Many Leaders working to change workplace culture through an employee health and wellbeing lens face resistance – especially at the beginning.
Take the menopause. While this period of a woman’s life, and the associated symptoms, are now openly talked about in workplaces, this wasn’t always the case.
In fact, as Sarah Churchman talks about in our latest MAD Leaders Podcast, when she first uttered the word back in 2015 in relation to the Health and Wellbeing agenda, she says she “could have been swearing at them [colleagues], or using a disgusting, filthy word” given their initial reactions.
Sarah has a wealth of experience facing down taboos, stigma, stereotypes and internal resistance – having worked in HR roles at PwC for 20 years, latterly as Chief Inclusion, Culture & Wellbeing Officer. And, while she uses the example of menopause in this podcast, her approach can be applied to any resistance you might be experiencing internally.
As she says, often working in Health and Wellbeing requires a certain tenacity, and courage to stick to your convictions, and – dare we say it – going with your “intuition” (though, as Sarah also says, she doesn’t use this word in the workplace, particularly professional services… yet).
But how do you keep your courage and turn the tide when you face pushback internally?
Given that there are always taboos to overturn in this sector (and Sarah predicts more are incoming in the current market), these are skills to hone and in this podcast she talks us through how.
She also shares her advice on moving employee health and wellbeing to become a culture issue, taken seriously by senior management, as happened in her time at PwC, hence her former title which merges inclusion and culture and wellbeing.
Timeline of conversation:
00:00 Introduction to the Leaders Podcast
00:35 This Week’s Challenge: Overcoming Resistance
01:30 Meet Sarah Churchman: A Trailblazer in Workplace Wellbeing
02:19 Facing Resistance: The Menopause Case Study
04:03 Connecting and Supporting Employees
06:38 Engaging Male Leaders and Overcoming Taboos
14:07 The Role of Intuition and Data
16:13 Future Challenges and the Importance of Human Leadership
18:23 Conclusion and Final Thoughts and, of course, the Alien Question!
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