Nervousness about talking about Health and Wellbeing issues, especially DEI, and which words ‘should’ and ‘should not’ now be used, emerged as one of the central themes of this year’s Watercooler Event.
Delegates and speakers praised the event for offering a safe space where professionals could talk openly with their peers about how to handle this tricky topic, discussing real life scenarios they are experiencing. The importance of bringing people together is particularly pertinent this week given it’s Mental Health Awareness Week and the theme is ‘community’.
Importance of community
One Director of Global Benefits at a FMCG company, who is part of the Make A Difference Media Leaders’ Club, said:
“It’s always useful to have a community of leaders who you can share your thoughts with and bounce ideas off, or get feedback. You get to speak to people in the same role but at different organisations so you get different ideas. Definitely, stepping out to events like this is really, really helpful. Yes we are all busy but it’s up to us to make that time and come and do it. The intent needs to be there.”
Many sessions and workshops touched on language, with attendees recounting stories of certain words being surreptitiously removed from company literature, and others saying reactions to the backlash were more overt.
For instance, in a session on neurodiversity speaker Wendy Macartney, Psychologist & Senior People Business Partner at Nedbank Private Wealth International, said the audience’s questions about language opened up a very helpful, “human” discussion.
Human conversations
She said:
“When we focus on semantics, people get confused. I think we need to let people say what they say. That doesn’t mean, of course, being cruel but it means that we accept when someone uses another word, or one that is similar [to the one we might prefer they use].”
She added that to foster understanding between people who hold different views, and perhaps use different language, “human connection” is essential:
“That’s why face to face events like The Watercooler are so important. They make a huge difference. You can meet people and interact with them and you have the opportunity to change minds and share information.”
Language naturally evolves
Macartney said that conflict, too, is best explored “face to face”. Her experience of bringing different people together in the office has been that it leads to a more “human” interaction. With this humanness, the language between people often naturally changes and becomes more understanding of each others’ perspectives.
Fellow speaker Selina Suresh, Head of Organisational Development & Inclusion ODI Global, who spoke on ‘Why Gender Equality Is Best for Men’, agreed:
“What I loved about the audience’s questions is they showed their comfort to ask what they were really thinking, versus shying away from a question. I loved how questions got into the practical of ‘what do I actually do in this situation?’. So, it’s not just talking about the problem or theory. It’s important at events that people go back to the office knowing what they would actually do.”
Over medicalisation of language
Some speakers and audience members also argued that Health and Wellbeing language has become “over medicalised” in the workplace. Others said they are finding new ways to talk about DEI without actually saying this acronym, or other potentially ‘triggering’ words like ‘diversity’ or, even, in some cases ‘inclusivity’.
For instance, one speaker spoke about delivering a DEI session to a large American corporation but positioning it, instead, as “leadership development”. While this may at first appear to be ‘turning against’ DEI, delegates discussed how this approach actually makes it easier for leadership to engage with the issues and for strategies to be embedded across the entire organisation, not just in siloes.
Think about the outcome you want
Speakers urged audience members to bear the outcome in mind and find creative ways to keep DEI on the leadership agenda. The theme of embedding Health and Wellbeing from the top, across the organisation, also came up repeatedly across the Day 2 Agenda of the Watercooler’s 4 streams: 1) Strategies & Leadership for Engagement & Culture 2) Prevention, Intervention, Holistic & Inclusive Wellbeing 3) The Office 4) Workshops.
One innovative way to do this mentioned was by treating the office as an employee Health and Wellbeing benefit. With so many employers adopting a hybrid model, the office is ideally placed to lead company culture in terms of how wellbeing, connection, collaboration, community, different ages/stages/ backgrounds/ working styles are cultivated.
Speaker Sofi Musleh, Executive DEI Leader, commented that she valued the discussion in one session, on Women’s Health, to engage leadership by promoting a “broader definition of ROI”.
She said:
“This was discussed in the empowering inclusive women’s health talk. It asked: what are you actually, systemically, changing for your place to be more inclusive?’ and the need for it to become part of the DNA of the organisation. It covered the fact that a lot of these conversations get lost in the conversation about ROI. But, when employers look at DEI issues on a bigger scale, the ROI is much broader in terms of employment, or even marketplace value for your company and the recognition it has.”
