Wellness at Work

This week I’ve been involved in a couple of “wellness” activities that are sponsored by my workplace. My workplace (besides being a library) is a large research university and despite employing a huge number of progressive people is a surprisingly unprogressive place. So it’s pretty exciting to me that they are making a big push to promote wellness for employees. They are emphasizing physical activity, nutrition, stress reduction, and smoking cessation.

As part of the stress reduction component, meditation sessions are being offered at various locations throughout the campus. I went to one on Monday, and I liked it so much that I went again on Wednesday. I hope to do some more research about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and post on that in the future.

On Tuesday, I went to a luncheon for Wellness Ambassadors–volunteers, like me, who agreed to help get the message out about wellness on campus. It was a lot fun. We got free pedometers, learned about a lot of cool things going on, and I even ended up talking to the wife of the University Chancellor. She wants to start lunch time dances!

It is interesting to think about why a workplace would be interested in the wellness of its employees. They did not get into this at the luncheon, but I am sure there was a lot of talk by the higher ups about retention of employees and cost savings when employees aren’t out sick. They did mention that we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves because it affects others, such as our family and friends. I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch to say that the wellness of the library employees could affect the library users.

And that gets me to another idea about wellness and about happiness, it may seem like it’s selfish for me to think so much about my own well-being. But I really don’t think that’s true. Gretchen Rubin who blogs at The Happiness Project explained it best in an interview she gave at Dark Party Review:

Striving for happiness may appear to be a selfish goal, but it’s not.

Studies repeatedly demonstrate that happy people are generally more sociable, creative, forgiving, and tolerant of frustration than unhappy people, while unhappy people are more often withdrawn, brooding, and antagonistic. Happy people tend to be more responsible to others and to maintain relationships better. They’re more confident, optimistic, energetic, and likable, and they tend to be more successful in their personal lives and at work. They do more volunteer work and give more to charity. They’re healthier. They commit fewer crimes. When people are in a good mood, they think more clearly and are more open to new ideas. Although depressed people are more vigilant against making mistakes, people think more flexibly and with more complexity when they’re in good moods.

Just think? What if you were surrounded by happy people at work? What if our users came to the library and always (or almost always) encountered happy staff? It seems pretty obvious that focusing on happiness and wellness at work can lead to better serving our users. Not so selfish after all.