Working Well: Sable Lomax Of Fearless Futures On How Companies Are Creating Cultures That Support & Sustain Mental, Emotional, Social, Physical & Financial Wellness
An Interview with Karen Mangia
Seeing leaders move from performative statements to follow-through ownership and accountability is a great source of motivation to continue this work.
The pandemic pause brought us to a moment of collective reckoning about what it means to live well and to work well. As a result, employees are sending employers an urgent signal that they are no longer willing to choose one — life or work — at the cost of the other. Working from home brought life literally into our work. And as the world now goes hybrid, employees are drawing firmer boundaries about how much of their work comes into their life. Where does this leave employers? And which perspectives and programs contribute most to progress? In our newest interview series, Working Well: How Companies Are Creating Cultures That Support & Sustain Mental, Emotional, Social, Physical & Financial Wellness, we are talking to successful executives, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, and thought leaders across all industries to share ideas about how to shift company cultures in light of this new expectation. We’re discovering strategies and steps employers and employees can take together to live well and to work well.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sable Lomax.
Sable Lomax (she/her) is the chief relationships officer at Fearless Futures, a DEI consultancy organization that facilitates transformative inclusion learning experiences by actively challenging the roots, intersections, and lived realities of inequities. She comes to Fearless Futures with over 12 years of experience in PK-12 education and program development and management with expertise in curriculum development, facilitation, pedagogy, and Black studies. She received her BA in African American Studies and French from Temple University and a MSEd in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and is a community creator, focusing on building vast national networks for professional Black women.
Thank you for making time to visit with us about the topic of our time. Our readers would like to get to know you better. Tell us about a formative experience that prompted you to change your relationship with work and how work shows up in your life.
As a Black woman born and raised in the United States, the relationship between work and how it shows up for me personally was formed in my earlier years as a student receiving my education (pk-12). My understanding of it deepened as I matured throughout university and in my professional life. Though this may not be the same for every Black woman, particularly those raised in the US, it became clear to me in high school that I would no longer be part of the majority group and my legitimacy would be questioned. Thus, tying my identity and worth to what I could produce in a traditional setting was going to be dangerous to the preservation of my humanity. This understanding has persisted and deepened as years have gone by till this day.
Harvard Business Review predicts that wellness will become the newest metric employers will use to analyze and to assess their employees’ mental, physical and financial health. How does your organization define wellness, and how does your organization measure wellness?
This is an interesting question as an organization that provides inclusion and equity training and consultancy to organizations globally. Like many other organizations, we do provide a monthly wellness supplement for folks to take part in, should they choose to. As we are spending time defining what wellness specifically means for Fearless Futures, it has become clear to those of us in leadership that, when an organization prioritizes inclusion and equity and embeds them into everything that happens both internally and externally, the mental, physical, and even financial health of folks is accounted for via policies, practices and processes. In practice, for example, this could look like an organization fully committing to pay equity for all functions internally. As a result, women won’t be underpaid and feel undervalued. Therefore, their mental and financial health won’t be negatively impacted. When organizations take the time to embed equitable practices into the fabric of their ecosystem, wellness and the many manifestations of it are addressed, eliminating the need for a specific wellness policy.
Based on your experience or research, how do you correlate and quantify the impact of a well workforce on your organization’s productivity and profitability?
Again, this speaks to how inclusive and equitable the organization is to begin with. Do folks, particularly marginalized folks, feel as though they have the safety (psychological and physical), freedom, dignity, and authenticity to do their jobs? Or do they feel due to frequent microaggressions at the interpersonal level that the possibility of growth impedes their career trajectory? Do they know that, based on the policies that exist, their ability to put their best foot forward is impeded by having to navigate a complex benefits system as a disabled muslim woman, perhaps? As an organization that considers these realities for folks, especially marginalized people, we know that when barriers that prevent people from focusing on the job they were hired to do have been removed, you don’t have to overly concern yourself with productivity.
Even though most leaders have good intentions when it comes to employee wellness, programs that require funding are beholden to business cases like any other initiative. The World Health Organization estimates for every $1 invested into treatment for common mental health disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity. That sounds like a great ROI. And, yet many employers struggle to fund wellness programs that seem to come “at the cost of the business.” What advice do you have to offer to other organizations and leaders who feel stuck between intention and impact?
At Fearless Futures, we like to say the business case for diversity is bankrupt and we need to disinvest. I would argue we need to disinvest from any line of thinking that requires defending anyone’s humanity particularly, that of marginalized groups, who often have to prove they are worthy of existing, much less any form of investment be it time or money. Business cases are strategically framed as positive and therefore saying “divest” stirs up all sorts of feelings and emotions. I encourage those in leadership to ask themselves what the goal is. If the goal is to engage in “tick the box” exercises that don’t lead to much change, if any at all then they can pump out as many business cases as they would like. However, if the goal is to make an impact that prioritizes the needs of their people, particularly those whose needs are historically overlooked and unmet, then do away with the business case and simply do what is right and invest in your people because there is no organization if there aren’t any people.
Speaking of money matters, a recent Gallup study reveals employees of all generations rank wellbeing as one of their top three employer search criteria. How are you incorporating wellness programs into your talent recruitment and hiring processes?
As a small but mighty organization, our recruitment and hiring processes look very different than that of a large organization. However, what I can say is that all organizations should be transparent as to what benefits they offer — from salary range to any programs (health insurance, vision, dental, etc.) and schemes that are available to a prospective candidate. It’s unfair to take a candidate through a laborious interview process just for them to learn in the end that what you provide doesn’t fit their needs.
We’ve all heard of the four-day work week, unlimited PTO, mental health days, and on demand mental health services. What innovative new programs and pilots are you launching to address employee wellness? And, what are you discovering? We would benefit from an example in each of these areas.
We don’t have isolated programs currently and, as of today, we haven’t discussed them. What we do believe in is providing ample paid time off for folks to use as they see fit. For example, in the US context where you can in theory use up all of your sick leave, how does one account for an unforeseen illness, much less their recovery period? How does the stress of that situation impact every category of wellness mentioned above? We believe in granting people the flexibility to take care of themselves as well as manage their time utilizing the policies that we have put into place. Does this mean there is no room for improvement? Of course not, but it does mean that we understand that no physical wellness or even financial wellness program can offset the gender pay gap that exists in far too many countries globally. We prioritize inclusion and equity from an intersectional lens in every decision that we make that creates the conditions required to address wellness without having to say, this is version 2.0 of our emotional wellness program.
Can you please tell us more about a couple of specific ways workplaces would benefit from investing in your ideas above to improve employee wellness?
First and foremost, I would say recognizing wellness is not an isolated occurrence and is influenced by culture, which is in turn influenced by HR processes and policies that are the guardrails. It is easier to improve employee wellness when policies have been indexed for areas that impact one’s wellness such as pay, health benefits, family leave, time off approval requests, etc. It’s not a shortcut, but if a company wants to prioritize wellness, they can’t skip over prioritizing inclusion and equity.
How are you reskilling leaders in your organization to support a “Work Well” culture?
By continuously providing professional development that engages with furthering our understanding of inclusion and equity in the workplace as well as different ways of engaging with conflict, restorative justice models, etc.
Ideas take time to implement. What is one small step every individual, team or organization can take to get started on these ideas — to get well?
In the spirit of not latching onto quick wins but giving something folks can do rather quickly, making salaries transparent for all new hires–there goes your financial wellness for a new cohort of hires.
What is your greatest source of optimism about the future of workplace wellness?
Seeing leaders move from performative statements to follow-through ownership and accountability is a great source of motivation to continue this work.
Our readers often like to continue the conversation with our featured interviewees. How can they best connect with you and stay current on what you’re discovering?
I can be found on Linkedin here.
Thank you for sharing your insights and predictions. We appreciate the gift of your time and wish you continued success and wellness.
About The Interviewer: Karen Mangia is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world, sharing her thought leadership with over 10,000 organizations during the course of her career. As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she helps individuals and organizations define, design and deliver the future. Discover her proven strategies to access your own success in her fourth book Success from Anywhere and by connecting with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Working Well: Sable Lomax Of Fearless Futures On How Companies Are Creating Cultures That Support &… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.