Sofokus – Better Monday®
Our goal is to make every Monday a little better by taking care of our employees and encouraging them to pay attention to their own work-life balance. Better Monday® is a metaphor for being able to really enjoy the work week. A state, where Mondays actually feel better. We also want to distribute this thinking outside our workplace, that’s why we have Better Monday® podcast for everyone to listen and learn from the leading professionals in the field.
Purpose
We want our employees to feel better at work and to be able to enjoy what they do, and that way to stay in work-life for as long as they want. We achieve this by looking at people as individuals, not just employees. Our program aims to maintain the work-life balance of our people on every aspect of their lives. Making sure people know the importance of recovery, sleep and proper nutrition, our People Happiness Officer works tirelessly to increase the overall wellbeing of our people. We also share this thinking and work-life balance tips to others by speeches and Better Monday® podcast where we interview experts and professionals all around the world. The themes of the podcast episodes vary widely in different areas of well-being for example from emotions in workplace to learning from failure.
Results
Our employees stay healthy and motivated. We have noticed that by paying attention to these things the risk of burnouts or stress-related sick-leaves is smaller. By paying attention to our employees and guiding on how to maintain a healthy work-life balance we make work a pleasant part of people’s lives. We also help others outside our organization by sharing well-being tips for work-life and personal life.
Implementation
Our People Happiness Officer sends to our employees weekly Better Monday® newsletter with new work-life balance tips, last week’s average feeling and weekly meditation video. Week’s average feeling is collected daily by a scale of emojis that employee can press depending on how they feel at the end of each day. We also have monthly exercise-related Sofokus Life challenges, remote work possibility, workshops on different current topics, walking meetings via Teams connection, as well as providing broad occupational health services and free massage and exercise sessions. With our Better Monday® podcast we bring different well-being -related themes from international professionals to our employees as well as to everyone who wants to listen. We also give speeches in different events and schools about work-life and how companies can support their employees to feel balanced.
It truly feels like working with family and best friends, because we all take care of each other and like to hang out even outside the work
The impact of such an initiative is huge for a small company but even bigger if it gets implemented into a large corporation, where one can easily get lost in a toxic environment with long hours and multilayers of hierarchy. The strong mental and physical health of employees is crucial for a healthy and forward business! However, I would be very interested to see how this is measured, besides newsletter and Monday talks and how it is implemented in a different culture of work. I think its success is very dependent on people's culture as well as the company's culture, and this is why I gave a lower rating for replicability.
Responses