Our mission to ignite the human spirit through movement doesn’t just apply to our external community. Build the Better You was created as a way to support our own team in their growth and development across the facets of their lives – touching on Mind, Body and Purpose. Launched towards the end of 2022, the framework supports the individual journeys of our team with different levers so they are able to all develop, grow, and care for themselves with a range of tools.
We checked in with Director of Talent and Growth Alessandra Del Pino to get insights on the program, its impact and how it will evolve with time. Read on to walk through what we've learned since the start of Build the Better You.
Flexibility, mental health, and purpose matter.
With our approach, we aimed to think outside the box and push the boundaries on how we could positively impact our teams. We went in knowing people are in different stages of growth or life and value different things. During our first year, we gained significant insights into what truly matters to our team and saw a few key takeaways.
[Flexibility] Our lives are filled in unique ways and having a supportive, flexible environment built on trust can have a big impact. People at high-trust companies report 29% more satisfaction with their lives compared with people at low-trust companies. (Harvard Business Review)
[Mental Health] Engagement with coaching and counseling sessions surpassed our expectations. The initial goal was to have 800 live sessions through the Kyan Health app for 2023 and we ended the year at 1300. We can easily see that this resource had a big impact.
[Purpose and Representation] It's one thing to be inspired by On's mission, and another to feel that your values and purpose in life are aligned with the company's values and mission on some level. It's crucial for our people to find an environment where they can truly be themselves – this is truly at the core of the program and we see this reflected in our annual engagement survey results.
Holistic well-being support is complex so assessing progress is nuanced and detailed.
There are a lot of moving parts when we speak about well-being. When evaluating the framework, we measure each pillar individually. For the Purpose pillar, we primarily use our annual Engagement Survey, looking at factors connected to mission, purpose, and D&I. The survey is a crucial tool to get a pulse of the organization and to understand how specific efforts might be having an impact.
The Engagement Survey, paired with data such as sick days and flexible time off usage, also factor into our assessment of the Body pillar. We get an understanding of the Mind pillar through a combination of feedback surveys sent to participants from Learning and Development sessions, as well as the insights provided by our mental health partner, Kyan Health.
Enhanced well-being needs layers of support.
We establish that different factors influence a person’s journey to becoming an even better version of themself. Our mission is to try and support the various layers and act where we feel we can have an impact as an organization. Of course, though, everyone’s daily life is different and there are factors that will ultimately fall out of our orbit.
With this in mind, and alongside global initiatives, we are highly intentional at equipping leaders to support their teams. They’re all coached to consider everything that can impact team members, having a human approach to the way they lead. There’s always a balance between accountability of results and all the aspects that can influence a team’s performance – it’s definitely an important challenge to navigate and our talent team does its best to support.
It’s all about mindset. Starting with it and developing it.
On as a company tends to attract people with a spirit of curiosity, with motivation, and the eagerness to contribute to something bigger than themselves, which allows them to easily connect with the intention behind the Build the Better You framework. But, it's only with the right mindset that you can really develop – there’s a big learning component that we have to continuously develop to sustainably grow, adapt, and scale as a company.
It's an ever-evolving process.
To enhance the program, we’ve continuously added new measures since launching. That’s with things like:
- Culture of Feedback as a Habit: We recognize the importance of feedback as an enabler of individual growth, as well as a powerful conversation for building trust and psychological safety within teams. We enable team members to have moments in the year to seek feedback from others, as well as reflect on their growth and have conversations around goals and priorities with their leaders.
- Team communication and collaboration tools: Our team member’s experience is influenced by the ways of working within a team. We’ve made intentional efforts at offering tools for team collaboration and communication, such as Valence (which helps unpack and share how different team members think and communicate), to inspire deeper discussions about ways of working as a mechanism to positively influence team dynamics.
- Leadership Development: We believe leaders have a multiplying effect on the experience that our team members have at On. As part of our Learning & Development offering, we have the School of Leaders, a series of training modules where leaders come together to learn and share best practices related to leadership at On.
- Individual and Manager Learning Budget: Our team members have an allocated individual budget for the purposes of their development. We believe giving enablers to team members for them to act and be intentional in their development is a powerful way to set growth expectations.
We’re also continuing to bridge gaps, for example, between BTBY and our inclusion groups. Additional support for mental health awareness, improving our feedback training, and supporting internal moves within On are additional areas coming into focus.
BTBY goes beyond the workplace.
We view our team members as their whole selves, not just a version of them at work. Because of this, it is our responsibility as an employer to support the human spirit within each person, through all the stages of their development. The reality is, as we have all realized over the last years, work and personal life are a lot more intertwined than we’ve previously dared to acknowledge. It’s essential that this framework taps into various aspects of well-being beyond the workplace. Just because we walk into the office, doesn’t mean our personal life stops at the door. Our interactions, work, experience is all impacted by the things happening around us and as an organization, we have an opportunity to contribute to well-being on a deep level - touching on Mind, Body and Purpose.