Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable with myself, how young.
I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu -Shan.
Coming up, joy is everywhere, you just have to find it.
Join us at Roundtable's happy place for stories, memories and all things feel good.
And from subsidized gym memberships to mental health workshops, companies worldwide invest heavily in wellness programs.
But are these perks truly transforming employee well -being?
Or is the money down the drain?
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We are game. Send it to Roundtable podcast at qq .com.
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And now on Roundtable, welcome to the happiest corner on the airwaves.
Roundtable's happy place.
Delivery. Delivery.
Delivery. What is it?
Happiness from Roundtable.
This week's happy place.
Let's lead with Mr.
Steve Hatherly. What do you have for us?
Swimming. Oh, lovely.
Oh, yes. It's so cold though.
Well, not outdoor swimming.
Yes, I'm not swimming in the canal from Beijing to the southern parts of the country.
No, I love swimming.
Do you know I laugh so hard.
Do you know the comedian Trevor Noah?
He has a stand -up special and in one of his specials, he finishes with five things white people love.
And number two on the list was swimming.
And number one was Neil Diamond's song Sweet Caroline.
And my wife, who's Korean was we were watching that together.
She's like, Oh, why are you so true?
You do love swimming in Sweet Caroline.
Anyway, I've discovered a gym recently that we signed up for that has the gym part and it has the swimming pool inside as well.
So we've incorporated swimming into our exercise routine.
And I grew up swimming.
I was lucky enough when I was a kid.
My family had a swimming pool in the backyard with a slide and a diving board.
So swimming just reminds me of my family and it reminds me of being a kid somehow.
So when I jump into a pool, I still feel like a child these days.
I love being in the water.
I love ocean swimming.
I love, you know, swimming in a hotel swimming pool as well.
So yeah, I'm really, really, really happy that I've discovered that these days.
It makes me feel calm.
It makes me feel serene.
And there's something I don't know so peaceful about having your body and your head under the water.
You can't hear anything.
Nobody's texting you or calling you or emailing you or talking to you.
You only hear the sound of the splashing of the water that your hands and your feet are creating.
I found it and we're loving it.
Oh that's great! So it's a good sport, some really good physical exercise as well as putting your headspace in the right place.
Yes. And splashing water on to other people's faces.
Well if they're close enough, yeah.
So the next goal is to try to make that part of my morning routine instead of the weekend routine, which it is right now.
But I don't know if I'll be able to do that or not.
That's the next challenge in front of me.
Wow. I was hearing from a colleague lately that swim doesn't not only give you that feeling of say tranquility and relaxation and also get the exercise done, but also it has a good posture as per when you're swimming, it's good for your cervical vertebra and your lower back.
Just exercise on those muscles that's usually stiff while you're sitting in the office.
Yeah or if you have knee troubles or something like that and jogging is not for you, then swimming is a great alternative.
There's lots of benefits.
Very nice and I might consider that in summertime.
Yeah. Thank you so much Steve.
Welcome. And you Shen, what's your happy place?
Well let me ask you a question first.
When was the last time you guys experience the joy of finding something that you thought was lost?
Oh that's a difficult question.
The joy in finding something that I thought was lost so I thought it was gone forever.
Uh -huh. But then I said, oh here it is.
Oh, my earphones. My earbuds.
I mean, this is kind of a daily thing for me.
Like, where? Oh there it is.
Yeah. Yeah. Youth. Hey, that ain't coming back.
Yeah, I said that with a tear at the corner of my eye.
Yes. You Shen, so please cheer me up.
I mean, youth is always with you.
But for me I just experienced it just last night yesterday that I found my e -reader that I think I bought it like almost a decade ago and I thought it's gone for good but it just turned out to be under a pile of books.
Oh wow. And it's still functional.
The battery is still running.
It's running really bad.
So you, yeah, but you still have all your books on there.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Old books, English books, novels, fictions, the criminal solving fictions I used to love, back in uni.
Give us one or two.
What were you reading at that time?
Well, there was this one called The Witcher.
Of course, it's the original story from the game The Witcher.
Geralt. Yeah, Geralt of Rivia.
My favorite. But anyways, there's also the Chinese fiction called Zhu Shu Yao.
I know it's probably not very well known.
It's just, it started as an online fiction and now it's a book and it was really popular during a time frame that young people just read through it and learn about the decent history that's written inside.
It's basically a love story but it's interwoven a lot of the historical incidents as part of the narration.
So back then I was diving really deep into that book as well.
But either way, it's just so good to get this thing back and also my reading experiences and part of the uni memories of reading with friends because it was such a big thing back then in 2013, 2012, that young people are getting their first e -books, whether it's a Kindle that's very famous back then
or a Han Long or other kind of domestic e -books that we just get them and we talk about the books we were reading.
And yeah, now the memories are back too.
That's amazing. I had that experience one time many years ago when I was moving house.
Do you remember the old MP3 players?
Oh, wow. They looked like a big...
Remote control. Well, okay, like a small remote control maybe or a big USB.
I was moving house and I was cleaning out the drawers and stuck way in the back was this little MP3 player that I hadn't listened to in maybe six years.
And oh, my gosh. And I plugged it in and I was able to listen to songs that I used to listen to back then.
Do you know song number one that was on there?
Sweet Caroline. You got my punch line before I got it out.
That was not on there, but that is what I was going to say.
But it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it?
It's like a little trip down memory lane.
Oh, lovely. What's yours this week?
Well, you know what my happy place is this week?
Celebrating Thanksgiving in Beijing with my expat friends.
None of us could roast a turkey or well to save our lives.
So we ditched the kitchen and hit up a restaurant for their turkey feast.
And here's what we had.
Golden roasted turkey, velvety mashed potatoes, super delicious cranberry sauce and a slice of pumpkin pie.
So good. Absolute chef's kiss.
No sweating over the stove.
No disasters in the kitchen.
Just us diving into that huge spread, wipe our mouths, pay and leave.
We paid. Perfect. And sharing this holiday as a Chinese person with American friends made me appreciate how cultural exchange lights up our lives.
Thanksgiving isn't a traditional holiday for me.
But sitting there swapping stories with friends over turkey and pie felt so universal.
Maybe you don't need to travel far to discover new cultures.
Sometimes the world comes to your city plate first.
And it also had a an epiphany that the best celebrations aren't about following traditions perfectly.
They're about connecting, learning and laughing together.
And of course, Thanksgiving's history is an all warm and fuzzy.
It's kind of dark and complicated to see to say the least.
But if there's one thing we can all embrace, it's the value of gratitude.
In a world that moves faster than a tick tock trend, stopping to be thankful is radical self care, in my opinion, whether it's for a great meal, a solid group of friends or simply surviving another week, there's always something to appreciate.
Gratitude isn't just for one day, it's the cheat code to a happier life.
And that is my happy place.
Wonderful. I don't get to eat that food very often.
You just described an American Thanksgiving dinner.
But in Canada, we have base basically it's the same foods.
We celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada a month earlier, we repeat that meal for Christmas time.
But again, we only eat it twice a year, but not having lived in North America for a very long time.
It's been a while for me to, to have experienced that meal.
So thank you for your happy place.
Because that took me back to my happy place of eating with my family during this time of year as well.
And you know what, the most important message from Steve just now, I hope you managed to sort of catch that gem out of the many awesome words this man just spelled.
Basically there's another Thanksgiving for Canadians that happened in October.
Yeah. And that's, you know, how things run in Canada.
That's right. Here's my question.
Do you prefer real cranberry sauce or canned cranberry sauce?
This is a big debate amongst North Americans.
What's the difference between a real one and a canned one?
Isn't the canned one the real one?
Well, no, no, it's more of a processed jelly type thing.
But a lot of people say the canned version is better than the real cranberry sauce.
But if you haven't had both, then my question is pointless.
Well, you know, for naturalists, we might say, oh, the real deal is always better.
No, the canned sauce better.
And it makes this amazing sound when you open up the can with your can opener and then you turn it upside down and shake it because it's got to come out and go as it plops onto the plate.
Fantastic. Oh, I love that feeling.
Oh, okay. We know how you feel about it that you should.
That's perfectly said without actually saying a word.
Coming up next from free yoga sessions to mental health support, wellness programs have become a staple in offices in a lot of countries.
Is wellness at work working?
Stay tuned. Looking for passion?
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Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understanding is the goal.
It's the hour of Roundtable with myself He Yang, and I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yushan in the studio.
Office wellness programs can come in many forms, ranging from onsite yoga classes to financial and stress counseling.
Companies can implement various strategies to enhance the workplace environment for their employees who spend countless hours there each day.
Companies around the world spend billions of dollars on these programs.
However, the question remains, are these programs truly beneficial for employees, or are companies merely wasting money?
Well, let's start with a little bit of background about how around the world people work the way they do.
Yeah. Well, the history of workplace wellness starts a lot, lot, lot earlier than I would have guessed.
It started with an Italian physician by the name of Bernardini Ramazzini.
Now, Bernadini Ramazzini lived from 1633 to 1714, but he is the person who is believed to be one of the first ever to write about the effects of work exposure on workers and was interested in the possibilities of taking preventative measures to help improve employee well -being, even back at that time.
Now, a half a century after his death, that's when the Industrial Revolution brought with it many new health problems and injuries due to the way that work was really reformulated and systematized as well.
Now, fast forward to 1810, Welsh social reformer Robert Marcus Owen, he proposed, this is interesting, in 1810, he proposed a 10 -hour work day to help protect the well -being of workforces.
By 1817, he proposed a more aggressive measure, excuse me, the eight -hour work day.
And that coined the phrase, eight hours of labor, eight hours of recreation, eight hours of rest.
And one of the first organizations to implement Owen's ideal on a wide scale, at least in America, was the Ford Motor Company in 1914.
Now, that's kind of how we got to work the way that we work almost internationally.
But the workplace wellness programs, they didn't really begin to exist until around the mid -1970s.
And during that timeframe, there was a perceived shift in financial responsibility for healthcare, from the government to the employer.
So there was a general culture shift that promoted fitness at the time.
There was emerging research findings that showed that the cost of employees' unhealthy habits could be very costly for companies as well.
All that research started to come out around that time.
And that's when the real wellness program started to kick off.
And we talk about wellness programs in the corporate world.
What do you exactly mean?
Well, I'll give you some examples.
I mean, you touched upon a couple of easy ones in the opening.
Things like an office yoga class, right?
That's a common one, I think.
But it can be anything.
It can go to financial counseling, stress counseling, mental wellbeing classes.
I'll give you some examples from some real companies in the world.
These programs exist these days.
Adobe. We know the company Adobe.
It's a software company.
They have somewhere in the area of around 30 ,000 employees, and they created a program called the Welcome Back Program to offer additional resources to employees and help managers facilitate a seamless transition back to work.
That's one example.
Here's another one.
There's a company called Red Hat, which is an IT firm.
They have about 19 ,000 employees.
And at Red Hat, they have something called Recharge Days.
These are special, quarterly days off where selected associates can all have the opportunity to step away from their laptops for a day of rest and renewal.
Now, if you're thinking, okay, well, that's just a day off, right?
But it's a collective vacation, which means everyone in the company has the day off.
And the benefit of this is when you come back to work, because everybody was gone, you don't come back to your computer with unanswered emails or text messages or work waiting for you because the whole company takes the day off.
Interesting idea. Here's one last example for you.
American Express, the credit card company, they have about 75 ,000 employees, maybe a little more.
They have Mental Health Awareness Month.
They call it Here For You, Here For Each Other.
And throughout the month, the company holds webinars, and they share tools such as Talking Points for senior leaders.
And it's all aimed at ensuring colleagues understand that it's okay not to be okay, and it's okay to ask for help.
And these are some examples of office wellness programs.
That last tagline almost made me want to cry.
Yeah. I mean, it's when you think of a credit card company, you don't necessarily think of a mental health wellness program existing within their walls.
But they do. And here's evidence that a lot of companies around the world have these types of programs.
This is from health .harvard .edu.
I'll read to you here.
If your employer has more than 200 workers, there's a good chance that you have a wellness program offered through your work.
About 80 % of larger companies have these programs existing today, and even at smaller companies with more than half of them having these types of programs as well.
Now, that's from health .harvard .edu.
That's obviously written from a North American perspective.
But still, we learned, as you were talking and you're opening, billions of dollars around the world are spent on wellness programs, corporately speaking.
Right. Is there maybe a Chinese angle to this?
I can go in this just to start the snowballing, I suppose.
One thing comes to mind, which is really coming from a different direction, I would say.
It's very common in Chinese companies, as well as public organizations or public organs, to offer the annual health checkup.
Maybe that's not direct mental support for sure.
Not all companies do this, but for a large number do here in China.
At least your employee gets to know, from a medical standing point, what's right and wrong about their health.
Yeah, what's going on inside your body.
Yeah, that's what we do here.
I just got my result, and it was frustrating.
But the better company you are hired by, the more thorough of a health track they're also providing as well.
So that's the thing.
Another example that I can say from the Chinese perspective is that previously I interviewed someone that works for a French corporation's Guangdong division.
So according to that person, basically, they use the European standard, but it's also practiced here in China, in Guangdong, in their office that there's this program called HeForShe.
It's something that's for the entire company and all the male employees especially, to support and to give equal opportunities for their female employees.
And there are also events and organizations that's just built for the female employees in that company to get supports mentally or just in whatever ways that they need help.
I think that's a very interesting mechanism as well.
And we don't really see that in a lot of corporations here in China, but in that one at least, that's what I heard.
And that's what they're practicing every year.
So how effective are these wellness programs?
That's the question, right?
So William Fleming conducted a study.
He's a research fellow at the Wellbeing Research Center at Oxford University in England.
And these study results just came out.
And what he did was he examined data from over 46 ,000 workers at 233 companies.
And the companies offered employees that he looked at a range of 90 different wellbeing programs.
They included stress and resilience training and mindfulness.
That was a big catch word a couple of years ago.
Time management training, relaxation classes, you name it.
These are 90 different programs offered at 233 different companies.
Now here's what he discovered.
Now this is according to his results from his research.
He found that almost none of these interventions had any statistically significant impact on worker wellbeing or job satisfaction, almost zero.
They did not improve employees' sense of belonging at work.
They did not reduce perceived time pressures, nor did they make employees feel supported or improve workplace relationships.
In some cases, wellbeing interventions even made matters worse, the study suggested.
For instance, workplace resilience and mindfulness training had a slightly negative impact on employees' self -rated mental health.
I won't go into the details of how he conducted that study.
That'll take too long, but those are the results that he found.
So what exactly does work to improve how employees feel about their jobs?
Yeah, I mean, there's evidence on both sides, but this is what he has to say about that.
Fleming says that it is possible to improve employee wellbeing by focusing on more structural aspects of the work, like improving pay or providing secure contracts or giving employees flexibility or control over their work schedule, and also providing the employees opportunity for upscaling and for mentoring
as well. Some of these wellness programs I have suspected for years are just a facade for corporate exploitation, offering perks like the ones that you just mentioned, Steve.
That actually has some substance, I think is more important than just appearing beneficial when distracting people from deeper issues such as overwork, low wages, the lack of real support in the workplace, I mean, kind of shifts the focus.
Yeah, and he did an interview with the New York Times and he said that he knew that what he discovered would be controversial.
He says it's not impossible for wellness programs to be successful, but there are other things that need to be taken into consideration.
For example, you have to know who your employees are and how they feel about their position.
Here's an example. I found this story from a woman named Shanti Alec who used to work for a large Toronto tech company, Toronto Canada.
And at that company, they offered a lot of different wellness programs.
But Shanti said as a black woman, she never felt that those programs were designed with people like her in mind.
And this was her quote, I know other women of color who sort of hesitated to participate, because we are taught that you're supposed to focus on work at work, and you work to work.
That's why you're there.
And taking advantage of some of those programs, she said there was guilt involved.
She said there's a level of privilege that some folks have and others don't.
And she also pointed to the fact that with younger employees, there's a lot more pressure on them to work, work, work while they are at the office.
Whereas some of her senior co -workers might feel, oh, there's a yoga class after lunch.
Hey, let's all go together.
So a group of those employees make that decision.
Okay, let's go enjoy that.
But she said she felt like those were designed for them, not inclusive for all the employees at the company.
I think that's an amazing point that she brings up you by introducing a wellness program at your company.
If you're not careful, you can alienate certain people at your company and make them feel worse about being at the office.
Yeah. I'm sorry, that just makes me feel like this is a first world problem when you're looking at so many companies in other places around the world that don't even offer yoga classes.
That's something that I'll have to pay extra to go to after work.
I mean, well, it's good to know that some people are really enjoying their lives in other places.
There's this phrase on Chinese social media called Mo Yu called it's kind of a joke among young people nowadays that they want to just get a little bit of time to slack off a little and relax a little during work.
But that's all that we can imagine at this point, I guess, because at least for me, I wouldn't dare to go to a yoga class of any sort during work time.
I looked up a couple of other examples of wellness programs to see what was out there.
Oh, my gosh, this is the worst, I think.
It's called Lunch and Learn.
This is what they say, turn your employees lunch break into an opportunity to learn about a wellness topic like nutrition or exercise.
Consider inviting a guest speaker who has expertise on the on the topic to entertain your employees while they eat their lunch.
What? Nobody's going to be excited about that for sure.
And the reality is that true employee well being goes or should go beyond surface level perks.
It requires the genuine commitment to work life balance.
Yes, you know, that should not be a foreign concept, fair compensation and a supportive work environment.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you so much, Steve Hatherly, and you shine for joining the discussion.
Thank you for tuning in.
You can always find us on Apple podcast at roundtable China.
Neil Diamond, huh? And also, we would love to hear from you and have your voice on our show.
So please send your voice memo to roundtable podcast at qq .com.
