The Frequency

As a part of our weekly check-ins, I have integrated wellness through psychological safety. I share my work-related stress first so we can create a space where people feel free to show up as their whole selves. What I have found is that I have created a trust-based sanctuary in our office instead of creating a pressure-based environment. My suggestion would be to start with vulnerability at the top. When the leaders of a team are willing to show their human side, it allows the entire team to prioritize their wellness without fearing the judgment from others.

Our core values reflect wellness through how we view TIME OFF as a shared obligation across the organization rather than an exception that needs justification.

Our PTO policy is intentionally flexible and designed to support rest, recovery and personal responsibilities without unnecessary steps or pressure. It covers vacation, sick time and personal days under one structure which removes confusion and hesitation. We also make space for brief time away for therapy sessions, medical visits or dental appointments without a formal entry in Paylocity. Team members simply coordinate directly with their manager to ensure coverage and alignment which keeps support practical and built into how we operate.

One practical step we recommend is to audit where time-off processes slow people down and eliminate formal requests for short, routine absences. We look for small process gaps that create hesitation like unclear rules on what needs a formal request versus what can be handled through a quick manager check-in. We write those boundaries down so managers apply them consistently and we make sure teams understand what “coverage” actually means so no one feels they are creating a problem by stepping away. Our intent is to reduce administrative drag, protect trust and keep wellness anchored in our daily operations instead of turning it into a separate program people feel unsure about using.

We stopped treating wellness as a perk and started treating it like infrastructure. That shift changed everything.

Early on, we realized most companies talk about wellness in terms of benefits — gym stipends, meditation apps, the occasional mental health day. That’s fine, but it’s surface-level. The real question we asked was: what parts of our work are quietly draining people, even if no one complains? Long meetings, constant urgency, the pressure to be “always on.” Those things don’t show up in a benefits package, but they shape how people feel every day.

So we integrated wellness into how work actually happens. We designed norms that protect focus, not just time. Fewer meetings by default. Clear expectations around response times. Work that can be paused without guilt. If someone needs space to think, recover, or just breathe, that’s not framed as a break from productivity — it’s part of doing good work.

The unexpected outcome was performance improved. People made better decisions. Burnout dropped. Creativity went up. It turns out wellness isn’t the opposite of ambition; it’s what makes sustained ambition possible.

My advice to other founders: don’t ask “what wellness benefit should we add?” Ask “what friction are we tolerating that slowly wears people down?” Remove that first. Wellness sticks when it’s baked into how work feels, not when it’s bolted on as a perk.

We began treating wellness as a core value, rather than just a benefit. At Legacy, wellness isn’t something you might find in a meditation app or experience on your days off. Instead, wellness encompasses our approach to workloads and how we reward performance, down to how much freedom people have over their time.

One of the practical changes we made was to redefine what we mean by productivity. What we do not reward is being responsive or simply online. What we reward are clarity, results, and sustainability. If someone’s ‘always on’ or checking their emails all hours, that means something’s broken in the system, not that that person’s a high performer.

What I always tell leaders: if well-being isn’t represented through the way that you hire, promote, and communicate expectations, it’s just branding. It’s time to live it out. Teams don’t follow values. They follow what happens.

As a founder and CEO in health and wellness, we integrated wellness into our values by making timely feedback and recognition a core habit. When someone does great work, we acknowledge it with the team right away, and when something needs improvement, we give clear guidance on what to do next. This keeps stress down, builds trust, and helps people grow faster. My advice is to pick one behavior that supports wellbeing, such as real-time feedback, and practice it consistently until it becomes part of how your company operates.

We’ve successfully integrated wellness into our company’s core values by embedding it into everyday practices rather than treating it as an optional perk. It’s not just about gym memberships or meditation apps, it’s about how work gets done, how leaders communicate, and how we recognize and support employees. For example, we built flexible schedules, set clear boundaries around after-hours communication, and trained managers to check in on workload and stress, not just deliverables. Wellness also factors into performance conversations: success isn’t measured solely by output but by sustainable contribution and growth.

The piece of advice I’d give to others is: make wellness a shared responsibility, not a top-down initiative. Involve employees in designing programs and policies so they actually meet real needs, rather than what leadership thinks might be helpful. When people see their input shaping decisions, wellness stops being a “nice-to-have” and becomes part of the company’s DNA.

Asking employees what wellness programs they want never worked for us. The answers were vague or just complaints. So we flipped it.

Instead of launching initiatives, we created channels for sharing workout routines and meals. Nothing fancy. “Here’s what I ate for lunch.” “Quick run this morning.” Participation was optional but visible. People started posting without being asked.

A fitness month with rewards for the top 3 landed well because the culture of sharing already existed. The program didn’t create the behavior. It amplified what was already happening.

Build the space before you build the program. Wellness sticks when it feels like part of the day rather than something extra bolted on.

For me, integrating wellness into a company’s core values didn’t start as a marketing decision — it started as a personal one. Years ago, I realized that many businesses talk about “health” or “well-being” only when it is convenient, but they don’t actually build their daily operations around it. I wanted to do the opposite.

At FASTOME, wellness is not just about physical health; it’s also about the environment people live in, the air they breathe, and the small daily habits that shape long-term quality of life. Instead of asking “what can we sell?”, we began asking “what genuinely improves someone’s everyday life?” That question changed how we choose products, partnerships, and even how we communicate with customers.

Another important step was consistency. It’s easy to talk about wellness once, but much harder to apply it in every decision — from packaging choices to customer support tone. Over time, this consistency creates trust. People notice when a brand acts with the same values it speaks about.

My advice for others is simple: start from authenticity, not trends. Wellness should not be a campaign; it should be a mindset. If the founder doesn’t personally believe in it, the audience will feel the disconnect very quickly. You don’t need to be perfect or have huge resources. What matters is aligning your actions with your message every day, even in small details.

When wellness becomes part of the company culture rather than a slogan, it naturally influences products, decisions, and relationships. In my experience, that is when a business stops chasing attention and starts building long-term credibility.

I connected our goals for being healthy (wellness) with our tradition of helping people make changes in their lives (transformation) and get well again (recovery). We have the same excitement around celebrating “wins” in health (such as an employee finishing a marathon) as we do around hitting our sales quotas. As a way to keep our associates focused on our company’s values (long-term health and purposeful living), my suggestion is to make health part of your “why.” By making health part of the overall company mission, it becomes ingrained in the company’s culture.

Integrating wellness into a company’s core values isn’t just about offering gym memberships or a few wellness programs here and there—it’s about embedding it into the culture, so it’s natural and consistent.

For us, the biggest step was recognizing that wellness is multi-dimensional. It’s not just about physical health, but mental well-being, emotional support, and even creating a work-life balance. We started by encouraging open conversations about mental health and stress, which was a huge shift. Making it clear that it’s okay to take a step back when you need it, without judgment, really helped reduce that unspoken pressure.

We also adjusted policies to promote work-life balance—flexible hours, remote work options, and even mental health days. We’ve found that it’s more than just offering perks—it’s about creating an environment where employees feel supported and where wellness is considered just as important as meeting deadlines.

One piece of advice I’d give to others trying to do the same is to lead by example. As leaders, we have to model the behavior we want to see in others. If we’re not prioritizing our own wellness, it’s hard to expect the team to do so. And it’s not just about saying “wellness is important”—it’s about showing it in how we operate. If your team sees that you take time to recharge, they’ll feel empowered to do the same.

Wellness isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing, so it’s also key to regularly check in with your team. Ask what they need, what’s helping them, and what isn’t. It’s an ongoing process, but the impact on employee satisfaction and productivity is worth it.

I made a digital “safe harbor” by establishing required screenless moments in our afternoon transition times. I have found that this minor ritual has dramatically enhanced the overall team’s ability to be resilient and feel emotionally secure while working through challenging projects. Providing this type of support allows all members of the team to decrease their stress as they experience it in real-time, rather than waiting until the weekend. My suggestion is to honor the space of silence throughout your workday. Include areas of recovery in the office’s rhythm, not just at home.

By creating a formal governance system that includes no less detail for mental health than our financial key performance indicators, we integrated wellness. I instituted the “Capacity Audit” every month to ensure that no department is at a capacity that may impede institutional accountability/excellence. We have developed standard benchmarks for sustainable output that shield our employees from administrative burnout.

My suggestions: If you are not measuring it, you cannot manage it! Incorporate wellness as a formal metric so you can ensure it’s always one of the top priorities of the board.

Working for a nutrition company, we realized pretty quickly that you can’t talk about wellness and not live it internally. One simple but meaningful thing we did was get gym memberships for all our associates. It sent a clear message that wellness wasn’t just marketing, it was part of how we take care of our people.

It changed the culture in a really positive way. People started talking about workouts, their weight loss, and just feeling better.

My advice for other companies, make wellness practical, not performative. Pick one real thing that improves employees’ daily lives and commit to it. When people feel better, everything gets better too.

We have included wellness in our overall approach to preserve funds and our company structure. After diving deep into our finances, we discovered that employee burnout was our largest uncontained operating expense. Therefore, we now view our employees’ available energy as a capital asset that must be maintained regularly. Treat the wellness of your employees as a means of managing risk in the organization. Preventing the overuse of energy is also a means of protecting the organization’s long-term financial viability and reducing the true cost of turnover.

We integrated wellness by building predictability into our workweeks across all teams. Clear schedules and stable priorities reduced daily tension and removed constant last minute pressure. People knew what mattered each week and could plan work and rest with confidence. That consistency made wellness practical because calm replaced guessing and stress at scale.

Our advice is to value stability as much as innovation when shaping how work flows everywhere. Wellness grows when people trust tomorrow instead of bracing for sudden change every day. Predictable systems support better decisions and healthier energy over long periods of work for teams. When stability is respected teams perform well without sacrificing mental health or balance.

I continually focused on finding new sources of positivity for our workforce throughout the challenging departmental transition because we had to develop a new set of tools to help reduce employee stress. By putting our stress-reduction goals into smaller and more realistic goals, we were able to generate a greater sense of success for our entire team to celebrate as we supported one another through this hard time as one team.

I believe the best advice to give is to continue to be persistent in your support elsewhere. Simple acts of encouragement and support can build resilience in people who have to endure great difficulty or hardship.

We integrated wellness by treating rest as an operational standard, not a perk, including occasional forced leave so people actually reset instead of stockpiling burnout behind a brave face. It works because recovery improves judgement, creativity, and consistency, which are core to performance, especially in fast-moving teams. My advice is to bake wellness into planning, set realistic workloads, model healthy boundaries from leadership, and measure output and quality rather than hours.

I used to think wellness meant buying expensive ergonomic chairs and stocking the fridge with kale smoothies. I was wrong. The real shift happened when I stopped sending emails after 5 PM. I noticed my team felt pressure to reply instantly, even during dinner with their families. I was the problem.

So I made a rule for myself first. I started scheduling emails to send the next morning instead of firing them off at midnight. It sounds small, but the tension in the office dropped within weeks. We integrated wellness by respecting time, not just by offering perks. My advice is simple. If you want your team to rest, you have to rest first. They watch what you do, not what you write in the employee handbook. You can’t preach balance while you burn the midnight oil.

We’ve been going 2 and a half years now with Tenacious AI Marketing Global, and we’ve had one sickness issue, and that was related to a major leg break. But other than that, sickness is not an issue, and that’s down to how we treat people and empower them mentally and encourage them to be good to themselves. We encourage them to look after themselves.