Transcribed from the recording and lightly corrected. It may contain errors; the recording is the record.
00:00Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And I learned firsthand that chronic stress can cause physical disease and chronic stress can kill you. And it nearly killed me. And the reason is wellness influencers or LinkedIn influencers have ruined the conversation. None of them have a background in corporate America, corporate hr. None of them are doctors. They're using AI to be false influencers.
00:21Chelsea Ryckis: That's gonna yield an roi. And I've to this day refused to put my name and sign off on any wellness that isn't 100% data driven. But there's not a lot there.
00:32Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Empathy and compassion coexist with expectations, accountability and setting boundaries. If this is your shift at work and you were expected to log on and come in, you are still expected. But we do so not in a fear based culture, but in a caring culture. And that makes all the difference in the world.
00:54Chelsea Ryckis: The Business of Benefits is your. No bs, no sales guide to real
00:58Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Solutions, no gimmicks, just the truth about how to take control, transform your benefits and care for your most valuable asset, your people.
01:07Chelsea Ryckis: If you're tired of the same old sales pitch and you're ready to rethink your benefits, this podcast is for you. The truth is out there. Are you ready to hear it? Today is a fun episode. We've got Dr. Romie Mushtaq, a friend of mine, a colleague in the benefits industry. She is actually the chief Wellness officer at Great Wolf Lodge, which is an organization with 14,000 or more employees and she has been tasked with making them healthier.
01:35Chelsea Ryckis: So it's funny because wellness has always been an area of benefits where frankly, I've called a lot of BS on and I've questioned the ROI and have questioned some of the vendors in the space and the practices around it, as you'll hear in the episode today. But I'm so impressed with this program and with the way that Dr. Romie has really created actionable data like science based, evidence based wellness programs that are yielding incredible results for the organization she serves.
02:12Chelsea Ryckis: And she serves some pretty incredible organizations besides just Great Wolf Lodge, being that she is a consultant in the corporate wellness space, including Delta Airlines, Google, Expedia, Salesforce, Oracle, just to name a few, and there are literally hundreds more. She's a brain doctor. That's probably where I should have started. She is a brain doctor with over 20 years of leadership experience and she really believes, even in the front, the front that we're in with AI, that work is human, the future of work is human and we need to protect people's brains. You're going to hear that over and over today, protect people's brains.
02:46Chelsea Ryckis: So she will help organizations basically spark a culture shift using her Brain Shift model that she's developed where brain Science Meets Leadership to create caring, connection and resilient teams. So today we talk about how do you identify burnout in your populations? How does that show up in claims data or not? And then for organizations that don't have a wellness budget, let's say what can they do? And for organizations that do what can they do as well? And you'll be surprised that a lot of it doesn't cost as much as you think it does.
03:19Chelsea Ryckis: But before we get into this week's episode, if you work in group benefits, imagine spending a few days connecting with professionals who truly understand your world. They speak your language language, they share your challenges and they're passionate about helping employees thrive with their employee benefit programs. That's exactly what you're going to find at the 45th Annual Employee Benefit Symposium, which is August 23rd through the 26th in Phoenix, Arizona. This is powered by ISCEBS and it's one of the country's premier gatherings of benefit professionals. So if you aren't going, take a look.
03:52Chelsea Ryckis: Iscebs.org symposium I've been to this conference personally, it's incredible I won't be there this year as we are going to be speaking somewhere else holding a pre conference workshop. However, if you can go highly, highly recommend it. Check it out is c e b s.org symposium so without further ado, let's get into this week's episode. Welcome to the Business of Benefits podcast. I'm your host Chelsea Ryckis and today we've got such a great, exciting guest. It's actually she is actually a dear friend of mine but also a colleague, Dr. Romie Mushtaq. Thank you so much for joining me today, Chelsea.
04:30Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It's so important we're having this conversation today and I always really try to be intentional. I never take anybody's time for granted that is putting us between their ears or watching the video. So my intention today is people will leave feeling motivated about their own well being at work and taking care of their team. Protecting your brain and protecting your people.
04:53Chelsea Ryckis: Love it. That is absolutely perfect. So earlier we were joking around about, you know, oh, our marketing guy might be a little bit nervous. He thinks it's going to be a boring episode because we have a brain doctor Neuro expert on on the call. I want to let the plan sponsors know a little bit about or your specific background with regards to your work. So could you share.
05:16Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yeah. Chelsea, I am blessed to say as a CEO and founder of the Brain Shift Institute, I have an impact driven business just like you do. And my career started absolutely, as a neurologist. I entered neurology at a time where less than 5% of the brain doctors in the United States were women. I loved my job, I excelled at my job, but I wasn't protecting my brain and I wasn't protecting my people, my team members. And this was in 2010. Nobody was talking about mental health in the workplace. In fact, that was a detriment to your career, let alone the term burnout had been introduced.
05:56Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And I learned firsthand that chronic stress can cause physical disease and chronic stress can kill you. And it nearly killed me in 2010. I ended up in life saving surgery. And when I woke up in the icu, I wasn't worried what the cardiothoracic surgeon was going to tell me. I remember feeling hopeless and feeling alone. And I remembered nobody at work asked me if I was okay and I was visibly struggling. And so today, my mission as a chief wellness officer for a company of 14,000 employees and as a workplace wellness and culture consultant is nobody should feel alone at work. And we need to create teams where everybody feels seen, heard and trusted. Absolutely.
06:44Chelsea Ryckis: I could not agree more. I know that you and I, originally, we are part of the same CEO founders club, but we, I think we really started to connect after you heard my brain injury story. And, and thinking back to that now, it makes, it makes so much sense because around the time when that happened to me, which was like 2013, close to 2010. I mean, concussions are obviously different than burnout, but the same idea just around health in general. There wasn't strict protocols, there wasn't an understanding of the mental health side of have a mild traumatic brain injury either.
07:22Chelsea Ryckis: So I feel like our paths have a lot of synchronicity in a lot of ways, especially now with the work of plan sponsors. So all of that being said, plan sponsors listening to this episode today, Dr. Romie, is if you can't tell yet, top tier when it comes to.
07:37Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Thank you. Yeah.
07:38Chelsea Ryckis: Workforce Wellness for plan sponsors. So we actually have. Let's tell everybody this so they can get excited as well. We have a webinar in August where we're going to dive super deep into so plan sponsors can realize what is the ROI on a true workforce Wellness program. How do you decide what to implement when you're going to take us through an entire risk process?
08:01Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yeah. So we are, yes, really excited. Yeah. It's really what is a chief wellness officer and how can you use the tools we would use to make data driven solutions for a whole person wellness program for your company with measurable roi? Because really, otherwise, don't we all sometimes honestly feel like we're throwing spaghetti at the wall wondering what employees are going to pay attention to?
08:24Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah, I think I've shared this with you. I've always been of the mindset because I haven't seen a lot of wellness programs really done well. What I've seen is we got a bunch of jump ropes. I remember early in my jump ropes story is terrible. You're going to love it. So early in my career, probably 10 years ago, I was speaking to a large bank in Florida, I don't know, 10, 15,000 employees. And when I was inquiring about their benefits program, of course asked about wellness initiatives and they said that they take it very, very seriously, I was like, great. Like what is it?
08:57Chelsea Ryckis: And they order jump ropes that are branded to the company and they ship them out to everybody. And I was like, so what happens after that? Oh no, everybody just comes in and they tell us how much their kids love the jump ropes. And I'm like, but is it tied to anything at all?
09:14Dr. Romie Mushtaq: We're getting the doctor Auntie face palm live if you're not watching the video here. And by the way, that isn't so outdated because you can replace jump ropes with pelotons or Fitbits and that's what people think wellness is. It happens to be whatever the CEO or somebody in the C suite loves and they're forcing it down the throat of every employee in the company.
09:37Chelsea Ryckis: Yes. And how often have we seen that with benefit decisions in general where something works for somebody as a decision maker? Right. So let's remind ourselves that all of these plan sponsors that you and I work with, most of them, if they're private companies, are subject to erisa, where they are fiduciaries to those that they serve. So every decision that they make should be made A, data driven, B, in the best interest of those that they serve. But a lot of the times, to your point, you see, oh well, my daughter did GLP1 and she lost a bunch of weight. So therefore, can we make GLP1s free for everybody or.
10:08Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yes, the jump rope. Right, Whatever the jump rope is. I love this analogy. I'm going to use it from now on in my keynote lectures. Is the jump rope because I'm having visions. I think I may be your older sister, but like when I was in elementary school, the. What was it? Double Dutch was trending. Right. And that's what creating a wellness program looks like. If you've ever watched those double Dutch teams and jump rope, they're like twirling the ropes in two different directions. And you've got to find the ideal moment to jump in and not triple and face palm on the cement.
10:43Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Otherwise you're going to have a bloody mess. And I feel like that is the wellness strategy today. You're just trying to insert the next benefit in this rapidly moving cycle of business. Global economic uncertainty. AI and culture is an afterthought. And culture is trying to be the band aid to reduction in workforce. And that's not how it works.
11:07Chelsea Ryckis: I love that. So can you share maybe some of the very basics? Like, let's just start super basic and then we'll get a little bit more granular and detailed. But, like, what is Workforce Wellness at?
11:19Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It is.
11:20Chelsea Ryckis: And then also something that I'd be very interested in knowing is like, how does a population know that they're in need of a program? Like, what signs start to tell them that people are actually burnt out?
11:31Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Chelsea, this is so important. I think two things here that we're going to break down is burnout. And how do you know you need a wellness program? Everybody needs a wellness program. If you have more than two employees, think of your wellness program is a part of your culture program. And I will address that second. But let's talk about burnout. I think most of the plan sponsors right now are giving a side eye or rolling their eyes or thinking, do I really want to listen to this episode? Because we're burned out from talking about burnout. And the reason is wellness influencers or LinkedIn influencers have ruined the conversation.
12:05Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Chances are you're listening to this podcast and you're following one of the top 20 LinkedIn influencers on burnout. And did you know none of them have a background in corporate America, corporate hr? None of them are doctors. They're using AI to be false influencers. I'm here to break down the nitty gritty. And how did I learn this? Because here I was suffering from burnout and I made it a mission that no one should be burned out again. And I didn't want to do just neurology and integrative medicine in a clinic and treat people when they, you know, arrived burned out. I was like, can we go to the root cause inside the company?
12:40Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And so you have to have a way to measure burnout. And I found one. Key tool that has been eye opening for every company that asks me to come and speak and consult. It's a neuropsychology stress test that's invalidated it. We relabeled it the busy brain test because I can't just walk onto stage and have a CEO go, we just hired a brain doctor that's giving the an entire company that a neuropsychology battery. I think all of your benefits leaders would really appreciate it that this is a validated psychology test. So it's called the Busy brain test. And I love this test because it helps us to protect our brain and protect our people.
13:18Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You and I as an individual, Chelsea, or anyone listening can take this. We'll put it in the show notes. You get a brain score we know below 30 means you are healthy and well, mentally well between 30 to 40 it's a change fatigue and 40 and above busy brain and burnout. And so it gives you the tools that I've researched in 17,000 people on what to do individually to heal the burnout because another meditation app or yoga class or nutrition class is not going to cut it in the benefits portfolio. And we're going to dig deep in the webinar in August on that.
13:51Dr. Romie Mushtaq: But the second thing is we now take that collective data from your company, de identify it and we can actually, whether it's 10 employees or 100,000 employees, get key metrics on how many employees are actually mentally doing well and resilient, how many are just having mild change fatigue and how many are actually burned out and what are their symptoms looking like? Is it based in the brain, cognitive, memory and sleep? Is it mental health or is it physical health? So now you're not guessing jump rope or Peloton or meditation app anymore. You're actually getting a data driven solution about the state of the brain of your entire organization.
14:34Chelsea Ryckis: When you're talking about this, I can't help but think about the plans that we design where we're designing custom healthcare plans that are completely claims and data driven and that we have to the penny accounting on every single claim granted claim would be after the fact. So there's no necessary like there's predictive analytics in it, but it's after the fact, it's reactive. Right. And I was so I would just love to be able to look at the results that you have from this brain test and then compare it to claims data and see where and I'm sure that's part of your process as well to validate.
15:09Chelsea Ryckis: Right. Which is that we are already seeing these things. So let's talk through what that looks like. Like manifestation of burnout. What does that actually look like in populations?
15:19Dr. Romie Mushtaq: First of all, I think most employees are using the term I'm burned out too freely.
15:26Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah.
15:26Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And it may be that I'm burned out because I had a tough week. I'm a caregiver to elderly parents. So what I really should be saying is, you know, this week at work, Chelsea, I'm gonna give you 40% because that's all I have right now. That's not burnout. That's my attention temporarily needs to be elsewhere. And I call that having a human moment and that workplaces need to create caring cultures where we have that flexibility. We're going to talk about that in a second. But one, you actually are having burned out. You're going to see three, four things happening is in the engagement scores.
16:03Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You're going to see people complaining about their leaders, their managers, unfair practices at work. You're going to see it manifesting in other areas on your engagement survey data. And at the end of the day, we know when employees are burned out, there's likely a breakdown in communication, a breakdown in trust, a breakdown prototype productivity.
16:27Chelsea Ryckis: Are they. Are they burnt out because of those things, or are those things happening because they're burnt out?
16:32Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Both. Both. And so when we look at this, when we go in as a whole person wellness program, I always say, what am I doing to protect the employee's brain in that particular industry? Because there's not a one size fits all solution. And then what are we doing to protect the people, protect the team? And that's the second thing we look at. And so the number one thing as a leader you need to be thinking about that your employees are burned out is if they're saying, I stayed up all night to get this done.
17:03Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And if there's a communication breakdown, if there is animosity between two co workers, personality conflicts, that's when I actually come in with the busy brain test. And how do I know this, Chelsea? Because as I told you, when we were researching the busy brain cure, we first looked at what chronic stress looked like in 17,000 people. DE identified data. Then we went back and said, we're going to test this protocol in 1,000 people. And what did that look like? Week two to three, after people have their brain score and they've done the sleep challenge. And it's a competition, so people were all in it.
17:39Dr. Romie Mushtaq: I was getting calls and text messages from the CEO and Chro and I would be worried like, oh my God, did something happen? And they'd be like, what exactly are you doing? Are you doing executive coaching on the side? Because I had two C suite executives that were at each other's throat and one of them was threatened to quit. And everything is fine now. And so all of a sudden you see interpersonal conflict, lack of trust, and complaints decline.
18:03Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And so what's going wrong with burnout is either we're ignoring all the employees that say I'm burned out when they're really saying, hey, Chelsea, I need you to be a little bit flexible with me for a day, a week, a month, month. And if you care for me and you could be flexible, I will give you all my time when this personal crisis is. Is passed. Right. That's what they're really asking. Or. But when they're complaining about work, oh my God, another tech tool. Is AI going to take my job? Those are the signs of burnout. We can't wait until we get an annual engagement survey.
18:40Chelsea Ryckis: It's profound and makes so much sense. I've always felt that intrinsically, that the word burnout has been overused.
18:50Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Misused, yes, completely.
18:52Chelsea Ryckis: And even, even with myself. Right. Like as a, as a new mom nine months in, we're not sleeping well. We just brought on four new incredible employees just last week, you know? Yeah, like, everything's amazing. The business is incredible. Definitely the most aligned I've ever been in my entire life in terms of like the trajectory of just personal, professional, like, things are amazing, yet I feel very tired and I feel like my brain is maybe kind of mush, to be honest.
19:21Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yeah, you have a busy brain. And I want to address that because that's the other thing is people think only an employee in crisis can be burned out. Is check on the high achieving employees that just had great news happen. A promotion, a new baby, a new marriage, a new house. All those things require flexibility. And by the way, our protocol, somebody just heard, I'm a new mom or new dad, I'm a caregiver for elderly loved one, and I'm not sleeping at night. We then move them from week two of the protocol to week five where we do the daytime energy plan. So we've researched all of that and put that into place.
19:55Dr. Romie Mushtaq: So step one is always saying, what can I do to protect the brain of an employee? And so what that looks like is I come in for a keynote lecture or webinar or, and I'm collecting data for the leadership team, but also giving the employees the experience of take the busy brain Task. I come in and I run the eight week program and we get a snapshot of where everything is afterwards. And, you know, you see it in the engagement data afterwards and the stories of people feel better in eight weeks and, and then you start measuring the retention and the productivity and all of that.
20:28Chelsea Ryckis: So.
20:28Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yes.
20:29Chelsea Ryckis: Do you ensure once you leave. Right. So there's those eight weeks. How do you ensure that the company has the right culture? Because there's something, Dr. Romie, there's something incredibly special about you. You already know this. You are so grounded and just present and intentional. And I, you know, I literally, in our short conversation, I'm already like, oh, I feel better.
20:48Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Oh, thank you, Chelsea. You know, because I practice what I preach, right? And so when we talk about protect your brain, it's nervous system regulation and energy is contagious. So I know as a leader, I, you know, I'm a chief wellness officer right now at Great Wolf Resorts, 14,000 employees. I have had personal family drama and trauma happen in the last two and a half years while I'm a chief wellness officer. I knew I needed to heal my busy brain and do what I needed to do to regulate my energy or my nervous system before I go into our lodges, before I do the supervisor and leader training. Our energy is contagious.
21:24Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You can't just grit your teeth and fake it till you make it because then that destroys an employee's psychological safety. They have no idea that I've just had a death in my family or I'm struggling with elderly parents. They're going to think they did something wrong because my energy is off. And so one, we have to protect our brain. And then you asked me how we, you know, continue this work is there's three steps in a whole person wellness program or consulting that I do. It's number one, protect your brain. Number two, protect your people, which is team, and then protect your business, which is the systems and operations. Right.
21:59Dr. Romie Mushtaq: What do most clients that are listening to this podcast or that'll be on our webinar in August, dealing with their idea of protecting the business is how can we keep the clients we have in this competitive environment and how can we scale business? They have forgotten that the pillars that lead to burnout are I'm not taking care of people's brains, I'm not taking care of the team culture. And when I say protect your business, that's the operations. So for instance, in, you know, hospitality in healthcare, it's a 247 operation. Operation and tech can be a demand on people. Often checking emails, electronic health records, whatever that may be.
22:38Dr. Romie Mushtaq: We need to optimize those systems and those can lead to burnout. So all three have to be addressed. So when I go in, it's how are we making impact? So number one, we have to heal the brain. Number two, protect your people. We go in and we train supervisors, managers, leaders. The mid level managers is where we found the sweet sausage. And we customize those trainings, but they're really rooted in empathy training and building trust. And we can actually go in, collect data and measure trust and caring. And those are things you train. They're not just personality traits you and I have, Chelsea. We've been trained on empathy and trust 100%.
23:17Chelsea Ryckis: And I can't tell you how many times over the last decade or so, like I've thought to myself, doing this work, I'm looking at claims data, I'm seeing populations, I see, see incredible cultures, I see not so great cultures, you know, all over the country, deskless workers, professional workers, white collar, blue collar, all of it. And thinking to myself, like, I know that there is a better way to do wellness because getting the ROI on the jump ropes or the weight loss challenge or the trainer that they have come to the office once a week, like, that's not, I've never felt passionate about that and I've never felt like that's going to yield an roi.
23:54Chelsea Ryckis: And I've to this day refused to put my name and sign off on any wellness initiative that isn't 100 data driven. But there's not a lot out there. There's a lot that claim that they're data driven, but, but they're not. Second, all the things that you're talking about, empathy, it's really comes down to like leadership and being able to hold space for people.
24:14Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It does, it does. And so, but we often start with the C suite and their development and the VPs and what we learned at Great Wolf Resorts. And what I looked, you know, studying the data of cultures that care, cultures that were making the top cultures and workplaces in America great places to work is empathy and trust were a key factor and that they were training people and empathy and trust. And so we rolled that out over the last 18 months at great Wolf Resorts and in our engagement data that we capture twice a year, we asked ask two simple questions. I don't ask, do you want a jump rope? Do you want a peloton?
24:51Dr. Romie Mushtaq: At work we ask, do you feel like your manager cares for you? And do you feel like Great Wolf cares about you? And that gave us the data. And you saw this incredible split because I had only reached 50% of our lodges with the live empathy training for the supervisors and managers and then the half that hadn't had the training, you could see this marked statistically significant discrepancy in did you care for me? I can now look at the data in the lodge even by department housekeeping, the guest services team maintenance, aquatics. We're the largest indoor water park in the world.
25:30Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And wherever whatever team was lacking on the caring, I could go in and talk to the HR director and remember, these are lodges that have 500 to 2,000 employees and be like, your aquatics team has the lowest retention, doesn't it? They're like, how did you know that Based on that one single question, you could go in and see measurable impact right away?
25:52Chelsea Ryckis: Absolutely.
25:53Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And we're going to dig into the system in the webinar.
25:58Chelsea Ryckis: So if we're, we're talking about clinical burnout at this point. So let's shift from more of the workforce and the feelings which I would love to, to stay in all the time because I'm very happy there, but let's shift a little bit to clinical. So my question is what types of claims would would plan sponsors see on their data that would signify that there's potential burnout? Is it mental health? Is it anxiety? Like, or are they things that we don't necessarily know all of it?
26:26Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Chelsea and I know you're not surprised to hear that we assume somebody is burned out and they're just going to have alcohol, drug addiction or anxiety. But I shared my story with a reason that, you know, chronic stress causes physical disease. Chronic stress can kill you. Typically, people push through the symptoms of anxiety, difficulty focusing, I can't sleep. And it's when the claims data start going up with in if you have a frontline workforce like we do, it's the physical injury claims that we're seeing are going up. Musculoskeletal injuries as a key example.
27:04Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Number two, when people are burned out at work, the increased claims are correlating right along with the CDC health data in the United States. Heart disease and all the contributors of metabolic syndrome. So high blood pressure, diabetes, those are the claims that are eating away because what happens, I'm a high achieving professional, I care about my job. I, I give whatever energy I have left to my loved ones. I'm not taking care of my health. I'm burned out.
27:33Dr. Romie Mushtaq: I did not go see the primary care doctor to get the labs that we give everyone in the busy brain cure that is screening for diabetes, high blood pressure, inflammation, high cholesterol and now you end up in the emergency room with a heart attack, a stroke, a new advanced cancer diagnosis. That's where we see the claims data.
27:57Chelsea Ryckis: It's interesting, I'm thinking of a client that we implemented direct primary care for a couple years ago. And what was remarkable, so for those plan sponsors listening that aren't 100% familiar with DPC. So DPC would be where the plan sponsor actually pays for 24,7 direct access for the member and the family to one specific doctor. So think about how healthcare used to be consumed in the old days where like your doctor was down the street, you could pop in and get what you needed, you could spend an hour or two with them. It's like old school medicine essentially that we're bringing to directly to the populations
28:30Dr. Romie Mushtaq: The best medicine, the best. And because somebody that knows them and cares for them.
28:35Chelsea Ryckis: Yes. So this specific plan sponsor, within six months we saw almost a 40% reduction in emergency room claims. And this is what I'm thinking about with what you're doing because even with what you're doing, direct primary care is still at the point of something acute is going on. Right. We're symptomatic at this point versus what you're doing is a step even before it.
28:59Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Step before it is awareness. And part of the protocol was designed this way. The individual consumer is getting to the root cause of what's going on with their burnout, for instance a thyroid disorder, undiagnosed diabetes. But as a business we are now getting every employee to the primary care doctor for their routine annual screening which, and so it's, it's like what is it? English is a third language but the bird in hand versus two in the bush. Right. And that's exactly it is like it's a win for me, the individual employee and it's a win for the organization and the claim games as well.
29:40Chelsea Ryckis: We always talk about that at Ethos where if we're not setting up win-win-wins, which is the employee. The employee wins number one. Right. The employer wins and then whether it's us or whoever else is engaging with, if you can support those win-win-wins across the board, that's when you create sustainability. So tell me a little bit about engagement. I've heard, of course, I'm sure you have. Oh my, you know, 40 to 60 year old male driven skilled trades, like they're never going to engage with something like this. I've heard it on mental Health and I have always seen the opposite. I will just throw that out there.
30:14Chelsea Ryckis: Okay, tell our listeners a little bit about that.
30:18Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You know, I have a three prong approach. We've talked about protect your brain, we've talked about protect your people, which is your team. And then protect your business which is actually looking at the systems and operations while people are undergoing transformation right now. Right. A technological advancement, et cetera. And both organizations where I've been a chief wellness officer, we've had five generations in the workforce. So yes, I have had to be that translator talking about what mental health looks like in our Gen Z employees to our octogenarians. And you need a translator. But where these programs work is when wellness moves from just benefits to an actual cultural shift.
31:01Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And that's why we call it the culture shift program. And that wellness is not just wellness will die if it solely lives with the benefits directors. And hopefully every benefit director is shaking their heads. You can't have a benefits director be responsible for the whole personal wellness of the entire organization. And what that looks like is having. We'll go through the webinar of having a wellness committee that you know represents every stakeholder division in the company and that includes your CEO, president of the organization, tying into culture and making that a priority before the client.
31:42Dr. Romie Mushtaq: We have learned so from the first organization where I was Chief Wellness Officer, Evolution Hospitality and they were acquired by Aimbridge. Power of Pause and Aim well still exist today and are thriving because we put the systems in place. And now BPAC Positive was a data driven solution at Great Wolf Resorts that was designed for our employees. So we didn't dare give a peloton, which our CEO loves to all the employees. When we are primarily Gen Z, we knew we had to have a mental well being rooted in positive psychology. So it's customized to the age and stage of most of the employees and the industry and the needs of the industry.
32:21Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And that's how you create that change and you get buy in. Because what did I tell you in the beginning is we create programs where people feel seen, where they feel heard and they feel trusted. And when everybody has a stake in the game, it now becomes a movement and not just a program.
32:41Chelsea Ryckis: Right. It's not another thing for the employee to do. Right.
32:45Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It doesn't not another app to log into. And really it's amazing and how that looks like in day to day practices when we've taught our supervisors who are often Gen Z, this is their first promotion or managers, our empathetic listening and trust program, we've now fostered a caring culture where people now feel that trust and care to say, I need help. And now they can be directed to the right benefit, whether that's mental health benefit, whether that's something to do with physical health, musculoskeletal health, whatever that is. And the programs are designed that way.
33:23Chelsea Ryckis: It's perfect. It's the pathway. The trust is the pathway to actual utilization of all these fancy programs that a lot of plan sponsors think are the things that move the needle, but really. And then they have conversations where, why is nobody engaging with these programs? And it's, well, we're missing the trust pathway, right? Which is cultural. It's not.
33:40Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It's all culture. It's leadership development and culture. And that's really. When people say, you do workplace wellness, I'm like, no, I do leadership development and culture. And wellness is a pillar, a huge pillar.
33:53Chelsea Ryckis: You know, I just, I could literally talk to you about this forever because I've always, always believed, believed this like in my core that there, there is a way to deliver ROI on wellness and, but specifically the wellness that you're talking about. Let me clarify that because there's going to be vendors listening to this call, being like, but you said yes, yes. So walk me through a little bit then. What about companies that don't have a budget, but they still, they want to start somewhere? What do you recommend for them?
34:23Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You know, Chelsea, you and I share the same viewpoint that it's data driven solutions. Whether you have 25 employees or 25,000 employees, you need quantitative and qualitative data. What does that mean? I go in, protect your brain. I want to know what the brain health of your, of your employees are. And we get the physical health data with that. Then in addition, we do the trust surveys and we do the empathy or care surveys with that and then the just the qualitative data. I my first four to six months at Great Wolf, I didn't roll out any programs. I didn't sit at our corporate headquarters in Chicago.
34:55Dr. Romie Mushtaq: I was out at the front lines of the lodges making beds with our housekeepers, doing maintenance calls with our engineers, talking to them. What makes you happy and healthy at work. And what that really meant was some candid, uncomfortable conversations. Our C suite are of the boomer generation octogenarians Gen X and our frontline team members are Gen Z millennials. I had to help bridge that conversation of the whole person wellness pillar we need to focus on right now is mental health and financial health. It may not be the case for those of us at corporate and I can redesign something so that you're designing a whole person wellness program.
35:35Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Not on all the eight pillars. That's so overwhelming. And you don't need benefits on all eight pillars. You need to know what's the age and stage of majority of your employees and what's the need and design the benefits and the culture around that. That and that's how we came up with BPAC Positive. It's a positive psychology movement that allows people to leave the worries of the world behind them and that when you're at work, you're in a caring and positive environment. And that's what we built.
36:03Chelsea Ryckis: That's amazing. Have you seen dramatic difference in terms of like absenteeism, turnover? Are those numbers promising?
36:11Dr. Romie Mushtaq: We started first measuring engagement data. We are 18 months into rolling this out across 23 resorts in different cities and states. So we had to, number one, roll out the program and start with engagement data number one. Then number two, we will start looking at employee turnover. Hospitality is a high turnover rate. Right. When you and I talk about claims data a lot, Chelsea, this is where I may hit the nerve of you and every benefits person watching. And I can't wait to have this open discussion on the webinar. I don't know how reliable claims data is depending on the industry.
36:52Chelsea Ryckis: Interesting.
36:53Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And here's why. If you look at where we are in the world right now with reduction in workforce and when you're an entry level or mid level employee, it's now understood you're not going to spend more than 12 to 18 months at a job and you're already looking for another one at risk risk to move forward. And even when you reach mid level senior manager, VP into the C suite, what used to be I'm going to retire in this company is maybe a three to five year tenure. And so it's not always easy to watch benefits for chronic disease.
37:29Dr. Romie Mushtaq: What initially people are going to see and think it's not working is an uptick in utilization of mental health benefits if it's done right.
37:36Chelsea Ryckis: Right.
37:36Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You know, they may see an increase in initial costs on the physical healthcare side because all of a sudden there was a rush of employees going in and there's all of a sudden, you know, the pharmacy costs have gone up because all these new diagnosis of hypertension, diabetes and autoimmune disease. So that's something you can watch over time. But what you're really seeing in the business is reduced turnover and you're seeing higher productivity and like, you know, improved profit in the company because you take care of your people, they're going to take care of your clients. Bottom line.
38:12Chelsea Ryckis: I do think that is a very interesting point and it's exactly what we've seen, which is when there is a strong culture and there's a strong rollout of some type of program, tons of engagement up front, cost obviously jumps, but as you would expect, cost other places, whether it's like the reduced ER visits I was telling you about or.
38:31Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Exactly.
38:32Chelsea Ryckis: We have another plan sponsor that removed every single barrier to mental health access, whether inpatient or inpatient. I knew you'd love this one. It regardless of what the care was, it was unlimited visits, zero dollars, no question asked. And traditionally for per employee per month costs in a traditional plan, which is not really what we do, but we researched them, they run about 14 to $17 per employee per month towards mental health costs. This significant was 7 to 8 with all barriers removed. And it totally dispelled the myth this was over a couple
39:11Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And but by the way, employees are going to say that because you know, the Gen Z and millennials, they are actually looking for the companies that have specific mental health benefits, benefits 100 and they know the, the big providers like does this company have Lyra or spring health? Because otherwise I, I don't want to work here. And you know, I'll, I'll share a story that we hear at all 23 lodges when I, I still go out and I'm there and I ask people like what keeps you here at Great Wolf five years, 15 years later.
39:42Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And they said, you know, I, I left because there was a hotel or resort or a mall that opened up down the street and they were, were paying us $5 more an hour, which in this economy is significant for a frontline worker. And they said I came back because people here care for me. And when I had a death in the family, when I got sick, I knew my manager, the entire team cared for me and I want to work somewhere where we do this.
40:09Dr. Romie Mushtaq: And then when we see the care and the trust index improving at a particular lodge or with particular team, we see the nps, the guest satisfaction scores and proof it's a direct correlation.
40:22Chelsea Ryckis: That's so cool. It's really fun to have this conversation with you because for a lot of personal reasons that the type of leadership that you're talking about is what I work to embody every single day. And I have seen it absolutely transform my company over the last six to seven years. Hardly any turnover, really strong morale. They treat our clients unbelievable. We haven't lost a client in seven years. Like, just. And it's.
40:48Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It is.
40:50Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's so cool to know that it can be done at scale. It is.
40:55Dr. Romie Mushtaq: It can be done at scale. And I want to dispel this myth because we are two powerful women leaders having this conversation. So when women talk about conscious leadership and values like psychological safety, compassion, we can be seen as weak. Please know that empathy and compassion coexist with expectations, accountability, and setting boundaries. If this is your shift at work and you were expected to log on and come in, you are still expected. But we do so not in a fear based culture, but in a caring culture. And that makes all the difference in the world.
41:29Chelsea Ryckis: You cannot have an operational infrastructure that lacks accountability and feedback and those more concrete things that people need to feel safe. Yes. Without the empathy and the understanding and the trust.
41:42Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yes.
41:42Chelsea Ryckis: So what would you leave our plan sponsors with if this piqued their interest? If they're like, I want to know a little bit more. What do you got?
41:50Dr. Romie Mushtaq: You know, I would say partner with both myself or the Culture Shift program and ethos. And let's talk about these three core pillars. Whether you're 25 or 25,000 employees, it's three pillars. Protect your brain, protect your people, and protect your business, which is protecting the health and wellness of your employees, your team building trust and empathy, and then the systemic operations that are reducing the barriers to burnout. And these are the consulting data driven programs we build that create cultural movements with people. And when you feel seen and heard at work and cared for, we will go the extra mile to create impact in the business. And I see that every day.
42:36Chelsea Ryckis: That's amazing. Our listeners, I'd love for you actually to share two things. First, where can they get your book? And second, where can they connect with you?
42:43Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Yeah. Thank you so much. You know, if you're curious, am I burnt out? Do I have a busy brain? We're going to link the free Busy Brain test here. And the Busy Brain Cure book is available not just in the United states, published by HarperCollins in nine languages around the world. Amazon Bookstore near you. And connect with me on LinkedIn. Let's have a conversation. If you see that your employees are living in fear of the next reduction in workforce or changes in AI, let's talk. We can absolutely help them. Culture shift.
43:15Chelsea Ryckis: Thank you, Dr. Romie, for being here.
43:17Dr. Romie Mushtaq: Thank you, Chelsea, for the work you're doing in the world. It.
