Audrey Tsui is a woman dedicated to spreading the notion of corporate wellness around Asia and into the wider international business community. She heads up the Corporate Wellness Management Unit in the business school at the Hong Kong Baptist University and uses seminars, publications and direct advisory contact with businesses to spread her point. Here she talks to HR Magazine about this topic, and in particular the idea of building resilience into your workforce to bounce back from the crisis.
Corporate wellness
According to Tsui, the majority of the foreign companies in Hong Kong will follow the policies of their parent company for corporate wellness. The western idea of corporate wellness is based on tangible problems such as smoking cessation policies and employee assistance programmes for alcohol or emotional problems, but this is wrong says Tsui. “Why only pay attention to those employees with a problem now?”
“Turbulent times are when we should pay much more attention to emotional wellness, spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, as well as occupational wellness.” Commenting on the current trend for restructuring, firing and freezes in hiring, Tsui said, “For a lot of staff on the one hand they have a higher workload, but on the other they have higher anxiety. What will happen to me in the future. What will happen to this company?” She added that this is well indicated by increased calls to support hotlines, increased suicide and crime, the conclusion being that we should be dealing with these emotions better.
People have a misunderstanding, said Tsui; wellness is equated to fitness or massage or meditation in the minds of many. “That is a very narrow perspective.” Wellness counts both for individual employees as well as for the overall company, she said. It also comprises aspects of physical, intellectual, emotional and even spiritual features. Tsui dubs this ‘total wellness’. Component features might be broken down further still, for example emotional aspects are confidence, positive feelings and emotional resilience, while intellectual aspects include thinking and love of learning. Tsui defines spiritual wellness not as a religious thing, but instead a kind of moral awareness, a basic principle to distinguish good and bad. “There is a strong sense of injustice in the world currently,” she remarked.
Karoshi
Tsui claims to have seen many people of a young age in businesses and among students, aged mid-20’s to mid-40’s, dying without getting sick. She said that this has changed her whole notion of stress. Part of the increased number is the higher levels of young people committing suicide, and part of it is sudden death syndrome, what the Japanese call karoshi, or death from exhaustion. Research shows that sudden death can be related to fatigue, perhaps caused by an extended period of long working hours, and stress, or because of a hostile living environment. She noted that both fatigue and stress are amplified in Hong Kong with the culture of long working hours, persistent building works, the noise and stressful conditions on the street.
Tsui added that fatigue is not just physical but is mental too. Secondly she explains that under her definition of stress, stress is actually a feeling of fear, uncertainty and a lack of control. In the working world staff are not given the power to control what they are doing, she said. Staff develop cynicism because they see the top decision maker asking them to do things they do not believe in, or that are not ethical. Things are not transparent and there is a lot of inequality, she added.
Occupational wellness and fortitude
Occupational wellness is how comfortable people feel when contributing, how committed they are and if they want to dedicate themselves to do more. Tsui offers an equation for the business perspective along the lines of ‘engagement + resilience = organisational fortitude.’ Here resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity. “In the last few years there’s been a lot of discussion about how companies can survive. A lot of talk focuses on fortitude, which refers to mental strength—to suffer pain and to face danger with courage.”
The purpose of engagement is not only to get employees to do things, but also to have them involved in generating ideas, about plans and strategies, company direction, effective implementation, and how to do things in a moral way. Tsui said that research shows that people do not want to work for money, they want to have meaning in their work. Financial return is necessary, but it is not sufficient to get people totally committed, meaning companies need to look deeper at an employee’s needs, said Tsui.
Tsui said, in many organisations “the boss’ attitude is ‘I think you do’, but this only engages the body of the employee, this doesn’t engage the employee’s brain or heart, so doesn’t make them feel they have worth.” She added that in many ways multinationals treat their entire staff in Hong Kong and other local subsidiaries as just ‘doers’ and don’t actually involve them in determining company direction.
In Hong Kong and other Asian cities wellness is often part of HRM, so it is usually the same person in charge that’s also in charge of benefits. “They make you feel very frustrated,” Tsui said. “Why do you treat wellness as a cost, wellness is an investment, and it can generate strategic return.” But, she pointed out, “Nobody talks about it, they talk about reducing medical costs, instead realising that reducing these things stops the company from advancing.” Tsui said that an engaged workforce has been shown in numerous surveys to generate substantially more returns, as employees are willing to take extra steps to achieve a business end.
Tsui said her point is particularly relevant in service sectors. If an employee believes in the firm they will interact with customers with intimacy. “How can banks regain the trust of customers who made losses? They have to continue to pay attention to them, reduce the pain they’re suffering and monitor, and show care and concern, which is in itself a service.”
Tsui underlined one example, referencing the recent Sanlu milk powder scare in mainland China. The former chairperson, Tian Wenhua, made a big mistake in that she never apologised, Tsui said, whereas the replacement did immediately when they took over. The next step for the replacement Chair was sending staff to different provinces to see what the company can do, which Tsui described as an ‘excellent gesture’. Tsui added, “Because they cannot produce, a less imaginative company would retrench their staff. Instead of doing that he mobilised his workforce—sending them out to the rural areas where the powder caused problems, saying: whatever we can do, we will do.” This is the kind of additional gesture Tsui feels companies need to work towards.
Creating a resilient workforce
To create a resilient workforce Tsui said a company needs three things:
- A culture of paying attention to wellness in the organisation
- Honouring business ethics and business integrity
- A management support system that ensures things like that happen.
Tsui said she believes in self-help. She says that in Hong Kong and Singapore when companies have a problem, they tend to seek outside help. For example, if people are depressed—hiring a clinical psychologist—but without really asking the question why or tracing the route of the problem. She believes managers avoid the issue with external hires so that if anything goes wrong the accusation will not fall on them.
Who handles wellness?
Tsui believes that the response of many medical staff to the notion of corporate wellness is, “Who are you? Coming here from management, to talk about wellness—you are not medically trained. We make sure you are not sick, and because you’re not sick you won’t die.” But she believes that this attitude is wrong. She added, “Wellness management should be a multi-discipline one. It should not belong to medicine, or public health, psychology, social work, nor HRM. It’s an issue that needs the input of all.”
Though she acknowledged managers would sit at the top of this system as decision makers, she still underlined that it is a case where everybody should have a say. “It’s about involving and engaging the employees to team up with the leader, so that they come up with a solution as a team. In order to do that managers must be open, and generate a trusting relationship,” Tsui said.
Tsui’s research indicates that the major problem with the management support system in greater China was the lack of communication. Management support does not simply mean, “You tell and employees listen,” but it should also involve employees coming up with ideas that might make a difference.
Asian wellness in decline
Overall, Asian wellness is decreasing at the cost of increasing wealth. Tsui cited one reason for this as the increased disparity between rich and poor. “Wealth management is not only about the volume and pace of wealth accumulation, but it is also about the fairness and impact of wealth distribution,” adds Tsui, who also acknowledges socialist leanings. She believes the most critical agenda of these times is going back to examine emotional wellness, physical wellness and spiritual wellness. “We must stand up and say no and do something right now… we just have to face it straight on.” Tsui says that a number of companies are doing good work, but these are in a minority.
Employees with good wellness are willing to do more in the community, which is good branding for the company. Tsui said that though community work is good, it is not as simple as just introducing a few of these types of projects. “It must be part of a company’s culture,” she said.
Fair exchange of value
According to Tsui, the companies who are currently ‘doing it properly’ in terms of sales are going ‘back to basics’, that is a fair exchange of value between the company and the customer. “That is, the customer pays them for what they believe should be of value, for example drugs from a drug company—it is the function and usefulness to the end user of the product or service so it is up to the individuals in any organisation to work out how to create this value and create this positive service.”
She cited the pre-downturn practice of banks selling customers investment products in what she described as a ‘dishonest manner’, because customers were not being briefed properly about the risks. “When employees seek to maximise returns for the company, those returns are short term. The reason is that the bonuses were given to so-called talent, but in the end it exposed the company to so much loss.”
To underscore the difference in approach she discussed the difference between improving returns to shareholders compared to improving return to stakeholders; the latter includes customers the former does not. Spiritual wellness falls into this discussion because it is fostered by going back to basics, honouring good value to customers, good business principles, as well as getting employees involved in the process.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
