Lucy Bennett - Baggs on Employee Wellness

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : We've been out in the mountains tracking, around campfires and doing these fireside chats. It was like the flood gates had opened, and all everybody wanted to do was talk about mental health, because I can guarantee that if somebody isn't suffering, they know somebody who is suffering that's close to them. To be able to give people that platform and the ripple effect that that's subsequently then had within an organization is huge.

Anand Verma : Welcome to the Knowledge Institute Podcast, the Brilliant Basics edition, where we talk about digital disruption, design and future work. The topic today is employee wellness. This topic is extremely timely and as well as a topic that's on many corporate's mind today. My name is Anand Verma. I'm the European head of digital services for Infosys and founder and CEO of Brilliant Basics. I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Lucy Bennett-Baggs, who is the founder and CEO of Just Challenge. We'll talk a little bit more about Just Challenge in a second, but first of all, welcome, Lucy.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

Anand Verma : Great. Thanks for being part of this podcast. Lucy, we're really excited to have you. It's a very, very important topic we are going to discuss and converse about. Before we kick this off, Lucy, it would be great for the listeners to hear more about your background, a little bit about yourself, your journey so far, and of course, what it's like to be a female entrepreneur in Asia.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah, perfect. I was born in the UK and went to university in Newcastle and studied a marketing degree, which led quite nicely on into a graduate scheme with HSBC, and I spent seven years with HSBC in the sponsorship and marketing teams. Through that experience, I very much noticed the shift from traditional big ticket sponsorships and marketing expenditure into events and campaigns with purpose and meaning that really connected the whole ecosystem internally where CSR, employee engagement, leadership development, and client relationships, and the importance of delivering meaningful and purpose-led campaigns and events.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Sort of following seven years of HSBC, in 2017, I left HSBC and set up on my own and set up Just Challenge, which really is an agency that's designed to work with large corporates on their employee engagement and health and well being objective based out in Singapore. As you mentioned before, I did a five-year stint in Hong Kong previously. It's been a really interesting journey, the entrepreneurial journey. Particularly, as you mentioned, as a female entrepreneur and one in Asia, it's been an incredibly challenging, but rewarding journey from the get-go. I think when you're privileged enough to be within a large corporate, it's very different environment and dynamic to then become an entrepreneur, and it's certainly comes with its challenges, with its highs and its lows. I think somebody said to me before I set up the business, "Just be careful what you're doing because you live and breathe it," and they're absolutely right. I have lived and breathed every moment of it since I set up in 2017. It's been the most incredible journey and I've learned more than I ever expected I would learn along the way.

Anand Verma : That's amazing, and I think a lot of people will get inspired by this as well, and having the experience of working in a big corporate as well as running a startup, I think you learn from both of these kind of situations and what you have been able to achieve in the last two and half years in building Just Challenge into what it has become has been incredible. We'll talk more about that in a second.

Anand Verma : Before we start, Lucy, Marnix Eikenboom, who's the managing director of Danone, said: "if health is the essence of your brand, it all starts with taking the health of your workforce very seriously." I'm really keen to understand from your perspective, Lucy, with regards to the whole employee engagement and wellness, what does it actually mean? What are some of the misconceptions in a large corporates or companies minds about employee engagement and wellness. This has come to this for basically, especially in the current situation, but I would be delighted to hear more about how you're thinking about the employee engagement wellness.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : The wellness space is a very interesting space, particularly with corporates. I think that there are a lot of misconceptions around, first in the investment that's required and ensuring employees are engaged in the health and wellbeing, but also the way in which it's delivered internally. I think that for a successful employee engagement campaign to be executed across businesses, it needs to be led from the top it's in terms of investment. I think that, and not necessarily wellbeing teams, but organizations can be guilty of seeing it as a cost rather than an investment. I think, I strongly believe, and I'm very passionate about the fact that successful businesses are made up of people, of humans that require support and guidance in how to be the best versions of themselves, their physical health, their mental health, but also being social being provided the opportunity to better that wellbeing experience.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : I think there's a lot of nervousness when it comes particularly at a time like now, when budgets are being slashed that front and center, I think that should be one of the things that remains on the agenda in terms of investment. It shouldn't be seen as a cost should be seen as actually providing an opportunity for businesses to further prosper by investing in their people.

Anand Verma : Do you think Lucy that a lot of C suite talks about employee wellness, but when time comes to invest in it, there is a bit of difference in their approach.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. Every company we talk to is in a very different stage within their wellbeing journey. Some are very, very far along the way and they've got amazing employee wellbeing teams and initiatives that have been rolled out across their organizations. They've got internal members of staff that are counselors, clinical psychologists. The support that we've seen in some of those internal teams is outstanding, but it's been pretty eye opening to talk to a lot of brands that actually are quite far behind within their journey. I think that they've got a lot of catching up to do. For me, I think, unfortunately that's the nature of these large corporates, these initiatives and directions take time to implement. I think that in order not to be left behind, particularly at a time where people's mental and physical health has really been challenged, I think that people need to take a faster and more flexible approach to implementation of employee wellbeing programs.

Anand Verma : From corporate perspective or company's perspective, Lucy, do you think the challenges and I'm really sure that our listeners will like to understand what those are top five, top six challenges there are, especially in the current situation. Also, do you think that challenges are understood because what I'm finding in our own business is when people used to work from two or three core offices before, now they're working from 200, 300 offices, their home offices mainly. All of a sudden, the problem has become a hundred times more. The challenge has become a hundred times more. Two questions for you. One is what are some of the bigger challenges that kind of the current situation presents? Second, is there an understanding of those challenges from the employer perspective?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : To answer your second question first. I think that companies can be very guilty of assuming that they understand what employees need and actually not listening to the voice of the employee and actually really understanding, as I said before, employers, managers, leaders are all humans and it's really understanding what their human needs are, but hearing it from them. I think before any sort of employee engagement program is implemented, it's really important to encourage the voices of the employees and understand actually what companies can do to support them, rather than just assuming that certain initiatives will tick boxes, for example.

Anand Verma : Yeah, this is a good one. I think this has been a big one because every company, to your point, is different, isn't it, in terms of their approach. The one policy or one solution will not work for every company in this kind of situation. That brings me to the kind of next topic on our discussion, Lucy, which is about Just Challenge, the reason you started the company. What is the mission vision of the company, what you're aspiring to do, but also what's the journey like since you started the company?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. I worked at HSBC for a long time in their marketing and events team and saw how the sort of world was changing and people wanted more meaningful and purpose led events. In 2017, I left HSBC and set up Just Challenge, which is traditionally an events agency that brings employees, leaders, stakeholders together to incredible locations around the world to raise money for charity, whilst driving employee engagement, CSR objectives, and the health and wellbeing of employees. Over the last year or so, but sort of accelerated over the last three or four months, we've really moved into delivering on these objectives through digital. Providing corporates with a platform to engage their employees and the health and wellbeing and purpose of organizations through a digital platform, which has enabled us to really drive communities across organizations, enabled them to connect with one another. To dive into their health and wellbeing, three content, live sessions, and much, much more than we would have traditionally delivered through events themselves. Really just trying to do as an agency that works with large corporates on delivering purpose led campaigns, both through events and digital.

Anand Verma : Love it. What I really love about it is your ability to move at speed and connecting the physical with digital and amplifying the message, but also opportunity for everybody to connect with the platform as well, which is absolutely fantastic and well done from moving from startup to almost on the journey of scale up.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Thank you so much. It's been quite a journey.

Anand Verma : It's a really good one. I think what is really exciting is not just the challenge part for the mental wellness of the employees, but also there is a sense of community, which is a big part of this idea that's coming up. Which is stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholders are not just your shareholders. The stakeholders are your community, the planet, the climate, all of these different things. It looks like you're bringing the companies, but also there is a planet and community aspect, which is key to Just Challenge business strategy.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. That's really the foundations of why we exist is to be able to give corporate a platform to demonstrate their care, to bring people together and in a safe environment, and to really focus on their mental and physical wellbeing, as well as driving bonds and connections across organizations. Yeah. That's really why we are where we are now. It's been a really interesting journey. The last couple of years, we've brought on some of the world's biggest organizations and helping them activate their purpose and look after their employees and things have changed significantly with COVID-19 and not being able to travel, not being able to bring people together. Our role is as a trusted agency of these corporates is to now continue to drive that engagement, purpose, connectivity and investment in their people, but virtually for now.

Anand Verma : That's brilliant. When we were doing the research for this podcast with our team, one of the things that came out was a lot of the corporate wellness programs only recognize the physical component of health. What you're doing is combining the physical, mental, and the community, all of them together. Will that be a good reflection of Just Challenge work.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah, absolutely. I think that they all, holistic wellbeing and looking at it across multiple different pillars is so important. Physical wellbeing on its own isn't going to cut it nowadays. I think when people have been isolated and working from home with limited social interaction, mental health is, there is without a doubt been a huge impact on the mental wellbeing of employee. Our purpose really is to bring people together virtually for now, ensure they do feel connected, that they do feel part of a wider team and give them the tools and the resources to engage in that physical and mental wellbeing across a number of different.

Anand Verma : All right. I hate to mention the C word, which is COVID-19, coronavirus. Lucy, we have talked a little bit about this last two, three months. How has this changed two things. One is employers approach to wellness, but also how has it affected you and your business as well? Because all of a sudden from moving from events, you have to look at a completely different approach.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Totally. At Just Challenge, our community has been built three physical events today. We take people on amazing experiences to track around the world, to raise money for charity. We build these awesome experiences to ensure that people feel connected to one another and our community has been very physical in that nature. Yes, we've nurtured it online, but it's not been how the community has been driven to date. COVID-19 has forced us to reevaluate our strategy. As I said, we have a responsibility for our clients to ensure that we're continuing to drive purpose and engagement organizations. We have subsequently executed on our digital strategy far quicker than I think we ever would have done if it hadn't been hadn't been around.

Anand Verma : Yeah. We talked about the word, pivot word, which you don't like. We kind of agreed to agree with the word accelerate, which is a really good word. I think acceleration is led by the necessity as well. This is also kind of helping you shape your own kind of strategy for the future. How do you see digital playing a role when things come back to normality or whatever the normality definition is?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. It's a really brilliant question because I think traditionally, over the last couple of years, we've very much been an events agency that has been complimented by digital. I think we'll leave this period of COVID-19, being a digital business of which events compliment it. That has always been something that we've worked towards, has always been part of our strategy. This period of time that we never thought we'd really have, we have really used to, I guess, switch this business round and focus on how we build our digital community of people. We provide them with the resources and the tools that they require in terms of feeling connected, invested in their health and wellbeing. We build that out and we continue to raise money for charity.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : We continue to drive purpose, and that is then when events come back, events will then compliment that community, but it's really switched our thinking and our mindset. That has been an amazing journey. I think that COVID-19, as horrendous as it's been for so many people, I think for a lot of businesses, it's really forced us to, and other businesses around the world, to rethink strategies and what will ensure they survive through the now, but really thrive once things return back to normal.

Anand Verma : Yeah. It's a brilliant point and stay with us, everyone. By the way, this podcast is remotely recorded. It's a collaboration of three different locations. Lucy, who's in Singapore, our producer in Italy and a couple of our team members in London recording the podcast. Once again, you're listening to the Knowledge Institute, the Brilliant Basics edition, where we talk about future of digital, future work and startups. Today, our topic is employee engagement and wellness. I'm delighted to be joined by Lucy Bennett-Baggs, who is the CEO and founder of Just Challenge, an exciting startup focusing on employee engagement and wellness. Lucy, I'm going to fish for some compliment because we have been working together the last, let's say 10 weeks or so. As you talk about moving from an agency business to a kind of a combination of agency and a digital business, if I may, the shift, the pivot acceleration is already happening.

Anand Verma : In a record time, you launched a platform and even though we work together, but the passion and the commitment that I've seen from you and your team has been remarkable and achieving impossible as well to kind of change the way you guys approach things. I'll be really keen to hear about, first of all, the speed that you guys are operating at. Secondly, the role of this digital platform that you initiated the work on within, launching within I think, 10 or 12 days, which is insane in the current situations. Would you shed some light on that shift of working with someone like us, but also launching a platform this quickly?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. It's been quite the journey, launching things as quickly as we have. As I've touched on beforehand, we have a number of big clients around the world who rely on us to deliver employee engagement campaigns with health and wellbeing at the center of everything we do. We really needed to deliver and deliver quickly to ensure that they are able to continue to drive purpose and meaningful content and campaigns across the organization whilst people are working from here. I think there was quite a lot of pressure on us as a business to come up with a solution. That's where the entrepreneurial mindset really comes into play. It's quite useful because you don't really have a choice. You have to move quickly and your team have to move quickly with you. I'm surrounded by brilliant, hardworking, incredibly driven team who will execute and can execute very quickly, which obviously helps.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : I think I identified very quickly that we didn't have the digital expertise in house that was going to be able to do this as quickly as we needed to. Three various connections with HSBC, we stumbled across Brilliant Basics and yourself and you guys were amazing and you understood the vision so quickly for us and the gap in the market and how we could bring what we do in our events, in terms of health and wellbeing and engaging people, connecting them socially and giving back, and you were able to execute that digitally for us. That was amazing.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : It wasn't just finding an agency that could deliver it digitally, but actually finding an agency that really understood what we were trying to achieve and helped us get to where we needed to be. We're equally as passionate. I think at one point, there was confusion as to who worked for who, because your team was so passionate about what we were trying to execute, which is so nice to hear. It was a pleasure. It was a huge rush and it was stressful. We learned a lot along the way, but we definitely couldn't have done it without.

Anand Verma : Thanks, Lucy. I think when we did a review internally, one of the highest satisfaction score for any project in the company's history was Just Challenge. People really felt vested.They were emotionally vested in Just Challenge and the speed they're working at. I think it's quite exciting, regardless of where the teams are based. People are really able to give their focus in the problem solving. I think that partnership was so exciting and the other kind of noteworthy comment is the team was really small and young as well. What we have realized is with the right multifunctional team members, multidisciplinary team members, digital natives around this with a leader who's kind of leading them. I think huge things could be achieved in a shortest amount of time as well. Thank you for the opportunity.

Anand Verma : We enjoyed it a lot. It's certainly a shining case study for us internally at BB. We kind of talk about it with a lot of excitement as well. In terms of the kind of moving back to the corporate topic, and we're talking about this last couple of days in preparation to this podcast. Lucy, embracing employee wellness and embracing employee engagement, we were talking about the word stigma yesterday, and stigma is more of more of a, "Hey, is this something that we should talk about? Should we keep it in the company? Should we talk about openly?" Yesterday, we were talking about how to turn this into a positive, how to kind of listen to employees, how to listen to communities? Given you've been working in this space for last two, three years, I would love your views on how corporates can start to think about this as a positive, rather than just a stigma in terms of employee wellness and engagement.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : It's been a really interesting journey to watch how the stigma around mental health and employee wellness has evolved, particularly in Asia, and having moved from a mental health and employee wellbeing. That's something I'm incredibly passionate about. We're very privileged, I was in the UK to be surrounded by so much support and encouragement in terms of speaking up. Then to move to Asia and to see where they're at in their mental wellbeing and the stigma that surrounds that. They are years and years behind UK, the US. That's quite interesting for us as a business because we come in with the mindset of celebrating people, speaking out and encouraging that social connectivity and a platform to enable the voice of the employee and it's a domino effect. Once one person starts to speak out, then more and more people speak out. Particularly if it's led from the top and you can see that with, [inaudible 00:23:37], the CEO is coming out and talking about his journey with mental health and his story.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : That then removes the stigma through the whole organization. I think it's really about actions rather than words. You can tell a story to your employees all day, every day, but for it to really land, I think it needs to come through human interaction and social connectivity and enabling people to talk about their mental health. I think that Asia is certainly catching up and it is starting to embrace employee wellness and smash the stigma, as we talk about out here, but they've certainly got a long way to go. What's been a real privilege is helping companies on their way to doing that and a really good example, and it's not in the digital space, but from our sort of traditional events side of the business is we took a hundred Barkleys employees into the Himalayas and we raised funds for mental health charities.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : We took mental health ambassadors and psychologists with us. We talked about mental health and we started with a fireside chat. One of the ambassadors asked people to put their hands up and tell their story. Nobody would put their hand up. It was incredible to watch because it's so far removed from that normal culture. By the end of this four day experience, we've been out in the mountains tracking and around campfires and doing these fireside chats. It was like the flood gates had opened and all everybody wanted to do was talk about mental health because I can guarantee that if somebody isn't suffering, they know somebody who is suffering, that's close to them. To be able to give people that platform and the ripple effect that that subsequently then had within an organization is here. I think it's changing. I think there's definitely still a stigma there. I think that large corporates are going to really fall behind. The small businesses and the startups that are really embracing it. If they don't be proactive and look at solutions, it's really going to address these issues, which are there more than ever before, particularly with COVID-19.

Anand Verma : Yeah. It's a really good point. I think large corporates also sometimes feel that this is a cost rather than value gained and happy employees means happy customers, as Richard Branson said in his own kind of strategy. What is really exciting, the example that you're giving us, and the event sounds amazing by the way, kind of track and have access to a psychologist and access to support as well. You feel comfortable sharing your views and kind of getting feedback as well. What is really exciting is at the heart of all of these activity, the desire to give employees permission to take care of themselves, through promoting this culture of mental and physical health is really exciting. I'm hearing that that's really core of what you're doing as well.

Anand Verma : Now with the digital platform and the physical events connected together, this could amplify even further, which means that you can reach to many employees around the world, despite the current situation of people working from home. I think this process leads to kind of creating and sustaining the culture of looking after each other. Do you also see that the work you're doing kind of starts to impact the company's culture thereafter when people come back from the event back to their work, start to kind of permeate through the corporate or organizations?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah, definitely. As part of our campaigns, we empower people to be change makers within their organization. To give them tools to then go back and champion what they've learned within the events, but exactly as you said, I think digital only then further amplifies this. We're working with an organization at the moment, they've got 250,000 employees. There's no way we could ever do an event for all of them. We have come up with it with a year long campaign that is three different challenges. It's a virtual challenge, there's then a series of local challenges that brings people together for a short amount of time. Then there's the global challenges that sit next to that. As part of the virtual challenges through our wellness platform, we have designed and curated some amazing wellbeing content across mental health, physical health exercise, yoga, mindfulness, everything that talks to holistic wellbeing, but actually we've called it Take 20.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : That came from the top. For us, that was so exciting because that was somebody very, very senior signing off the approach that says you should take 20 minutes a day to invest into this platform. That for us is a game changer because that has set the tone and set the change within organizations from the top that allows and enables people to take 20 minutes of their day to invest in their wellbeing. I think that's so important. As I said, I think that you can give employees all the tools in the toy box, but if you're not giving them the time and encouraging them to take the time to invest in them, then they use this really. We can design all the tools and platforms, but it's really, I think it's so important to be led from the top.

Anand Verma : Absolutely. It's talk the talk, walk the walk, like you said, and it's top down driven as well. I think a lot of good news is a lot of companies are really pushing this agenda from their approach, their ways of working as well. While a lot of corporates still have to catch up with this, but what you're saying is that this would be a successful platform for conversation to not just kind of invest in this, but also create significant value, both from emotional and financial perspective. Lucy, thank you so much for the discussion points. One of my last question was if you had to kind of give some tips to a CEO you happen to meet virtually or physically somewhere, what they should be thinking about, just a few tips, three, four points they should be thinking about with regards to employee engagement and wellness.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : For me, the biggest piece of advice I'd give any CEO is to lead by example, and to ensure that employees can connect with his or her vision, feelings, human emotion, and their own investment and their wellbeing. If you see that, that then subsequently enables you to make a change as well. I think to remember that everybody is human and to be ensuring that the tools and the support are there to be able to enable them to better their physical and mental wellbeing. I think just to not underestimate the impact that COVID may have had on so many people's mental health. I think that a lot of CEOs at the moment are probably chomping at the bit to get back to the normal as we know it. Everybody's workloads will either go through the roof if they haven't already. I think it's just remembering the impact on mental health that has probably come off the back of pandemic that spread around the world.

Anand Verma : Fantastic. Thank you. I think it's become more important than ever before. Lucy, we have a tradition on our podcast to talk about your favorite book that you've read or are reading at this point in time and also some of the reasons and some takeaways from the book as well.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Yeah. Coincidentally, and it really, my favorite book of a very long time is a book called Lost Connections by Johann Hari. It very much talks to mental health. It starts by opening up about all of the medical background and their research and investment into research that's gone into mental health and how that's been funded, which has predominantly been by the pharma companies who obviously make the anti-depressants that support mental ill health. What he does is he uncovers eight different connections that he feels as humans, we have lost along our journeys, and he identifies them as losing a connection with nature and losing a connection with meaningful work and losing a connection with your family and your friends and losing connection with meaningful values.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : He breaks them up into eight different lost connections. Then he talks to how you can reconnect with those values and nature and wellbeing in order to support your mental wellbeing. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It's very, very eyeopening. Even if you're not suffering from any mental ill health or depression, it really helps you to understand why people are going through what they're going through and how you can subsequently support them and rebuilding those connections to a better mental well being. It's honestly brilliant, one of the best books I've read.

Anand Verma : That's the recommendations. I think just to kind of take that Lost Connections book, it's also shows that corporates sometimes might lose connection with their employees if they don't focus on the wellness engagement part of it as well. The book title is amazing, but also a reminder of what we should be thinking from a corporate and organizations perspective. Lucy, thank you so much for being part of the podcast. We talked about your journey. We talked about the wellness definition, Just Challenge, the mission and the vision. We also discussed some of the stigma part, also misconception, also what corporates could do to make the employee engagement better and thriving within the company. Just to wrap it up, Lucy, how can people find you online?

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : My email address is Lucy@Just-Challenge.com. I'm on LinkedIn as Lucy Bennett-Baggs which unfortunately is the surname I can't hide from. It wouldn't be very difficult to track me down.

Anand Verma : Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for being part of this discussion as well. I'm confident that listeners will enjoy listening to this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you today and wishing you full of energy, power engagement for the future endeavors as well with Just Challenge, but thank you so much for your time.

Lucy Bennett-Baggs : Thank you so much, Anand, for having me.

Anand Verma : My pleasure. Everyone you have been listening to the Infosys Knowledge Institute, the Brilliant Basics edition, where we talk about digital disruption, design, and future work. Thanks to our producer, Yulia De Bari and the entire Knowledge Institute and Brilliant Basics team. I also want to especially thank Kate Daswani for researching for this podcast as well. Until the next time, keep learning, keep sharing and stay safe.