In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, host Brandon Laws sits down with Mark Mohammadpour, Founder and Chief Well-Being Officer at Chasing the Sun, to unpack what it truly means to create a culture of well-being. Mohammadpour challenges the traditional notion of workplace culture, arguing that it isn’t an enterprise-wide concept but rather something special built within small teams. From rethinking workplace benefits like childcare support to improving internal communication strategies, the discussion highlights practical ways organizations can build healthier, more engaged teams.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Mark Mohammadpour is the Founder, Owner, and Chief Well-Being Officer at Chasing the Sun, an employee well-being consultancy that offers “relatable, practical, and applicable” solutions for employee empowerment and well-being.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, Sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
THE CULTURE OF WELL-BEING
A culture of well-being isn’t just a company-wide initiative—it’s personal, shaped by the relationships between employees and their direct teams. As recent guest Mark Mohammadpour puts it, “I don’t think enterprise-wide culture exists. Culture really is defined between the employee and the employer.” The key is to focus on the day-to-day interactions between the small groups of people employees spend most of their time with. Leaders play a crucial role in shaping that environment, ensuring that well-being isn’t just a corporate buzzword but something that truly improves employees’ lives.
For years, workplace wellness has been narrowly defined, often limited to gym stipends or meditation apps. But true well-being, as Mohammadpour emphasizes, is much broader. “It’s ultimately waking up and saying, ‘Is my life better because I work here?’” A culture of well-being takes into account not just physical and mental health, but also financial, social, community, and career health. It’s about creating an environment where employees feel valued, confident, and supported in their growth. This means rethinking workplace structures—everything from how time off is managed to the purpose behind in-office workdays and how teams communicate.
When leaders tailor HR benefits and policies to their teams’ actual needs, they create healthier, more engaged workplaces, which in turn leads to stronger businesses. “If we’re able to solve those challenges and answer those questions at a team level,” Mohammadpour says, “that is a healthy team. That is a healthy culture of well-being.”
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
“Life is Better Here”
“It’s literally an act of Congress around childcare. If we can help companies and empower companies to be able to help take care of parents—expecting parents—they will stay. That is one reason why I hear, ‘My life is better because I work here,’ because I know that my company is going to take care of childcare benefits. They’re going to support longer leave, not only for the mother but also for the father. […] It might seem kind of out of the blue—why do we talk about childcare? Well, this is a huge stressor for people. So that is one example of why I hear, ‘I want to stay at my company because I know that if I want to grow a family, I can do it here.’”
Bridging the Gap
“Well, there’s some data from Gartner, for instance, that talks about there is an awareness gap in benefits and certain benefits, whether it be financial or others, between what the company offers and what employees actually use. And I think there’s some deeper discussion that needs to happen as to really why. My hypothesis is that it comes down to communication, and we need to make sure that we’re partnering with HR to make sure that we’re creating an internal communication strategy that’s a multi-pronged approach.”
Advocating for Well-being
“I think we have to think about it in terms of the perspective of the executives. […] What’s keeping you up at night? What excites you? Where do you want to go? And the more that we understand our executives and what’s important to them, the better. Oftentimes, it’s going to come down to dollars and cents. It’s going to come down to business objectives. It’s going to come down to quarterly sales, end of year, trying to land a new client, trying to launch something, trying to increase the thought leadership of a particular executive so that they’re seen more. These are the things that executives think about. And the more that our HR community understands that and asks the questions, primes and pumps, and understands really what influences them, it will ultimately help how to have that discussion about well-being.”
Nobody Employee Left Behind
“The reality is that not every company can meet the needs of every employee every time. It is challenging, but that’s a reality. And this is the part where communication comes into it and just being very transparent and being able to say, ‘Look, this is what we’re offering at this time.’ […] I think it comes down to a couple of things related to surveys. One is we have to sort of evolve the idea that we don’t want to survey our employees too much. The reality is that employees will respond to surveys every day if the executives take the feedback and are able to apply it. It’s when they don’t that employees don’t want to take the surveys because they see nothing’s going to happen with it.”
The Power of Relationships
“As much as we love to focus on the short term, I’m about the relationship and about the long term, and thinking about the relationship between the teams that you’re working with and the people they are working with are more important than the short term. I realize that building relationships long term does not positively impact short-term dollars and cents. And I understand that, but we’re in an evolution in how we work.”
The Bottom Line
“We have the opportunity to make a real impact on our organization, and that comes with the people that you are working with right away. And when we think about cultures that shift from enterprise-wide culture—we’re nimble, we’re agile—we need to shift those words to how we are feeling as a unit and how we are defining health within our team. And then, there is a proven way to be able to help execute and measure effectively, which will impact the health of your team, make you look amazing for your executives, and ultimately improve the health of the company as a whole.”
LEARN MORE
Connect with Mark Mohammadpour on LinkedIn, or for free resources on well-being, check out Chasing the Sun.