The most important part of our business is our people: our playmakers and our game-changers, who make magic happen on the regular. But we recognize their ability to perform at such a high level is directly tied to their overall well-being. Our teammates are more than employees; they’re parents and children, caretakers and coaches, community leaders and mentors. And while they’re producing best in class work, they’re also navigating self-care and caregiving responsibilities, a global pandemic, racial injustice and economic uncertainty.
Through regular feedback via monthly small group conversations with our Leadership team and frequent all-company (anonymous) pulse surveys, it became clear that mental health is a pressing topic amongst OBE employees. As a People First organization, we recognize employee mental health and overall wellness as a top priority.
OBE is honored to announce Dr. Aron Steward, PhD, as our Psychologist-in-Residence, who will help us establish strategies to build resiliency through relationships during our transition into a post-pandemic world. Focusing on resiliency, relationships, re-engagement, and restoration, her sessions will aim to:
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- Embed mindfulness practices into our personal and professional lives to ensure presence in the moment
- Integrate conversations about individual, community, and societal rebounding into the everyday
- Balance our focus on strengths and flaws in assessing performance
- Embrace pain and suffering, and recovery and resiliency as phases of wellbeing
- Understand adversity to understand opportunity
- Facilitate honest conversations on avoidance and the difficulties confronting invalidation
- Spend time with individual departments and address specific project groups
- Share stories... and so much more
Dr. Steward is the current Chief of Psychology at The University of Vermont Health Network—Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital and Founder of ReallyBeU—a health and wellness consultancy that provides training, leadership, therapy, mediation, and program development to individuals and organizations. Among her many recognitions, Dr. Steward was awarded for exemplary teaming and coaching with the Department of Mental Health and Department of Children and Families and has received the State of Vermont Crime Victims Services Career Achievement Award for exemplary service to victims and initiatives that support crime victims.
As leaders at OBE, we may not have all the answers, but we’re giving room for questions and conversation, while collecting resources to support them. The partnership with Dr. Steward is one way we hope to offer a safe space for employees to express their feelings, as we continue to hold space for ALL aspects of the human experience.