UTO honors self-care with the wellness community of practice

Editor’s note: We invite readers to join us on an ongoing storytelling series, “Culture & Innovation,” in which we will not only discuss the development of UTO’s celebrated culture, but how it intends to improve, evolve, and intersect with the wider Sun Devil community.

Energized by our Positive Core, UTO works consciously and collaboratively to create a healthy workplace culture. Today, our Wellness Guild guides much of this work, defining workplace health as the soundness of our bodies, minds and spirits. 

Past Wellness initiatives have included 5k runs, gardening, volunteering opportunities, digital badges, presentations on nutrition and immune health, plus countless other events. The most recent initiative, "Celebrating Earth Month with Acts of Green," honors 2022 Earth Day: a celebration and call to action for all climate, sustainability and environmental activists. 

Formed four years ago, the Wellness Guild recognizes workplace health as a priority, in its many forms. In this article, we’ll dive into the ways in which this guild improves how we work, learn and live at UTO and ASU. 

Teams from across UTO join together to advance wellness work 

At UTO, a “guild” is defined as a community of practice, either self-organized or chartered, that centers people around a common interest. For the Wellness Guild, cultivating a broad sense of well-being in its members is the shared goal that drives these initiatives.

The Wellness Guild arose from the convergence of several other streams of culture work, with the Leadership and Workforce Development Program providing a framework for it to thrive as a unique community of practice. Directed by Senior Organizational Development Consultant Pamela Brooks, classes within the program emphasized trust and emotional intelligence, focusing not only on physical health through their step challenges, but also highlighting the importance of nurturing one’s mental and spiritual well being. 

Inspired by this program’s mission of encouraging holistic wellness, Chief Culture Officer Christine Whitney Sanchez and Director of People Operations Farnoosh Niknam sparked re-facilitation of these activities for UTO. Fellow team members Chris Deaton and Cindy Luna Miranda helped lead the charge. 

Additional founding members, including Bonnie Wilde and Sandra Johnson, worked to transform UTO’s Giving Back to the Community team into a more integrated piece of the Wellness Guild. Jean Squires and Cheryl Johnson soon joined the effort to bring wellness to the forefront of UTO’s resolutions for a healthy and productive workplace. 

With events and workshops centered around a variety of engaging topics – from vegetarian cooking to indoor gardening – the Wellness community of practice continued to expand. 

Flourishing in symbiotic harmony, other guilds — such as Giving Back to the Community and Responsible Innovation — collaborate extensively with Wellness. To date, examples of an energized Positive Core in action include food drives, step challenges, and an environment conducive to community health. 

Looking back, even as the pandemic spurred a large portion of personnel to transition to virtual work, interest in Wellness escalated: "The reason we’ve continued to grow," Deaton explains, “is because we’ve created and maintained an informal space that can be accessed even remotely, where anyone can attend."

Working to refine the scope of its impact, Niknam and Whitney Sanchez developed the dimensions of wellness – including environmental, social, spiritual, financial, physical, intellectual, career and emotional wellness. These pillars became the Wellness Guild’s north stars, inspiring them to incorporate numerous forms of healthfulness into the activities they produce. 

For example, Yoga Mornings and Mindful Minutes serve to nourish one’s spiritual, physical and emotional needs. Meanwhile, step challenges and 5k runs provide an outlet for social and physical team collaboration. A yearly campus harvest provides connection with the environment, with Springtime Seville Oranges ripe for picking on the Tempe campus. Even a volunteering opportunity as unique as historic landmark maintenance for Castle Tovrea was pursued by the Wellness Guild. 

The 2022 Wellness Camp to offer new levels of engagement

As the Wellness Guild evolves and expands, members hope to enhance one of its most enticing programs: the Wellness Camp. Originally launched in 2021, the Wellness Camp encouraged participation in a variety of events and activities designed to catalyze healthy habits and personal growth. By recording one's attendance in Wellness Camp activities, participants could also earn points used to earn rewards – with up to $200 awarded to those in the 1,000-point tier. 

Now, 2022's Wellness Camp is set to incorporate Badgr into its design, enabling participants to view a catalog of their achievements and contributions towards self-improvement, symbolized as virtual badges. Renewing the rewards system of the previous Wellness Camp, Deaton looks forward to seeing colleagues not only invest in their physical, mental and spiritual well-being, but also receive monetary recognition for their admirable efforts. "You might already be doing it,” he notes, recalling colleagues with established meditation rituals or a morning jog. “So why not get rewarded for it?"

Ready to embark on your wellness journey?

Wellness is the key to unlocking a life of stability, longevity and fulfillment. By co-creating a culture that values wellness, healthful rituals become embedded in the routines of our workforce, ensuring brighter futures to all those who participate. 

“Our value grows out of a holistic approach where we acknowledge our collective work is greater than each [singular] transaction,” affirms Cheryl Johnson. 

For UTO teams looking to get involved in the Wellness Guild, check out our webpage or join the guild on Slack at #uto-wellness.