One of my favorite pieces of science is how we can course-correct from stress in as little as 60 to 90 seconds. That’s the foundation of Thrive Reset, our tool that allows us to reduce stress and reset in just 60 seconds. So when I was recently reading about efforts to increase safety in the industrial and manufacturing sectors, I was struck by the parallels between Reset and what are called “safety moments.”
Safety moments are short breaks taken at certain points in the day to discuss a relevant safety topic. They evolved out of “toolbox talks,” which are informal safety discussions usually held at the beginning of a shift. Safety moments are now commonplace throughout heavy industry. For example, Oceaneering International, which provides industrial equipment to the oil, gas and marine industries, has a Safety Moment of the Month. At Halliburton, they start every meeting with a safety moment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees workplace safety, even opens many of its meetings with a safety moment.
The key — for both Reset and safety moments — is that they don’t have to be long. The point is to give ourselves a pause, even for 60 seconds, to be mindful and reset. Sitemate, which builds software for manufacturing companies, has a list of “1 minute safety talks.” There’s also a website offering hand-drawn safety videos called “60 Seconds of Safety.”
No matter what industry you’re in, these types of mindfulness breaks are actually more effective when they take less time away from everything else on our plates. That’s why we made Thrive Reset take just 60 seconds. With over 100 Resets to choose from on themes like gratitude, movement and reframing problems, each Reset includes a guided breathing bubble that helps you inhale, exhale and bring yourself back to center. You can also create your own personal 60-second Resets by selecting photos of your kids, pets or landscapes, along with quotes and music that bring you calm and joy. At Thrive, we not only open our all-hands meeting by playing a different team member’s personal Reset, we’re also integrating the tool into workplace software like Zoom, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams and Slack.
It’s part of our mission to embed well-being directly in every aspect of the workflow, the same way safety moments embed safety in the workday. That’s why, as we marked Thrive Global’s fifth anniversary last week, we launched a new 5×5 product suite. It’s a comprehensive set of five distinctive products — Thrive Today, Thrive Learn, Thrive Reset, Thrive Challenges and Thrive Pulse — available across five platforms: web, mobile, chat, conference and call centers. It’s all about meeting the moment by meeting employees where they are and providing solutions in real time when they need them most.
What we’ve seen over the past year is that well-being has become so critical to the employee experience that we need to approach it with the same level of urgency and importance that industrial companies do with safety. By using these moments as tentpoles throughout the day, we can turn moments into mindsets. That’s how cultures are changed. At Walmart, Chief People Officer Donna Morris recently spoke about the difference embedding well-being has made. “We start every Global Town Hall, which is every second week now, with a wellness moment,” she said. “Someone getting up, sharing what they are doing specific to their well-being, it could be something physically, emotionally, it could be financially. That wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Thrive.”
Our job may not require us to operate heavy machinery, but virtual fatigue and burnout pose a different set of hazards to our physical and mental health. As we update our view of the human operating system, Reset reminds us that downtime is a feature, not a bug. And of course, well-being and safety are linked in other ways as well. According to a Gallup study, companies ranked in the top quarter for employee engagement had 70% fewer safety accidents than those in the lowest quarter. Another recent Gallup analysis found that employee engagement correlates strongly to employee retention. As former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams put it, “Healthy and happy employees have a better quality of life, a lower risk of disease and injury, increased work productivity, and a greater likelihood of contributing to their communities than employees with poorer well-being.”
We might not always have 30 minutes to take a walk, or exercise, or do whatever we’d ideally like to do to recharge in the course of a busy day. But however busy we are, we can take 60 seconds. That’s what’s so powerful about the science behind Reset. So however you do it — and you can go here to get more information on Thrive Reset — take a moment for yourself today to breathe, reset and bring yourself back to center.