In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Aaron Wolowiec, FASAE, CAE, CMP Fellow, founder and president of Event Garde and host of the Voices & Views podcast, chats with Tara Davis, senior director, internal communications and staff wellbeing at the American Psychological Association, about the growing importance of wellness in high-stress industries like associations and hospitality. Tara shares how APA is fostering a culture of care through initiatives like the "Meet...
In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host Aaron Wolowiec, FASAE, CAE, CMP Fellow, founder and president of Event Garde and host of the Voices & Views podcast, chats with Tara Davis, senior director, internal communications and staff wellbeing at the American Psychological Association, about the growing importance of wellness in high-stress industries like associations and hospitality. Tara shares how APA is fostering a culture of care through initiatives like the "Meet with Purpose" campaign, and discusses key strategies for preventing burnout, supporting mental health, and building intentional connections among staff. This insightful conversation explores emerging wellness trends and how prioritizing employee wellbeing can drive both personal and organizational success.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/IvPlhKGgtiw
This episode is sponsored by Visit Orlando.
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
Transcript
Aaron Wolowiec: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to this month's episode of Associations Now Presents. We'd like to extend a special thank you to this episode sponsor. Visit Orlando. I am Erin Wallic, founder and president of Event Card, where we're passionate about transforming to help organizations meet, learn, plan, and grow. I'm also honored to be a newly inducted member of the 2025 Class of A SAE Fellows, an incredible community of change makers and thought leaders in the association space at Event Guard.
We're known for helping associations elevate their meetings and learning experiences, reimagine facilitation practices, and navigate meaningful strategic planning. But today, I'm here not just as a. Facilitator or strategist, but as the founder of Healthy By Association, a wellness focused community, I launched back in 2017 to support those of us working in the often high stress world of associations and hospitality.
That's why this conversation is especially close to my heart. Today's [00:01:00] episode takes a deep dive into what wellness really looks like in association life beyond the buzzwords. We're talking about burnout, prevention, mental health, flexible work, and what it means to build a culture of care that supports both staff and members.
Joining me is someone who lives and breathes this work. Tara Davis, senior Director of Internal Communications and Staff Wellbeing at the American Psychological Association. Tara brings more than 15 years of experience in using psychological science and strategic communication to build healthier, more human centered workplaces.
Her work sits at the intersection of empathy. Evidence and action, and I can't wait for you to hear her insights, whether you're a CEO, trying to prevent staff burnout, an events professional considering wellness lounges and quiet rooms, or just an overwhelmed association pro Wondering if it's okay to take a real lunch break.
This episode is for you. Alright, let's get into it. Welcome again, Tara. We're gonna certainly start the conversation today from a big picture [00:02:00] perspective, and I would love to just define a key term before we get into it. When you think about wellness, I'm curious, what does wellness mean to you within the context of association life today?
Tara Davis: First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be here. I am so excited about this opportunity and to talk about something I'm very passionate about. So thank you. So I like to focus on the term wellbeing rather than wellness. It seems a little bit of a wordsmithing, but. Wellness to me implies either you're well or you're not.
And it is like one end of the spectrum or the other. And in reality, wellbeing is a spectrum, right? And it's a state of being healthy and happy. And there are lots of different types of wellbeing. There's financial, there's social, there's intellectual, and I think that. It's important to focus on this holistic wellbeing.
It used to be [00:03:00] that people thought about it really as just your physical health, and then I think we evolved a little bit to consider your mental health, but it's so much more. It's this connection of your mind and your body and how you really are doing. When someone asks you.
Aaron Wolowiec: I love that there are so many different dimensions of wellbeing and they don't always get talked about in all of the places at home or in the workplace, in school, in our church, or volunteer opportunities either.
I'm curious. How you think expectations around workplace wellbeing have changed for association professionals over the last few years? Has it been just as a result of the pandemic or have other factors really been at play?
Tara Davis: That's such a good question and so perfect. 'cause my dog is barking, so if you hear that, I apologize.
That is a symptom of this work life just coming mixed together and not being suffered anymore. But yeah, I [00:04:00] think that some organizations were thinking about wellbeing in the workplace long before it was trendy, and I feel very lucky to be in an organization like that. APA, the American Psychological Association has had an office.
Dedicated to employee wellbeing since I think 2003 and being a leading mental health organization. That makes sense, right? You can't expect to be talking about mental health in society and with other organizations, and so in my mind, you can't really separate wellbeing from workplace initiatives and from deadlines and priorities.
All of that is intertwined with that. Isn't always the case. And I think one, I don't think you can really say a silver lining of the pandemic. One result of the pandemic that is positive is that more employers have been paying attention to mental health in the workplace because I think there was such a decline in the mental health of our country.
We really facing a mental health. [00:05:00] epidemic as well. The other thing is not only is it about organizations paying attention, but also employees started expecting it. So it's no longer this nice to have, oh, I'm a feel good company 'cause I care about my employees. It's now a business imperative and I think that less people are having to prove the business case to their employers.
And I've also noticed that a lot of these initiatives used to exist solely in HR and it maybe it was a tiny part of an HR employee's job, but now there are positions and teams dedicated to it in my situation, and I think that's a really beautiful thing, showing the priority and the importance that it really is for our organizations and employees' success.
Aaron Wolowiec: And I want people who are listening today to not immediately get turned off by thinking, oh, we're not as large as, we don't have a department dedicated to health and wellbeing like [00:06:00] APA does. Certainly throughout the episode today, we're gonna be talking about different ways to come at health and wellness, no matter your size, whether really you're a.
Solopreneur working as a consultant within the industry, or maybe a small staff or medium staff, or a large staff organization. So before we get into those tips and tricks, let's start with fundamentally, what are some of the key elements of a workplace culture that truly prioritizes while being no matter the size of the organization?
Tara Davis: I love that question because yes, we do have an office dedicated, and so in terms of resources and budget, but it's really only two of us, two and a half I should say, as I have a member of my team who support some other work in the organization. Don't think that we have 20 folks dedicated to this.
We have about 550 employees and there are two and a half of us who are really focused on creating a healthy workplace. And so in addition to that, I wanna quickly. Note something that is part of what you're already doing, that you can [00:07:00] just think about differently or message differently, or your intention can be a bit different or it's free.
Just wanna quickly say that. So have no fear, don't worry. We don't have a large budget or even a large team. So back to what are these key elements? This is something I've been doing for a while and there are different models that have come around of. What it really looks like to prioritize wellbeing in the workplace.
And what I love is our former surgeon general, Dr. Vik Murthy, came up with a framework for mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. And some psychologists from a PA actually co-created this with the surgeon general's office, so you can look it up if you just Google a surgeon general model for wellbeing, it'll come up and it has these.
Five dimensions of things that the research has shown. These things lead to a healthy workplace. If you focus on these things, you have the outcomes that you're looking for in terms [00:08:00] of your people and your organization. So one is. Connection and community, and we know that loneliness is rampant right now, and we also know that it's really important for our mental health and wellbeing to be connected to others connection and community.
What I love about this model is each of these things are rooted in. Human needs, two, human needs for each dimension. And these needs are consistent across demographics, across type of work, job level, all of these things. And so first is connection and community. So it's rooted in the need for social support and belonging, which is very important right now.
Belonging is very important in the workplace. And the next one is protection from harm. And that's rooted in the need for. Safety and security. So we mean physical safety, of course. We also mean psychological safety. Then there's mattering at work. That's the third dimension, and that is rooted in the need for dignity [00:09:00] and the need for meaning, which obviously purpose goes along with those.
Right now we are spending a lot of time trying to focus on how do you help people find meaning in their work? How do you show their connection to the greater impact of an organization? And then the fourth one is work life harmony. So I joked about my dog. He had this term work life balance before, which was a joke.
Things were never even on the scales. And so now it's like, how can you make these things not be at odds with each other in this gray world of work life? And so those are rooted in the needs for autonomy. I. Flexibility. And so what that means is like someone providing options for how, when and where someone works, when you can, obviously there are parameters, and then giving them the autonomy to say, this is what works best for me.
And then the last one is an opportunity for growth. And that is rooted in the need for accomplishment and the need for learning. And what I love about this [00:10:00] model is they're all surrounding this foundation of employee voices. And so at our organization, the strategy that we use is we listen to psychological science.
So what does the research say? What does it say about people being engaged or happy at work? And then we listen to our employees. So you can't really just take the science and plop it in, right? We listen to our employees about what they need, and that changes day to day, and we evolve. So those are elements that really make up a healthy workplace that is prioritizing the wellbeing of its employees.
Aaron Wolowiec: And we're gonna talk about this a little bit later in the episode today, and thinking about how even those five dimensions might also extend to members, the greater community within your industry, and thinking about how, what does that look like within the context of your organization or your field, I think could be a really helpful activity for your team to think about, consider at a future meeting [00:11:00] or retreat or a strategic planning opportunity to think about.
Given the ideas that we're gonna share today, how might you customize, adapt, or adopt that for your context? Two, all of these five things are so interesting and seem both obvious, but also deep, right? If you could go deep in each one of them, but two things that you said that really stood out to me first is work life harmony.
I love hearing that readdressed or reimagined in a slightly different way because I think we, you're right, we all know that there's no such thing as work life. Balance. Certainly I've not experienced that and I think that when we set that up on a pedestal, something we're supposed to, we're trying to achieve, it probably sets us up for failure in the long run.
The other thing that you mentioned that just really stood out to me was this need for, and probably no surprise that you started with it. Connection and community, right? Yeah. Both in terms of us as. Staff members, but also in terms of our members, our attendees, in terms of [00:12:00] thinking about what associations were created for.
I've been in the event industry for a very long time, and think about all the meetings and events that we plan for our members, for our attendees, for our industries. Really, there are two primary goals that we're doing that for. One is for learning and one is for networking, community building connection.
And we can't ever forget that. It's not always just about the education, but it is about convening people and certainly in this post-pandemic environment. I think that for many organizations and for many events, it's almost like the scale has tipped more toward the side of community. And connection than it has even necessarily towards learning and education because you can find so much of that really good content online these days.
Tara Davis: Absolutely, you're totally speaking my language. One of my favorite studies is the Harvard Longitudinal Study, and they basically followed these men over, I think the CR 75 years, and they wanted to find [00:13:00] out what truly determines how long you live. And they took into account their genetics and their physical health habits and their eating and all the things.
And what they found in this study is that the thing that determines how long and how well you live is if you have. Strong community, and by that they meant it. You don't need 20 friends, you don't need a million Facebook or social media connections. It's really, do you have one person that you can confide in and that you can trust?
That is what determines how long you live. What an incredible thing. I could talk about connection forever because it's so interesting. We know that. And also what's true is in the pandemic we got. Being lonely. We know we need connection. We crave it, but then we all stay comfortable in our homes just doing what we always do.
And so one thing I've learned especially about work, both at our convention, for our association, and also internally. [00:14:00] Is that connection really has to be intentional, and I think that is a big shift that has happened through the pandemic and hybrid work and remote work. It requires a lot more intentionality, but I think that it can still be done beautifully.
Aaron Wolowiec: It's like a huge takeaway I think, for folks today, is that I think that over the years, particularly for folks who have been in this industry of association management for a while, connection community was almost a byproduct. If you convened people. Obviously connection or community happened, right? I think we're beginning to challenge that notion, and I think to your point, recognizing the intention that needs to go behind it in order to create connection and community more intentionally.
Tara Davis: Absolutely. We joke at our organization that folks, we forgot how to interact or talk to each other because of the pandemic. And at our convention, I lead attendee engagement for APAs convention. And years ago, pre pandemic, we would have this space that was like a [00:15:00] newbie lounge and really for new folks.
And then the pandemic hits. We didn't have it for a year or two. And now we're back obviously, and we have decided everyone's new. Because we have lost social skills, we have to be a lot more intentional about community. It doesn't just naturally happen. So we created this lounge area called The Gathering Place, and the whole point is to connect with each other, connect with the convention, and connect with the field of psychology.
And it's a space for everyone to feel welcome to exchange ideas and to learn and to grow. And so I completely agree. I. Kind of was something I think we took for granted and now it, it's so important, but it requires a bit more thought and intention.
Aaron Wolowiec: And speaking about event attendees and the industry at large, members at large, if you will, what role do you think associations can play in normalizing conversations around mental health within their professional communities?
Tara Davis: Oh, that's such a great question. I think that. [00:16:00] Wherever leaders can model the way that is so impactful. Vulnerability is one of the most important qualities of a leader, especially if they're willing to share their mental health journey. Now, you don't have to obviously talk about a diagnosis or anything too personal, but even sharing that you take part in, in therapy or mental health.
Services. That is huge. Even APA is. A leading mental health organization and there are employees that we have, and I'm sure members as well who maybe even they're a mental health professional and they would be concerned about someone knowing that they are seeking mental health services, which is wild, right?
But. There has been a stigma for so long, and so what I love is when people talk about how therapy isn't just for when something has gone wrong. We had [00:17:00] this NFL player, he spoke at our convention a few years ago and someone asked him, why do you have to go to therapy? What is wrong that makes you seek mental health services?
And he said. What's wrong? Are you kidding me? Therapy is what helps me perform at my best. I don't need to go, I don't have to go. I choose to go. 'cause it gives me an edge on my competition. It helps me learn about myself. And because of that, I'm my best version of myself. And we talk about that at APA.
Some of our psychologists have written things for our internal communications or shared videos where they share, yes, of course, if things are hard and spiraling. Seek it out. But also if things are going well, seek it out. Because then when things go wrong, as they will, you are more equipped. You've cultivated this resource toolkit to really put your wellbeing, your mental health in a good place for when bad things do happen.
So I think just how [00:18:00] we talk about it is a really helpful thing. And then I also just think finding out what barriers might exist to accessing. Mental health services or benefits and remove any that you can. And when we talk about it with our employees, when we talk about our employee assistance program, we actually share, did you know they'll help you find a daycare for your kids?
Did you know they'll help you find a vacation spot? Yes. They're actually there to provide mental health services, but they provide these extra things because it's like an easy step, like an easy gateway into seeking deeper help and guidance. And so I think talking about it and really just normalizing it, that it's part of our lives.
We don't think twice about going to the doctor to get a physical each year. We don't just go to the doctor. If our arm is broken, we go and we do preventative. Things. And so why aren't we thinking about our mental health in the same way? [00:19:00]
Ad Read: Let's pause there for a moment because I think the assertion you just made is, uh, one that I just wanna remind folks about.
Just making your annual appointments, like having, um, your annual physical going to the dentist two times a year, having your annual. Mammogram. I just turned 45 this year and my doctor said, guess what? At a younger age. Now at 45, they're encouraging folks to get their first colonoscopy. And so I just scheduled that appointment even though I didn't want to.
And so I think pivoting from sort of members in the industry, back to staff, starting foundationally with just some of the basic annual things, annual skin check, for example, just the annual things that you can do to make sure that you're in your best peak self and that you're performing at your best, I think is important.
Let's take a quick break from the conversation for a word from our episode sponsor. Visit Orlando today. We're showcasing why Orlando is an unbelievably real destination for your next meeting. This award-winning [00:20:00] destination offers planners the world-class accommodations. Venues dining and entertainment needed to create memorable and well-attended events of any size.
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To start planning your Orlando event, go to Orlando meeting.com. One of the other things I wanted to touch on is burnout. I pulled up to remind myself of a great book if folks haven't read it. Burnout the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. It is a must read for anyone who is dealing with or knows somebody who's dealing with burnout.
'cause I think it does unlock so many secrets and unknowns about what you're navigating and experiencing if you don't fully know and understand. But I wanted to [00:21:00] ask you, as you think about. Practical ways your organization has supported staff mental health, but in particular shining a spotlight on burnout?
Tara Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I think that, I consider burnout has evolved. I've certainly been burnout. I think most of us have varying degrees, and I think that there is this. Okay, get the mental health apps like go to therapy, which is good. I'm not saying it's not, what can the individual do, which is great.
You should have some responsibility and initiative in that. But also, what is our organization doing? To prevent burnout, and so that is where I have been really thinking is I think how we think about burnout and how we think about workplace wellbeing even really has to evolve. It's not just like throwing a bandaid on, like when you asked me what are elements of an organization that [00:22:00] prioritizes wellbeing, I didn't say a weekly yoga class or meditation, or even I didn't say.
Providing mental health benefits, which of course I believe in. It's about the systems and the policies. Are we setting our employees up for success? So broadly, what it looks like. For me is treating our employees as whole humans, complex humans with varying roles and responsibilities that might change day to day.
And understanding that there are all these different pieces to people, right? It's not, okay, I'm producing this one thing, like you can't separate these things out. And the ways that we've tried to shift our culture, we really listen to our employees, which I mentioned before, and so one example. Is when we went remote during the pandemic, most of our organization was not familiar with having remote work.
And all of a sudden we had a million video calls, video meetings, [00:23:00] all day, every day. I think most people in associations can relate to that. Right? And we periodically check in with our employees and ask them, how are you doing? We ask about their stress levels and they said, I'm really stressed out because of our meetings.
And we're like. Oh, okay. Didn't really realize meetings could be that stressful. And then we started digging deeper and digging deeper. And there is a lot of science around healthy meetings and it's a lot more complex than I think we thought it was pre-pandemic. And so we started carving out from the science what behaviors that we would want our employees to engage in order to create a healthier meeting culture.
Based on what the science says based on our culture and context. And so we created this campaign called Meet with Purpose, and we have I think four phases so far. And each phase has a dedicated three behaviors [00:24:00] that we expect our staff to engage in to try out. So the first woman started very basic. We said, okay, the science says that being on calls nonstop all day long isn't good for you.
We were used to transition time. We were used to like being able to walk down the hall and get a glass of water before we went to our next meeting. I. We're gonna say that all of our meetings have to end 10 minutes or five minutes before the end of the hour, and we even encouraged our employees to change their outlook settings to do that so that you have that transition time if you're in back-to-back meetings.
We also said that you should have. An agenda of course, which we knew, but we also encouraged our employees. A, you can't set a meeting unless you have an agenda in the meeting invite. And B, you should try and phrase your agenda as questions. 'cause you can go on and on about a topic, but if you have a question that you're trying to answer that it might be easier to move on to the next agenda item to keep in the parameters [00:25:00] of your timeframe.
So the behavior we focused on that I've loved and meet with purpose is really around video calls and there is a lot of research and it is mixed as a lot of research is, but around. Is it healthy to be on video calls? It's certainly not healthy to be on them all day. We know that is true, but it's complex.
It can be more detrimental to be on video calls for minorities, for women, for new employees. I don't know about y'all, but a lot of the time I'm like looking at myself view and being incredibly critical, and so it's a lot more complex than just, oh, we used to meet in person, so now we have video calls. No, that's actually not the way to do it.
And so this Meet with Purpose campaign really shifted our meeting culture and addressed burnout. Just a couple other things. I know I like talked about that a lot. So just a couple other quick things I wanna mention is that. If we see our employees [00:26:00] as whole people, then we understand that when things happen outside of the workplace, whether it's virtual, hybrid in person, that it affects them.
For instance, when George Floyd was murdered, we had a conversation with our staff and it was open. We had our CEO and deputy CEO on there and our different psychologists as well to just. Talk about what happened and to talk about how we were feeling. We did the same thing after election day and understanding that what is happening out there, it's not separate.
It's all one thing. And helping our employees navigate life really. And then I also will say, and the, I think be more opportunities to talk about this, but our internal communications has evolved drastically to really address our employees as. As whole people and to try and hit the different areas of wellbeing.
Aaron Wolowiec: And you've talked about so many great tactics, tools, approaches that you've taken with the team. I'm curious if there [00:27:00] are ways that you either intentionally or unintentionally or formally or informally measure ROI or how do you know that the two and a half staff that you have dedicated to this role is having a meaningful impact on your team?
Tara Davis: So for us, it's a combination of the research that other organizations are doing, and then our internal data. So we measure the things that are shown to be indicators of organizational success, such as happiness, low stress, job satisfaction, and purpose. And then we see how efforts in those areas impact the things that we care about.
And so we measure. Those things at least once a year, and we compare over years to ourselves, plus to other workplaces, to we compare to similar organizations. We also have an external survey called Work in America Survey, and we can compare our data to other [00:28:00] organizations across the nation. And for us, it's not a.
Annual survey. We do that for sure so that we can compare results, but we also measure after every major initiative we measure after every event. And it's mainly around the things that have been shown in the research to be indicators of organizational success. Along with the employee wellbeing, so happiness, low stress, job satisfaction, and purpose.
And there's actually a really great study recently that looked at these things. It was done by Indeed, and they basically set out to find out is there actual return on investment when it comes to productivity, talent acquisition, and retention, as well as. Like an organization's financial success, and they were able to measure all of those things in terms of productivity.
They asked people how happy they felt, and when you compared the people who had the frowny face with the people who had [00:29:00] the happy face, there was a difference of 12% increase in sales. If you were happy, then you had 12% more in sales than someone who was unhappy. That shows that pouring into employee wellbeing and happiness does lead to greater productivity.
They also found that a higher wellbeing score met you, get more job applicants and particularly the applicants that you want, and then they looked at retention. So companies with higher wellbeing had lower staff turnover, and in terms of numbers, if you have a higher wellbeing, then you're losing one third less of your people each year.
And then of course, they looked at, okay, what about the company itself and its financial gains, or how it's doing in the stock market? And they found that greater employee wellbeing is tied to higher company valuation, higher return on assets and greater profits. For four years. [00:30:00] So they said that the results that you're seeing were predictive of organizational success for up to four years later.
And so, uh, I think it's fascinating that it has evolved from this thing that just felt touchy, feely, soft, if you will, to something that we actually can measure. And there is so much research backing up that it's, yes, it's good for the employees and their wellbeing, but now it is a business imperative that organizations thrive when you do these efforts as well.
Aaron Wolowiec: As we prepare to wind down this conversation today, look, I could talk to you for hours because you are clearly just a wealth of information. But as we prepare to lay on the plane, I'm just curious about a couple of things as we look to the future. One is, what trends do you see on the horizon in an industry like health, wellness, wellbeing that seems to be changing so rapidly?
What should we expect to see in the next maybe one [00:31:00] to two years?
Tara Davis: Definitely a focus on the whole person, not just what they produce as an employee, so a more holistic wellbeing approach. Also, a focus on cultivating leaders. A lot of CEOs prioritize wellbeing and then it drops off at the mid-manager level.
I saw a striking statistic recently that 85% of managers are. People, leaders on accident, so they actually don't have formal training on leading people. They are good at a skill. Along with that research, there's research showing that managers are as important for an employee's wellbeing as their spouse or partner and as their therapist.
So you have these managers, these people, leaders who are having an impact on their employees, good or bad, but they're not being trained on, you can't just expect them to be a good human. It's a difficult thing to manage these conversations that [00:32:00] you have to have parameters, you have to have boundaries, but you also know that caring about them as a human will lead to greater success.
So I think really cultivating leaders. And finally this shift that I mentioned to not just adding a class here or there, there's a joke that, you know, one of the worst things you can do for stress, someone who's stressed out, is to offer them a three hour stress management class. Like it's not a program or a class.
It's about rethink. Thinking how our businesses and organizations operate. So we need systemic change around wellness, not just bandaids here and there, and Meet With Purpose is an example of that. We could have just had a webinar on how to run a good meeting, but instead we had this initiative that spanned years and focused on how the organization could set employees up for success.
So I think those are some of the things that I'm certainly paying attention to and I hope others [00:33:00] will be as well.
Aaron Wolowiec: We premised that no matter where folks are joining us today, whether a solopreneur, a small practice, a small organization, or anywhere in between, including medium and large size, that we would give folks an example of a good first step.
For folks who are feeling a little overwhelmed by the conversation today and not quite knowing where to start, where would you point them?
Tara Davis: So first, please don't be overwhelmed. I clearly love this area so much and you can reach out to me and I would love to have a conversation with you tangibly ask your employees what they need, right?
Like, why are we trying to get, we're not fortune tellers? Ask them if you could, if we could do one thing to improve your workplace experience, small or big, what would it be? That would be so telling. Create an anonymous form and see what they say. And then if that doesn't really get elicit responses, people maybe are afraid.
Have conversations about what is stressing people out at work and think about your culture. Would it be [00:34:00] better for teams to have these conversations than to do a survey, but asking people. What is stressing you out? What makes you dread coming to work? And finally, one of the beautiful things for me that came out of the pandemic is we pilot things all the time.
Just because you start something doesn't mean you have to commit to doing it for two years, five years. You say it's a pilot. We're seeing what happens. We're seeing how your needs evolve. We're seeing how the organization's needs evolve, and you try it out and hopefully you fail at some point because that's like building psychological safety.
And from failure comes innovation. But don't be afraid to try things and they can be very small things. We ask our employees, if we could do one thing to improve your workplace experience, what would it be? And. Some of them were very small things that I could change and make someone's day, and those are some of the things to think about, but I would love to have a conversation with you.
Don't feel overwhelmed. You are [00:35:00] starting with trying to do good and you'll get there.
Aaron Wolowiec: Awesome. Last question for you today, Tara. Finish this sentence. Associations that prioritize wellness will what?
Tara Davis: We'll have greater financial success and reputation while also making the world a healthier, happier place when we need it the most.
Aaron Wolowiec: Awesome. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Tara Davis: Thank you. I've loved this conversation with you,
Aaron Wolowiec: and that's a wrap on today's conversation. Huge thanks to Tara Davis for sharing her wisdom, practical strategies, and heartfelt perspective on what it really means to lead with wellness in mind.
And again, we'd like to thank our episode sponsor Visit Orlando. If this episode reminded you that you matter, that your wellbeing, your boundaries, your energy are worth protecting, then I hope you'll carry that with you because when we create environments where people feel seen, supported, and [00:36:00] safe to bring their whole selves to work, we don't just imp.
Prove morale. We build stronger, more resilient organizations. This isn't just about stress falls and step challenges. It's about embedding care into our culture, our policies, and the way we show up for one another, whether we're leading teams, planning conferences, or supporting members through tough times.
If you are looking for more tools and inspiration, check out Healthy By Association a community. I started to support association and hospitality professionals on their wellness journeys. And as always, you can learn more about our work@eventguard.com. Thank you for listening and for everything you're doing to make your workplace in this profession just a little more human.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And for more information on wellness in today's association environment, visit associations now online atassociationsnow.com. Until next time, be well and take care of one [00:37:00] another.
