Founder Podcast Feature: Chase Sterling on the Truth About Workplace Wellbeing
What happens when workplace wellbeing becomes popular, but the advice organizations follow is not always grounded in evidence or practice?
In this episode of Wellness in the Real World, Wellbeing Think Tank Founder and Executive Director Chase Sterling joins host Dr. Natalie Grinvalds for a conversation about workplace wellbeing, experts over influencers, organizational systems, burnout, belonging, and what it takes to create healthier workplaces in real life.
A Conversation About Evidence, Humanity, and Work
Workplace wellbeing is everywhere right now. Organizations are investing in wellness programs, apps, challenges, webinars, and benefits designed to support employees. Those efforts can be valuable, but they are not enough on their own.
In this conversation, Chase shares why workplace wellbeing requires more than surface level solutions or trend driven advice. It requires evidence based thinking, applied experience, humility, employee listening, and a willingness to examine the systems that shape how people experience work every day.
The episode also explores why Wellbeing Think Tank was built around the idea of elevating experts over influencers. Expertise can come from formal education, applied practice, lived experience, research, and years of doing the work. The goal is not to make the field more exclusive. The goal is to make workplace wellbeing more trustworthy, practical, and effective.
What This Episode Explores
This conversation begins with the difference between workplace wellness and workplace wellbeing. Chase explains that workplace wellness often focuses on health promotion, benefits, incentives, and individual behavior. Workplace wellbeing includes that work, but also looks more broadly at leadership, policies, culture, wages, environment, belonging, psychological safety, and organizational health.
The episode also explores why workplaces should, at a minimum, work to avoid causing harm. That does not mean every workplace will be perfect. People make mistakes, leaders are human, and harm can happen unintentionally. But organizations can still take responsibility for the systems within their control.
Chase and Natalie also discuss the tension between individual responsibility and organizational responsibility. Individuals can care for their own health, manage stress, and make choices that support their wellbeing. At the same time, workplaces influence whether those choices are realistic, supported, or culturally acceptable.
The conversation also touches on burnout, non-toxic positivity, and the need for workplaces to make room for real human emotions. Supporting people does not mean fixing them. It means listening, responding with empathy, and creating enough trust that people can be honest about what they are carrying.
Another key theme is business alignment. Chase shares why wellbeing practitioners need to understand what success looks like to leadership, identify the business problem they are trying to solve, and define clear outcomes from the beginning. Participation numbers matter, but they are not always the same thing as impact. Strong workplace wellbeing strategy connects human needs with business realities.
Why Listen
This episode is a valuable listen for HR professionals, workplace wellbeing practitioners, benefits leaders, organizational leaders, and anyone responsible for creating healthier work environments.
It is especially relevant for people who are tired of one size fits all solutions and want a more thoughtful, practical, and evidence informed way to approach workplace wellbeing.
The conversation is also a reminder that wellbeing work can feel isolating. People leading this work are often trying to influence systems, build trust, translate research, make the business case, and care deeply without burning themselves out in the process. Community matters for them, too.
Listen to the Full Episode
We invite you to listen to Chase Sterling’s full conversation on Wellness in the Real World with Dr. Natalie Grinvalds and reflect on what it might look like to move beyond surface level wellness efforts and create workplaces that are healthier, more human, and more aligned with what people actually need.
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