We just completed our February wellbeing challenge at Go Well, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to see small, intentional habits begin to take root across our team. What started a few years ago as a quarterly movement competition has evolved into a more holistic challenge, inspired by Te Whare Tapa Whā, where team members set weekly goals across physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing. From meditation to playing guitar to spending quality time with kids before bed, the diversity of goals has been a nice reminder that wellbeing looks different for everyone.
For our team, this challenge reflects an important shared belief that health, wellbeing, and sustainability are fundamentally interconnected. Our wellbeing depends on healthy natural systems: clean air, safe water, healthy food, and a stable climate. When those systems are degraded, human health suffers. Equally, our ability to engage in meaningful climate action depends on how resourced, supported, and well we are ourselves. If sustainability is about long-term resilience, then wellbeing must be part of the conversation.
Internally, we bring this philosophy to life through a structured and intentional approach to health and wellbeing. Our Health, Safety and Wellbeing Policy formalises our commitment to ensuring our team feels supported, safe, and able to thrive — not just at work, but in their day-to-day lives. This includes regular 1:1 and team check-ins, encouraging open conversations about mental health, and flexible working arrangements such as our nine-day fortnight. Alongside this, we invest in proactive initiatives such as our annual wellbeing survey, regular wellbeing workshops, social and volunteer days, and the quarterly wellbeing challenges mentioned above.
We feel it’s worth acknowledging that the nature of our work requires us to regularly engage with confronting science about the trajectory of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, mental health, and social inequity (to name a few issues), and sitting with that reality can be heavy. Further to this, we haven’t been immune to the extremely challenging economic environment in Aotearoa (and globally). We consciously create space to process and navigate these challenging topics and times, and we’ve have found that this openness and vulnerability has allowed us to support one another and ensure we main resilient and positive. We believe the strength and cohesion of our team today is proof that prioritising health and wellbeing pays off.
Externally, we support clients to integrate wellbeing into sustainability strategies, policy development, and education. We recently ran a Health & Wellbeing workshop for our client, Wise Group, exploring the intersection between climate change, equity, and health, and how we as businesses and individuals can take practical steps to strengthen both environmental sustainability and collective wellbeing. “Wise Group has been very fortunate to partner with our friends at Go Well to develop our Sustainability Strategy. We have also run a series of lunch and learn webinars through Go Well, including our most recent one on health and wellbeing. Our staff have really valued the information and learning received to date and we look forward to having further sessions in future.” – Manase Lua, Pasifika Equity Lead
At Go Well, we believe that organisations cannot treat wellbeing and sustainability as separate agendas. The organisations that will thrive in the transition ahead are those that recognise that resilient people underpin resilient systems.
If your organisation is exploring how to strengthen both sustainability impact and workforce wellbeing, we would love to support that journey. Get in touch to learn more about our quarterly wellbeing challenge, workshops, or strategy support.
Written by Kate Lodge, Sustainability Consultant at Go Well Consulting.
