Building Inclusive, Compassionate, and Flourishing Workplaces with David Shapiro

Welcome to the Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, change makers and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live work and lead with more joy, health, love and meaning. It was my pleasure to host David Shapiro on our Flourishing Edge podcast today. David is the Assistant Director of Programs and Partnerships at the center for Health, Work and Environment. In this role, he oversees chwe's signature public health outreach programs, including the Colorado Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative, a key initiative that creates more belonging, inclusiveness and psychological safety in the workplace. Key ingredients for flourishing hey David, it's so excited to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast, my friend.

Thanks Ashish. It's great to be here.

Look, my friend, all the work we do at Happiness Squad and on this podcast is really helping leaders and organizations create creating flourishing workplaces. And no workplace can be flourishing unless it's inclusive, unless people find they belong and feel psychologically safe and trusted. And I think the effort that you all are doing with the Recovery Friendly Workplace just spoke to me right when I heard it, Right when I thought I looked at it, I never thought about it. And so I'm really excited to bring your story and the initiative and the impact that you're having all across the Front Range to our listeners so they can listen and see how they can take this work that you are creating and really integrate them into our workplaces.

Great. Well, I'm excited to be here and talk about it.

So my friend, let's start with a little bit of your origin story, your personal and professional origin story on how you came to to this work that is at the intersection of workplace health, safety and recovery friendly policies.

Sure.

How did you start on this journey?

Yeah, well, I always do a self descriptive introduction when I'm on webinars. So David Shapiro he him pronouns I'm a white man in my late 40s. I work at the Colorado School of Public Health, which is located on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado. My origin story for coming to the Recovery Friendly Workplace Initiative kind of bobs and weaves a bit. I've always had a job that matched my personal life. I've been really privileged in that way, at least for the last 20 years or so. And my background is in cultural anthropology and African history actually. And I used to think in order to study Culture. I had to travel overseas. I had to go to Southeast Asia, India or Nepal or Africa. I traveled to a lot of countries. And what I realized as I got a little bit older is there's culture right here in the workplace. There's culture in this room, but I don't have to go to some other foreign continent to find it. So when I made that realization, the first workplace strategy that I got involved in were family friendly workplaces. What does it mean to support new parents in the workplace? And that matched my experience having children. My kids are now 2016 and 14. So 20 years ago, I left retail job in the ski industry selling ski clothing and ski gear, and started to talk about how dads can spend more time with their kids and what is a family supportive or a family friendly workplace environment. Yeah, that included things like what does paid family leave look like? What does child care supports look like? I grew my career there and I started learning more about occupational safety and health. After a run with some nonprofit organizations and leading them and growing them, I had this opportunity to move over to the Centers for Health, Work and Environment at the Colorado School of Public Health and start really diving into helping organizations with their health and safety programs. With total worker health, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit today, I'm getting a degree, master's in public health on occupational health and safety as well. And so I had this opportunity eight years ago to start advising and consulting businesses on their health and safety programs. I've built up my own corpus of understanding of occupational safety, including slips, trips and falls, and general occupational hazards. And in terms of supporting people in recovery, health and wellbeing has always been something that we've worked with companies on for the recovery initiative specifically, the short history is I was doing advising with businesses on Covid guidelines starting in the fall of 2020, what does it mean to wear a face mask? What are airflow exchange rates like in buildings? And all the companies that I would advising. So the CDC paid us some money for me to do consulting with businesses on Covid guidance, started talking to me about mental health and isolation and people working from home and what that felt like. And so we really quickly decided, gosh, we need to dive deeper into workplace mental health. And I don't know if you remember, but a lot of companies to get people to socialize were doing online happy hours. They were doing sort of like let's all drink wine together. And the company started talking to us about, gosh, we're not sure that this is actually Healthy activities for everybody. Not only is everyone feeling isolated, we're also encouraging people to get together and use alcohol. And so there was this opportunity through American Rescue Plan act dollars, through ARPA funds to start talking to business leaders about recovery and supporting workers in recovery. So many people who are in recovery from substance use disorders have co occurring mental health conditions. And 2022, we convened a group of business leaders from a variety of sectors and we said, hey, if we're going to start a certification program to actually acknowledge and recognize businesses in Colorado as recovery friendly, would you be interested in participating? And a whole bunch of businesses signed up and we were able to get legislation that passed in 2024, bipartisan legislation to launch the program. And now we're off and running and certifying businesses. The last thing I should mention is I am a person in recovery. For me, what that looks like is I no longer use cannabis. So I had a long run using cannabis to deal with my generalized anxiety disorder. I had a co occurring disorder. Right. Generalized anxiety disorder and cannabis use disorder in order to treat it. So now in recovery, my version of recovery is I'm abstinent, I choose not to use cannabis at all. And so I keep meeting people in the workplace that are either in recovery or that are battling with a variety of substances or substance use disorder issues. And so again, just like with family friendly stuff, my work matches my personal life. And so it's something I'm really passionate about.

Yeah, I mean, what a rich tapestry of experiences and life experiences and really using our life. Right. And tuning into what's present within to then look externally to see is this something that is out there? In most cases it is. As much as we think we are unique, we're not. Right. Our experiences are oftentimes mirrored in the world around. We're just blind to it. And so I love your journey from family friendly to worker friendly to recovery friendly. Right. Like really expanding kind of, if you will, the impact from one set to others. And I do think actually recovery friendly is quite big because most people actually don't realize how prevalent substance abuse is. Most people don't even think about use of alcohol as substance abuse, even though many would classify according to the medical definition to be consuming much higher levels of alcohol than is healthy or could be considered dependency. So I want you to disaggregate that a little bit for our listeners on. First of all, before we talk about what is recovery.

Sure.

Let's talk a little bit about what is substance abuse and how prevalent it is in the World around us.

Okay, yeah, thanks for the question. So when we talk about psychoactive substances, right, so psychoactive means they have some sort of impact on your brain, on your mood, on your behavior, right? And the spectrum of psychoactive substances is really large, right? It includes caffeine. People don't like it when I talk about their coffee. It includes nicotine and tobacco, alcohol all the way through, some of the more illicit or illegal drugs, cocaine, heroin, you know, other opioids and cannabis falls in there, etc. So when we talk about use in general, there's a spectrum of use. And now I'm not a clinician, right. I work in public health and I advise businesses. So some use is prescribed use, right? Oftentimes people are prescribed medications and they're using it to benefit their body, their brain, whatever it may be. There's also what we call lower risk use for religious ceremonies and services, perhaps workplace events where people are consuming a mild amount of alcohol. There's lower risk. There's still some risk in using substances. And then there's the higher risk use, which falls into addiction, addictive behaviors, impairment in the workplace, unable to do your daily functions. Well, I want to mention, because we're in Boulder, Colorado, and I work with CU Boulder, quite a bit the lower risk use. We also talk about social or experimental use, right? So college students don't always think about risk, and youth don't think about risk at all sometimes when we talk about psychoactive substance. So another category that we interchange words on for the lower risk use would be experimental or social use. Now, the DSM 5, the criteria for mental health conditions, it starts to talk about how to label substance use disorders. And there's like 11 criteria that clinicians are looking for. And there's a lot of people that fall under either a mild to a severe substance use disorder under those 11 criteria, they fall under categories like tolerance and withdrawal, physical symptoms, mental health symptoms. The worst case is when you can't function well without using the psychoactive substance. Across the US I think the current total is close to 30 million people with a diagnosed substance use disorder on any given day. I think the last number was like, 29 million individuals. So it's a lot of people all.

The way from mild to extreme. So over that spectrum. Over the spectrum, I'm surprised it's only 10%.

Yeah. Of adults.

I know.

Yeah. Right.

I am very surprised that it's only 10%. Just given if you think about starting from. And maybe it doesn't include caffeine.

It does not include caffeine. Or tobacco. That would be alcohol through.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. No, I was like, well, and it's a large number.

It's a large number. And half of those are in mild substance use disorders. So 50% of whatever the number is we're talking about are usually diagnosed with a mild substance use disorder, but it's still on that spectrum. It's impacting some form of how you go about your day, right? Yeah. If you cope with alcohol every day after work or multiple days a week after work, even if it's a small amount of drinks, it's not binge drinking necessarily. It's still probably one of the symptoms of a mild substance use disorder. Right. We know there are other coping strategies. Or in my case, if you're dealing with your anxiety disorder by using cannabis. For me, I had multiple symptoms. Right. I had a severe substance use disorder, which is a quarter of the number. Right. So half or in mild, a quarter in moderate and a quarter in severe is basically what we say at any given time. And the other thing I want to mention that's important for us to think about is not only is it the individuals with the condition, and substance use disorder is a medical condition, usually those individuals are closely connected to at least one or two other adults. Right. So when we talk about the number of people that's impacted by this disease, just like any other chronic condition, you have to 2 or 3 times X that number of 30 million US adults. And so when you talked about it being such a small number, it's actually two to three times greater. Because if you're my family member or my close friend, you're impacted by my medical condition as well. So it's a lot of people.

Well, and I think today, you know, and I can speak for myself, right. There's a lot of people, if you look at the workplace, state of flourishing or state of suffering, you can choose what word to use. 60% experience stress daily, 22% are burnt out. And we don't live in a severance world, so we carry that stress with us. Comb. Right. And oftentimes the go to to handle that stress is either food or alcohol or one of the other drugs, whether it is cannabis or more extreme versions. Right. I think people are indulging in it and it affects families, it's affecting the next generation and so much around. So. So, yeah, I mean, it's. It's actually a really, really big deal. And I chuckled a little bit to when you said, you know, I know you're using the definition from, you know, mild drinking at parties to kind of when you're really addicted. Been to a lot of places. Holidays parties are just around the corner where there is a lot more than mild true drinking. And it then creates lots of other issues because you lose that sense of what's right, what's wrong often and, you know, the implications again, actually go. I'm sure many of us have been at parties where we've seen something happen. The tale of that event lasted a long time and affected relationships for much much. That contagion doesn't just go away after the event.

No, I mean, I'm glad you brought up holiday parties because we've been doing this work on consulting for recovery friendly workplaces for a few years and this is the time of year where a lot of companies are gearing up for celebrations. And I don't want to get labeled as like the fun police or like a buzz kill. Like I'm not advocating for no alcohol, but I'm advocating for multiple options for people. Right. So that there's fun non alcoholic drinks. And you're right. So often these corporate holiday parties have focused on the signature cocktail or the beverage and moderation for. You can look different for me. Right. If I'm on a certain medication or, or my.

Or I'm in recovery.

Exactly.

It's way different. Absolutely.

Yeah. And so we've been advocating for companies to expand their offering for a long time. And when you think about it again, I'm going back to my cultural anthropology from a culture mindset. If this is what we do and how we celebrate as a company and this is our big go to every year, what are we saying about how we celebrate activities and events? What are we saying to our employees about what it means to have success and what it means to win or what it means to be, you know, celebratory. And there are certain industries we work with, like construction, who the normal watering hole or gathering place is a bar or a brewery after work. And so you're kind of sending the message that this is what we do as an industry. Right. We've worked with some large banking companies that always focus their holiday party on the signature cocktail. And I heard from one of these large institutions that they would rent out these big ballrooms and. And they put a full bar with the signature cocktail on all four corners of the room. And they said, David, we're not sure how to shift. Right. We've been doing this for 30 years. The signature cocktail at this big bank. This has been the focus of our holiday party. And you're right, probably other issues came up from them doing that. Right. Not everybody is able to moderate their usage. And again, for those of us in recovery, it's a little awkward that the whole party is focused on this. And so the shift that this company made was they had two full bars and then they had two mocktail bars, right? So they just went 5050 and they said, we're going to offer a non alcoholic fun drink just like the alcoholic ones. And the other thing because I've done occupational safety that I encourage them is like everybody should have a ride share or get the motor vehicle issue out of the way for that. Like give everybody Lyfts or Ubers or whatever the ride share service is so that you're distancing yourself from the riskiest part of that behavior, which is getting in a vehicle.

Yeah, well, my friend, as we, when we started the podcast, I was like, I think this podcast, we're about three, four months out and we're going to release it in February, but I think maybe we release it in November, way ahead. Because we actually have, we have a holiday campaign that we just launched this week. And again, I don't want to be a party pooper, but what we are, the whole campaign is around giving a gift of flourishing. There are proven approaches, right, in which we can build habits around with positive psychology that can help us fundamentally address stress anxiety in a different way through building positive, happier habits that are more adaptable and resilient. So our whole holiday campaign is this year, give your employees more than just a holiday party.

I love that.

Give them the gift of flourishing. Give them something that helps them be more adaptable, more resilient, a better father, a better mother, a better colleague, a better community member. And let's do that together rather than just a one time fun, which would be the hedonic versus helping individuals build habits to live a more eudemonic life.

Right. Well, and I just want to mention one thing because it is Halloween. I know you're going to release this, you know, coming up, it's not just alcohol, right. We have this habit of taking all of the extra Halloween candy and bringing it into the office and throwing it in a bowl on the break room table. And before I talked about recovery, friendly workplaces and in addition to, we talk about food at work as well. Right. You talked about food also. So I'm not saying don't do that. We call that dumping, right? We're going to get it out of my house and I'm going to Dump it on the break room table. Now for me, when I get hungry in the afternoon at 2:30, 3:00', clock, if that's the only thing on the break room table, well, that's what I'm going to grab a handful of. Right. So if the only signature drink at the corporate event is a cocktail, I'm going to be pretty persuaded to go and get that alcoholic beverage. What we advocate for is if you're going to put the Halloween candy in the table, fruit, put fruit or a vegetable. Right. And so when I go up, I'm an adult, I go up and I get to choose a 2:30 or 3 color. Do I want to grab an apple or do I want to grab the Halloween candy? Right. I'm not saying eliminate, I'm just saying provide options so that people can moderate and be adults.

Yeah. And I think it's all about going back to, you know, for a moment, you know, you talked about cultures you can spread around the world, exploring it or you can spend it here. The reason we don't find culture here is because our brains that are so used to kind of a pattern, we don't find that, you know, when we go someplace new, we are forced to look for differences because they're different. Right. So our brain is looking and scanning everything. If I show up here all the time, I'm not looking for those. So for me, this is one of those invitations which you talked about it for food, we can talk about it. For alcohol, we can talk about others. But it's to really bring this lens into are we being inclusive, are our choices creating something for everyone? Right. Really. And it's not about removing things because we know that never works, but it's about really creating choices. I loved that. How do you create choices so people can self direct and choose, you know?

Right.

So let's take a little bit into, into the recovery friendly workplace. And I want to actually now go to the other side. Right. People don't think about caffeine and alcohol necessarily as substance abuse, even though it is. But let's stop there. I want to actually go to more of the psychoactive drugs that are really out there and talk a little bit about why this initiative really focuses on, on that and what are the struggles you see when it comes to employers dealing with whether it is, you know, cocaine addiction or whether it is opioids or whether it is any of the other more considered, you know, illegal drugs, so to say.

Right. Illicit. Illicit drugs, yeah. So my own personal research as a master's in public Health Student is on this topic as well. I've kind of really dove into the topic of supporting workers in recovery, both professionally and personally. So the goal of the initiative is to support businesses to help workers who are in recovery. So the first issue we find as a researcher and a scientist and even in working with businesses, the samhsa, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Administration at the federal government was really inclusive when they defined the term recovery, which I love. It's a self directed individual process of change. That means your definition of recovery, Ashish, can be what you want it to be and my definition of recovery can be what I want it to be. But when we work with workplaces or when we're scientific and looking in from a research standpoint, it actually makes it a little bit difficult because there's not necessarily a standardized definition of what it means to be in recovery.

Can you repeat that a little slowly?

Yeah. So samhsa, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Systems Administration at the US Federal government had a very inclusive process for defining what recovery means. It's an individual self directed process of change. So that means that if you're substance free for 24 hours and you raise your hand and say, I'm in recovery, David, we accept that as a definition. For me, it might be a year of abstinence from a substance and then I feel comfortable saying I'm in recovery. For a clinician, they're looking for certain criteria and designations. Right. So I love the community aspect and the collective impact of that type of definition. It's really beautiful. It's very inclusive, but it makes it hard to research. And when I talk to human resource professionals, HR professionals, it's unlike any other chronic condition.

Right.

I've been talking about this a lot recently. Most workplaces, when someone says I have cancer, we all band together, we say, you know, f cancer, we're going to raise money, we're going to rally around the person. Same with cardiovascular disease, same with type 2 diabetes.

Companies are same with any physical. You have an accident, you lose a leg or you break a leg, there is so much we feel empathy. We're able to very easily move and kind of say, what do you need?

We've got the play. We've got the playbook for all of these other chronic medical conditions. For this one substance use disorder, it's. There's no real playbook. Right. And so because recovery can look like a variety of different things and for some people, recovery means harm reduction. And harm reduction is another term that's important for your listeners to understand Harm Reduction might mean I'm on methadone to get off of heroin, right? And methadone is a form of an opioid. So I'm still consuming a small amount of opioid prescribed in order to deal with the severe substance use disorder I had. Or it might mean I'm switching from my pain management medication that I might have been using inappropriately to cannabis, but I'm still on some form of a psychoactive substance that's part of the recovery community as well, is folks that are engaged in harm reduction. So when we think about this from a workplace standpoint, these are things that human resource professionals and safety managers are not trained on, right? I mean, this is far outside the domain.

Well, I think I even go further, actually, David, on this. It's not that the human resource professionals aren't trained on. I think, as humans, our reaction, right, and our words in the vernacular, to somebody who's suffering from cancer, from somebody who is suffering from a physical injury, from a cardiovascular. Our internal reaction and our sense making is that of empathy and compassion and feelings bad for them. When we hear of somebody who's struggling, right, who's a heroin addict or who struggled, who uses cannabis a lot, I think there is still so much judgment.

I think so.

So it's not that we don't have policies and playbooks, but I think our own inner stories are seen from the lens of judgment that closes our hearts to the suffering, which is as real for somebody who's struggling with substance abuse as somebody who's struggling with cancer.

That's what I've noticed. So I've hosted close to 200 advising sessions now with businesses in all types of industries. And what I keep hearing is, yes, David, we know what to do when someone has a cancer diagnosis. Again, we all rally behind that person if they need to do oral treatment or chemotherapy. We make the accommodations we need to do. And what's interesting is I got into this work to support people in recovery that were already like, maybe out of the disease state. But if out of 10 advising sessions with a business that I have on recovery, friendly workplace, nine and a half. Talk to me about active use, impairment in the workplace. Somebody is actively using. We're concerned about this person who's drinking too much. Someone showed up on the job site and was doing cocaine, or they were passed out in a port, a potty. And so I keep wanting to talk about people who are in recovery, but the reality is psychoactive substances, especially illicit ones, they're here right now impacting workplaces every Day, especially sectors like construction, restaurant, hospitality, healthcare. Right. And retail, manufacturing. And so as much as I want to talk about supporting people in recovery, we're not there yet. We're really starting. We're talking to companies more about what are your policies, your programs and practices, not only to support people in recovery, but actually to get people into treatment and to help them deal with this medical condition. The only other thing I wanted to say is I have, we have seen a shift. I brought up mental health in the beginning of our conversation. A lot of companies have a playbook now for things like depression and anxiety also. So I've seen a real shift of if someone needs to go out for a mental health leave for whatever reason. We're starting to have a playbook on that. There's more neurodiversity in the workplace and people are acknowledging that ever before. But you're right that this personal connection to substance use is different than all of those other conversations. You may have had a father or a sister or a friend that you tried to get help, support with and they were successful in recovery. They went back. And all of that, I think, impacts how we treat and handle individuals in the workplace that are using psychoactive substances that are impaired by them. And that's a really important word in this topic too, is impairment, Right? You can't show up at the job site impaired, especially if you're in a safety sensitive workplace environment. So when I get out of sort of like the weirdness of how companies handle or don't handle this, I get into, well, let's look objectively at what's going on. Is David showing up at a job site impaired? Is he unable to function at his job? Yes. No. That's almost a binary response, right? If yes, well, let's dig into what is the impairment, because impairment can happen from a lot of lack of sleep, stressful ride into work, family conflict, psychoactive substances, other chronic conditions. So we need to be objective when we're talking about impairment until we know what's going on, until we can confirm what's actually happening, all we know is the person showed up slurring or unable to perform their job duties. So let's be curious and dive in a little deeper.

Let's not go to the shortest answer, which is, oh, that's because, yeah, okay, so talk to me a little bit about the components of a workplace. Right? So you talk about it from, yes, we want to talk about recovery, but we also want to talk about active, you know, those who have active abuse or impairment issues going On, Right. And these segments, by the way, you know, you talked about all of these industry segments, manufacturing, construction, retail, food, service, restaurant industry, by the way, all of these are also jobs. Just to kind of put things in perspective for the listeners. I discovered the research of Zeynep Tan. She's an MIT professor, she created the Good Jobs Institute. She talked a lot about how a big chunk of these jobs are what she would call bad jobs. Jobs where people are barely making minimum wage. They're making minimum wage, you have to pay minimum wage. But if I only give you 500 hours of work and then I put on that instable schedules, you're putting people into situations where they might have two, three jobs, they're constantly getting fired. There is a lot that we're putting on them. And then when you combine that with where do you go to kind of handle all of that mental emotional stress, the average pay to many of these jobs that companies pay, combining hours times cost would like less. Around 20,000.

Right.

19 to 20,000. I don't remember the exact number. Right. And so I think it's quite big. I think so there is a very real human suffering component. So when we put on our judgment hats, we have to kind of put that into consideration as well. Right. So talk to me about David, when you go talk to an organization, what are all the components that you recommend they think about to make it recovery friendly?

Sure. There's a lot of things we could talk about with any given company, regardless of industry or size. So the first thing that we do, and I know Ashish, you're part of the recovery friendly workplace initiative with your organization as well, we have the companies take a baseline survey and assessment. So we get a little bit of data and that's we're public health. Right. So we love our data, we love evaluating the data. So I can have conversations like this with businesses all day, but ultimately I want to mark change over time. And the way we do that is by collecting some data about how are you currently supporting your employees, what type of medical plan do you have, what type of policies do you have in place, what type of training are you offering? Right. And so when we get that, that small amount of Data, it's about 15 or 16 questions that a company fills out, mostly around mental health and a little bit about recovery or recovery supportive workplaces. Then I can actually have a consultation or advising session from a place where I have some data. What we're finding is training and education is a piece that a lot of companies just need. They have training and education on a variety of topics, but it doesn't often include how substance use is impacting workers or how substance misuse is impacting our workplace. So we have a training that's associated with the program as well that we can offer to organizations, and it includes a component on leadership. And I know leadership is really important in this conversation. Right. So another thing we talk about is it's going to be really hard for David, as a frontline, essential employee, to raise his hand and say, hey, I need help. If the thought is that my supervisor, manager, or the executive who's leading our company isn't willing to talk about it or perhaps is even still engaging in behaviors that show they're using in a risky way. Right, yeah. Which is fine. Again, I'm not judging that, but thinking about sort of just hierarchies in power and control in the workplace without a leader who steps up and says, this is something we're willing to talk about, this is something I'm willing to change, we're willing to go there. It's really important to provide agency to all of the other frontline workers to say, oh, I can actually get help here and I'm not going to lose my job. Yeah, I'm not going to be stigmatized. I know stigma is a really big issue because of people coming in with their own personal background. So that's a little bit more gray than some of the stuff we capture on the assessment. Right. We often ask companies to dig into their benefits. What does it really look like if I come to my HR director and say, hey, I'm going through something and I think I need help? What does the referral process look like and what is their experience going to be? Are you covering in person treatment? If yes, great. Find out what that looks like for the referral process. I often tell people to try it. Right. Like if you have an employee assistance program, an eap, call it and say, hey, I'm dealing with stress, or I think my drinking might be too much. What kind of resources does the EAP have for me? Right. So the things that you're referring to people, I often tell leaders in each to try them and just see what it's like.

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So those are the kind of conversations we have. And then there's a big conversation around policies. What is in our handbook? What does our drug free workplace policy say? We do policy reviews as part of the process and we provide input on workplace policies. Because so many workplace policies are written from the lens of like zero tolerance, right? If you show up impaired on the job site, you're going to lose your job. Like, that's basically a truncated version of most policies we see. And we're not saying you have to eliminate that component of the policy, but what we would prefer to see is we support you, your health and your well being. Right. We have these benefits in place, including our medical plan and our eap. And if you're experiencing something with substance use disorders, if you think you're struggling, here's our resources, here's what, here's the process. And then somewhere down the line in the policy, it says, and you can't be impaired on the job site. Right. In a construction site, you can't get on a forklift and be under the influence. Right. You just can't. Right. You can put yourself at risk, you can put other workers at risk, the community at risk. Similarly, in a hospital, you can't be impaired trying to be a surgeon. So let's start the policy with, we care about you as a human being. We have these resources in place. And then say, and we're going to get you all the support and help you need. You got to raise your hand and say you need help and support. But we do reserve the right for termination if those other things can't happen or don't happen in a way that's mutually beneficial to you as the employee and us as the employer. But that's not how the policies I see are written. If it's like very much sort of a legal cover our company kind of background.

Yeah. And I think that's where I want to go next. Right. I think for me, when I first think about policies, yeah. They're predominantly, unfortunately, written from a place to give ourselves legal standing to terminate somebody and not get sued. And as a result, also, many policies are just. That's what it is. It's in a book. Nobody actually. Their policies aren't practiced. Right. That might be the place where we go to kind of get our backing to say, this is why I'm letting you go. So I wonder what you do to kind of really like. So you talk about, obviously the baseline, right. We talk about kind of, okay, how do you actually, you know, support. What's your support programs like how do you expand that? The leadership, behaviors that would support. Right. And I would almost call that like what I took away from that is imagine how we can have people have an open mind. So stop judging an open heart where we can care for somebody struggling with substance disorder in the same way as somebody struggling from cancer. Open heart and open will, which is I actually want to not just feel sorry for you, but I want to think about everything in the situation, in the environment around you that might be contributing to this and thinking about how I might create an environment that is more supportive to help you make the choice and to help you go down the path of recovery.

Right, right.

Really open will, open heart, open mind together. But just leaders are not enough and just policies are not enough. So talk to me a little bit about what are some ways where we can really bring that approach, that openness through the culture where it is not just the leaders, but everybody who is aware and kind of really being more inclusive, being more supportive. How does that happen?

Sure. Well, I'm going to start with policies and then I'm going to expand because we're talking about it. Because what I thought about when you're talking is most companies tell me, yeah, that's our policy, but that's not actually how we handle things. We actually do get people support. So part of it is we'll make your policy reflect what you actually do. Right. Like, I mean, it doesn't make sense to have a policy in a handbook that doesn't reflect how you actually handle things. And there's ways to word policies that reflect what you actually do in addition to having, like, I'm not saying you can't. In the beginning of this initiative, people kept asking me, david, can we be a recovery friendly workplace if we terminate someone who's actively using? I'm like, of course, safety always comes first. And so when we talk about the total worker health approach. Right. So CDC trademark the term total worker health in 2011. NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, trademark this term is the integration of health and safety in the workplace so that we lead to well being. We talk about the three Ps in total worker health policies. We've had a good discussion on policies, practices and programs. Those all have to align. So practices are the conversations and the communications. And you're right, it's not just leaders because as you know, and having worked with a lot of large companies, the leader can say, this is what we're going to do. And the workers can say, this is what we need but the big missing piece is the middle, the whole middle, the supervisors, the middle management, because they're the ones that's ultimately responsible for getting the work done. So the gatekeepers and the guardrails is middleman. Is the middle always the middle. So they really need a lot of support, education and training. Because how am I going to get my job done and live by these core values of the organization? Right. If it feels like another thing that we're doing, it's going to be hard because everybody is tapped out with how much they're doing right now. Right. You brought up burnout and everything else. And so if recovery friendly becomes the next thing, people are just going to say, you know what? I don't have the bandwidth and the capacity to do the next thing.

What should I stop doing if you want me to do this?

Right. So how does it just become inclusive in our culture? So you're right. Most leaders are saying, yeah, we want to be recovery friendly. Most CEOs say we want to protect the health and safety of workers or we care about families. I've never had a C suite executive tell me I don't care about families or I don't care about people in recovery. Right there we're, we're human beings, we care. It's in the secret sauce. Is the middle.

Yes.

How do we make this happen? And that's through policy, practices and program. Right. Training, benefits, looking at work design, shift schedules. And if it's the case of construction, if all of our gatherings are at the brewery, what does that say about our culture as an industry? Right. Or even in the medical profession. I've worked with the healthcare sector a lot. A lot of the ways that nurses and doctors learn to celebrate and cope with stress is over. Bonding activities around alcohol. I keep coming back to that, but it's a really common celebratory activity in the U.S. but what we know is alcohol can lead to, for people that cope with a psychoactive substance, it can lead to other substance use and substance misuse as well.

Yeah, yeah. I think this the frozen middle or the overburdened, overstressed, underdeveloped middle. Right. That is for us the key for flourishing work. I'm like, stop doing training at the leaders and stop putting everything on the workers by giving mental health apps and meditation apps, et cetera. It's the middle that holds the key to whether your workplace is one where people can flourish and work and help them grow into their biggest potential, or work is something that is just a way to earn a paycheck to survive. And that's true here. Right. It is the middle that we've got to figure out a way to support and make this be the way things are done, rather than one more thing.

Right.

To think about and do. Right. So I love that. Tell me a story. You've been doing this work now for a while. Can you bring this work to life in terms of a story of an organization or an individual leader that as they kind of made the transition from what might not have been a recovery friendly workplace to one. What was the impact it had on the business, what was the impact it had on the people and what was the impact they had on the customers?

Yeah, well, we've been certifying businesses as recovery friendly only for like eight or nine months since January. Yeah. So actually the first stories I have are all business owners that were already in recovery, but maybe not talking about it and just said, this is how I run my company. I didn't know what I called it before, but I'm in recovery. I'm substance free myself. I want to support others in this journey because for a lot of us in recovery, service is a key component of how we just go about our daily lives. Right. And so the first couple stories, a restaurant in Denver, ODB's is a sandwich, small sandwich shop in Denver. I think they're up to like 40 or 50 employees. Two owners, Cara and Cliff, that are in recovery and 60 to 70% of their staff is in recovery at any given point in time. Right. So they have created a restaurant culture that still serves alcohol. Right. And still has chefs and people behind the house that have a lot of life experience with a variety of different things. But they said we're a welcoming place. We want more people to work here. We want to make sure that people feel supported in this environment. We're not going to center all of our get togethers and excitement and celebration around drinking or maybe using other substances. We want to create a different type of restaurant culture. So that's ODB's 50 or so team members in Denver. Growing organization to owners in recovery. And what it looks like for them is they're just willing to have conversations with people. Right. And they know that people have returned to use. I don't use the word relapse, I use return to use or recurrence of symptoms. And they just say that's okay. We know that that could happen. Here's how we're going to help and support you. We want you to get healthy, we want you to come back to work Right. This is important to us. You're part of our family. And they do use family as part of their description of their workplace. Another one is a plumbing company, absolute caulking and waterproofing. The Deering family is similar. They just wrap their arms around people and they've really created a culture in a construction and subcontractor environment where because they've done so many stand up safety talks and trainings about this topic, people are starting to raise their hand and say, you know what, maybe I can get some help or support here. Maybe I'm not going to lose my job. And we talk about another company, JHL Contractors, also in Denver, where an employee raised their hand and said, I think I need to go to treatment for opioids for heroin. And they said, they paused, they didn't freak out. And they said, okay, let's get you the help and support you need. And this person thought, when I get out of treatment, there's no way there's going to be a job for me. They were a great worker. And the company said, no, we want you to come back. We want you to get healthy and come back just like any other medical condition. And we want to grow. And so this person has now gotten multiple promotions in their workplace. And so those are two sort of smaller family owned businesses. JHL is a little bit bigger, but now we're working with the Attorney General's office, the Colorado Department of Law. We just issued a certificate to the Attorney General's Office, the Department of Law, and they're saying we could do things differently here too. We're a thousand people, or however many are at the Department of Law. The state of Colorado is even looking at some of what we do right and saying, well, we can shift a few things. We can look at how we celebrate, how we talk about things, what our policies say, and be more inclusive of individuals with this medical condition. So it's not just the small businesses. We started with a lot of small businesses and business owners because our roots are in small business engagement that were already doing the things and just getting acknowledgement for it. Us helping them a little bit further along the way. Now, eight months in, we're starting to get larger companies, school districts that want to do things differently. They know they may not be super supportive yet, but they're working with our centers on what are some small shifts we can do. And the last thing I want to mention is we have this story from it's another small business. For those of us in recovery, we know that payday can be A stressful day. Right. If you're always paid on Friday, I tell to people, Fridays is a really big time of year for the bars and for drug dealers and psychoactive substances. Friday is a big money maker in the psychoactive substance space. And so this company asked its team members, several of whom were in recovery, how can we help? And they were like, well, Friday's tough. I've always spent my money in a certain way, and there's some studies out of other countries, and they said, what if we just shift the payday to Tuesday or Wednesday? How would that feel? Like it's a little bit of an administrative burden. But what would we pay you on Tuesdays instead of Fridays? And the people who work there said, that would be amazing. On Tuesdays, I do budgeting. I go to the grocery store. I take care of my bills. I'm not even thinking about my old life and what I would do on Friday. And so this. We're looking for small nuggets like that of, well, let's just shift our payday schedule. And it made a humongous impact for this small business and the people that are working there.

Well, I think impact always starts with small things that have outsized impacts. Right. And we might not realize it, but they're really small. Like this Friday to Tuesday, I can think, you know, Friday is end of the day. I've got money, people. You know, in our society, people celebrate with alcohol. That's just become the norm. People reward themselves. I worked so hard. I'm going to reward.

Or cannabis.

Or cannabis or anything, you know, And. And the chances of that being celebrated that way on a Friday are way higher than Tuesday because I got to show up to work on Wednesday.

Totally.

Right. And I might even work a little bit late. And there are things going on with the family. So I think it's. I actually think it's brilliant.

I thought so too. And again, this came out of some of the research that I did. There was a study, I think, in India actually, of day laborers who got paid daily and some of whom had a substance. And the. The study sort of extended out to say, what if we pay you weekly instead of every day?

Right now you don't have money during the week.

Exactly.

Spend on that.

Right, exactly. So every day, some people were on the way home picking up whatever they were going to pick up or doing whatever they were going to do. So with financial education and training. Right. It's not just shifting because that can freak some people out. Right. Like, I'm used to getting paid every Day. And now you're saying I might get paid monthly at some point. Right. But the idea was let's extend it out, let's give you financial education and training so. So that you know how to budget, you know how to spend your money differently. And this study had like really solid impacts for people in terms of reducing their substance use and building a healthier life for them and their families.

I think it goes to that notion of open mind, open heart and open will. Open will is all tuning into what's around in our environment that is putting people in a way of harm.

Right.

And how can we make those changes? So I love this one. Are there other couple of months that stand out for you? That might be tiny shifts, David, that you've seen have outsized impact?

Yeah. Well, the non alcoholic beverages at events is a big one.

I think that's massive. That is so great. Why can't we have a mocktail and a cocktail, right. And have those options so people don't think. I mean, how often are women when they ask for a non alcoholic drink, the first question is, are you pregnant? No, you can choose not to be pregnant at right. You could choose to just have a drink which is not an alcoholic.

Right. Or for me, when I choose a diet Coke, I often get the question, well, why? Like the alcoholic beverage is free, you're here, it's expensive.

Normally on the menu, we're giving it to you.

Right? Like what? And I'm like, well, I don't drink at workplace events. I don't drink much, period. I've never been. For me, alcohol was never the issue, it was cannabis. But I'm like, my drink of choice is a diet cook. Why does that matter? And like, why are you even asking? Right. And right. With women, especially of childbearing age, the first question is, are you pregnant? Which the fact that our brain goes there is just so interesting to me.

Because we're so used to alcohol being a part of our life and I think this is really big. Go research alcohol. I'm not suggesting give up alcohol. I have more than my good share of drinks that I should. I would be a mild, definitely mild substance abuse candidates. Right. As. As a ticket go look at the effect of alcohol. I saw it and it shocked me. Alcohol is poisonous to the body. Alcohol is so poisonous that it actually, when you drink alcohol and there's sugar in your blood. I have diabetes. I wear a glucose monitor and I can see if I have alcohol, all the sugar gets shunted out of my blood. Why? Because the body needs to burn off alcohol before anything else and it'll do its best. So we know the effects of alcohol on our body even in small days. It is harmful, it is not good for us. And yet the amount of alcohol that we actually drink is so much. So I'm actually really grateful for companies like Athletic, for companies which are creating non alcoholic drinks and creating options today.

Right. There's a lot of options.

There's lots of options, right. So I think going back to, as we go into this holiday party, really think about how can we actually create a place where there are options for people and friends. People are looking for those options. People are becoming more aware. So you're just going to be helping people on the journey and opening that aperture for them.

And I'll say for those of us in recovery, you're also being a lot more inclusive all of a sudden. You open up health and well being and just normalizing for people that are choosing not to drink. So those are a couple easy ones. I feel like I often encourage people to. And this takes a mindset shift. But like even if someone shows up in the work site and they smell like cannabis or they're visibly impaired, slurring their speech, wobbling around, can you refrain from labeling them as a drug addict or as what even if it's happened multiple times? Because really, unless you see someone consuming the product, injecting themselves or drinking on the job, like your brain wants to put patterns together. Like you're saying, you're saying, well, this is David and he's got these characteristics and therefore he's addicted. Right. Or he's got a substance use disorder. So objectively, you know, just like we do with a lot of other things, we need to just say what do we see and document objectively. Just like in a safety sensitive situation, right. The accident happens or the incident happens, we have to document just the objects from an objectivity, no subjectivity. Okay. Is he able to do his job? Yes. No. Okay. If it's no, what are the things that are happening? Right. It's not. Maybe there is an odor, right. Or there was an odor outside or there was a syringe in the parking lot or whatever. You can document those things, but unless you see someone consuming the substance, you actually don't know what they did before they came into work. And so I just want to sort of level set and say you don't know. Even though your brain wants to say it knows, you actually don't unless you see someone. Right. And so let's document what, what the objective Facts are. And a lot of HR and safety professionals fully get that already. The rest of us want to label and that's where we get into stigma. Right. And so anti stigma campaigns is another thing. The more we talk about this subject and we've done a better job talking about mental health in this post Covid or whatever era of COVID we're in, people are talking more about anxiety and depression and mental health and isolation than ever before. So we want to just talk about this one as well. I'm glad you're doing this podcast. We have our website and companies are talking about supporting people in recovery. They're talking about substance use differently. And so one of it is just like, well, we talk about it, we don't hide it, we don't keep it in the dark. Leaders talk about it. Hopefully managers might be able to talk about it a little bit more. And it takes a culture where people feel comfortable, the psychological safety you mentioned, to say, if I bring this up, am I going to get supported? And that's the other small thing is if you have benefits and EAPs, and I know I mentioned this already, call them, try it, See what. And so instead of just saying, hey, David, I see you're struggling, here's the phone number for the eap. The background work is, and I've tried it, and here's what happens, or I'm willing to call it with you and let's see how it goes. Instead of just giving the person the phone number and saying, good luck, we have this benefit in place for you. That's more of just, you're on your own. That's the opposite of connection. Right. And Johann Hari chasing the Scream. You know, connection is the opposite of addiction. It's not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It's not abstinence, it's connection. It's helping someone, it's supporting someone.

Connection is the opposite of addiction. Addiction. Yeah. That's beautiful. And I think just on that point, David, I can see the impact of this going so much. So you talked about, let's take that moment, somebody comes and they might smell right. Of cannabis. What you're saying is, unless you've seen it, don't label them. But I think the labeling can go the same as I am angry or I feel anger. Let's go on that for a moment. If I can start to even one, not label, but actually talk about what they're struggling so that they are suffering from addiction versus they are an addict. Two very different things.

Correct? Yeah.

One, labels Even if that is the case, even if you saw them, right. We can go towards, they are struggling.

Right.

They can be struggling with something like cancer, we don't have that judgment.

Right.

But if they're struggling with substances, we immediately go, you must be weak.

Right.

Or there is something wrong with you or why can't you be right? So I think that also creates a bit of space and I think if next, if we can get people to go to opening our heart to what they must go through or what must be around them, I think that training people to be more compassionate, being more open hearted, yes, it'll help employees, but I think it'll help the businesses so much more. Because one, you don't lose great talent. But more importantly, once you start to see the world from a place of curiosity versus judgment and starting to ask questions that will show up, the way you engage with customers, customers who call you, who are irate, it'll show up in every walk of life. And I think you will just become a business that is really one sensing on so many dimensions. And taking that insight, the example of the studies you gave to take businesses in completely different places. Right?

Yeah.

Businesses don't in today's world win from top down direction. They come from multi sensory, from the fringes coming in. And by the way, these employees who you will support is what customers experience.

Right.

And that'll show up on an outsized impact on our customers experience it too.

Yeah. Well what you talked about in terms of the not labeling, that's a pretty common anticipation, anti stigma campaign. Right. And we've done this as a society we're getting better of like someone experiencing homelessness or someone who is unhoused rather than a homeless person.

Yes.

And it's the same. David is someone who has experienced cannabis use disorder. David's not a stoner anymore or like, you know, not an addict.

Yeah, all these labels. Yeah.

Right. And so person centered language is a pretty common training that we do and resource that we give. Like let's just. And that's part of this not labeling someone.

Right.

Because we're in Colorado. So the smell of cannabis is like everywhere all the time. Right. I mean it doesn't. So it's really hard to pinpoint exactly what's going on in these scenarios. So in that sense again you can only label what you objectively see and you're not going to hopefully label someone as. And you were talking about diabetes. Right. So you're a person who's experiencing type 2 diabetes or like a diabetic is A label that either you're comfortable with or not, but it's not one for me to give to you. If you choose to call yourself a diabetic, fine. Like I'll go with that. But I'm not gonna say that. I'm gonna say you're monitoring your glucose.

Absolutely.

You know, like you're just a person who's aware of their blood glucose levels. Right. And that's the same we want for any person who uses psychoactive substances as well.

Yeah. So just keeping an eye on time, leave us with what are some ways if people want to find and bring recovery friendly workplace initiative into their organizations? Yeah. Where should they go? How can they find you? Sure. And what would be the next step for them?

Yeah. I'm going to bring up one more easy thing and then I'm going to tell you how to find us. Which is part of any disaster response emergency preparedness program in the workplace should be having naloxone or Narcan in your first aid kit. Right. Just like you have a fire extinguisher on the wall or an AED in case of a heart attack, you should have Narcan or naloxone in your first aid kit to be prepared for an overdose emergency. And that's one of the things that we do with businesses. So the website is co like colorado recovery friendly workplace.com or.org corecoveryfriendlyworkplace.com that is the best way to get in touch with the program. There's a pledge. The first step that businesses take is say they're willing. They take a four part pledge and it's usually a decision maker at the organization like you did Ashish for the Happiness Squad, that you're willing to have a conversation about this, that you know where to find resources and you're going to refer your team members to resources when needed and that you're willing to work with the School of Public Health. So it looks like a, like a nonprofit or a program, but it's really all just backed by the Colorado School of Public Health, the Anschutz Medical campus and really the University of Colorado system. And yeah. Corecoveryfriendlyworkplace.com is the best.

Amazing. Well, David, listen, I'm grateful that we got a chance to meet now almost a couple of months ago.

Me too.

And your team. And I really hope that more and more workplaces really bring this thinking and this work into their workplaces and make it a core part of their programs, their practices and their policies rather than just policies Yep.

And everything's no cost. So you get to interact with academics and researchers because we know that this is the right thing to do.

Beautiful.

Yep.

Well, thank you, my friend.

Thanks.

Be well and have a great rest of your day.

I will. Thanks, you too. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Thank you for joining me on the flourishing edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share. Share it with someone who's ready to flourish, too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected for more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.