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Say Hello to the CHO

Say Hello to the CHO

Last updated on: April 22, 2022 at 12:31 pm by Gleb Tsipursky

Say Hello to the CHO 2022-04-22T12:31:38-04:00 Gleb Tsipursky

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The pandemic has led to an undeniable awareness of the need for a new C-suite leader, the CHO or the Chief Health Officer. This has been driven by the recognition of the importance of employee health for engagement, productivity, and risk management, along with lowering healthcare insurance costs. At the same time, more and more employees are reporting growing mental and physical health challenges in these troubled times.

In the race to keep employees safe while keeping productivity and morale up, organizations are realizing that simply offering yoga and other wellness programs through Employee Assistance Programs won’t cut it. This awareness ushered in the need for a top executive whose sole focus is on optimizing employee health, physical and mental, for the sake of company bottom lines.

Thus; say hello to the Chief Health Officer, the new C-suite leader who is both captain and curator of an organization’s health policies. The CHO is in charge of dealing with the health of employees, both physical and mental.

If you enjoy video, here’s a videocast based on this blog:

And if you like audio, here’s a podcast based on the blog:

Or simply read onward!

The Need for a CHO Is at the Heart of Pandemic-Stricken Organizations

The emergence of the CHO is a response to the pressing need to address gaps in companies’ health management. While it is true that there has been a rise in workers’ mental and physical health issues in recent years, it is the pandemic that made chief health officers essential.

Although the pandemic has pushed the need for CHOs front and center, the role isn’t completely a new one. In fact, U of Michigan has had a CHO since 2017 while Google hired one in 2019. However, most companies were prompted by the pandemic to establish a CHO, such as Delta Airlines, Goodyear, and many others. Moreover, communities of CHOs are being established at the highest level, such as a new cross-industry community at the World Economic Forum.

Meanwhile, executive search firms are noticing that this is a new office. They have started sourcing for candidates for companies keen on hiring a CHO, particularly in the tech, financial, and manufacturing industries.

The Primacy of Health

The development of the role is a very concrete way of codifying and embodying the importance of health. Some use the term chief medical officer for the same role, although chief health officer is the main one being used for health.

The CHO puts a true focus on health as a basis for productivity, retention, recruitment, and risk management, the latter most strongly embodied by using best practices for a safe office return. Reporting directly to the CEO, CHOs work with other senior executives to develop and implement strategic policies that take care of employees’ overall health, as well as remote work guidelines and in-office safety. They’re also the executive in charge of mental well-being and helping employees avoid burnout.

As businesses continue to grapple with pandemic-driven challenges and seek to adjust to the changes it brings to the workplace, the CHO’s role will continue to evolve. Aside from focusing on basic health policies for workers – including safety measures such as improving air quality – the CHO’s domain will also encompass building a resilient workforce. This means holistically targeting recurring pain points such as stress, work-life imbalance, and mental well-being.

Organizations can also expect CHOs to do a deep dive on issues driving mental health problems. These include racism and gender discrimination – fundamentally harmful to employees and equally bad for business. The CHO will collaborate with the HR department in all of these pursuits.

We should celebrate companies finally starting to give mental and physical health the priority it deserves. Now, the question is how many resources will the CHO be able to command to help companies gain a competitive advantage in their most important resource: their people.

Conclusion

The pandemic has forced organizations to reconcile with the need for taking major steps towards employee health and satisfaction. As organizations settle into the new normal of remote work, many have started hiring a new C-suite leader, the Chief Health Officer. The CHO works alongside the HR and other senior executives ensuring all policies prioritize the mental and physical wellbeing of employees.

Key takeaway

The pandemic has taken a toll on employees’ mental and physical health.To address these issues, organizations have started hiring a Chief Health Officer to oversee the prioritization of health in all policies…> Click to tweet

Questions to Consider (please share your answers below)

How can your company benefit from hiring a CHO?
What measures did you take during the pandemic to ensure the health and well being of your remote working employees?
What resources will you equip your CHO with to maximize gains?

Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio

Originally Published at Disaster Avoidance Experts on December 21, 2021.

Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is a world-renowned thought leader in future-proofing, decision making, and cognitive bias risk management. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-proofing consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which specializes in helping forward-looking leaders avoid dangerous threats and missed opportunities. A best-selling author, he wrote Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019), The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020), and Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021). His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, and other languages. He was featured in over 550 articles and 450 interviews in prominent venues. These include Fortune, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, CBS News, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Time, Fast Company, and elsewhere. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for mid-size and large organizations ranging from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, including 7 as a professor at Ohio State University. You can contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, LinkedIn, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, and gain free access to his “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace” and his “Wise Decision Maker Course” with 8 video-based modules.

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About Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases, which devastate bottom lines and bring down high-flying careers. His expertise and passion is developing the most effective and profitable decision-making strategies, based on pragmatic business experience and cutting-edge behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, to empower leaders to avoid business disasters and maximize their bottom lines. You can learn more here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/glebtsipursky/ The bestselling author of several books, Dr. Tsipursky is best known for his national bestseller on avoiding disasters and achieving success in business and other life areas, The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide. His next book, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters, is forthcoming with Career Press in November 2019. It’s the first book to focus on cognitive biases in business leadership and reveal how leaders can overcome these dangerous judgment errors effectively. After that he’s publishing The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships with New Harbinger in April 2020, the first book to focus on cognitive biases in professional and personal relationships and illustrate how we can defeat these dangerous judgment errors in our relationships. See more information here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/author-page/ Dr. Tsipursky’s cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 400 articles he published and over 350 interviews he gave to popular venues that include Fast Company, CBS News, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Conversation, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inc. Magazine, and many others, as you can see here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/media/ Dr. Tsipursky's expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training for businesses and nonprofits. He serves as the CEO of the boutique consulting, coaching, and training firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, which uses a proprietary methodology based on groundbreaking research to help leaders and organizations maximize their bottom lines by addressing potential threats, seizing unexpected opportunities, and resolving persistent personnel problems. His clients include Aflac, Balance Employment Assistance Provider, Edison Welding Institute, Fifth Third Bank, Honda, IBM, International Coaches Federation, Ohio Hospitals Association, National Association of Women Business Owners, Sentinel Real Estate, The Society for Human Resource Management, RealManage, The Columbus Foundation, Vistage, Wells Fargo, the World Wildlife Fund, and over a hundred others who achieve outstanding client results. You can learn more about that here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/about Dr. Tsipursky also has a strong research and teaching background in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience with over 15 years in academia, including 7 years as a professor at the Ohio State University and before that a Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications include journals such as Behavior and Social Issues, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. His civic service includes over 4 years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Intentional Insights, an educational nonprofit advocating for research-based decision-making in all life areas. He also co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge, a civic project to promote truthfulness and integrity for individual professionals and leaders in the same way that the Better Business Bureau serves as a commitment for businesses. He serves on the Advisory Board of Canonical Debate Lab and Planet Purpose, and is on the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal Behavior and Social Issues. A highly in-demand international speaker, Dr. Tsipursky has over two decades of professional speaking experience across North America, Europe, and Australia. He gets top marks from audiences for his highly facilitative, interactive, and humor-filled speaking style and the way he thoroughly customizes speeches for diverse audiences. Meeting planners describe Dr. Tsipursky as "very relatable," as "a snap to work with," and as someone who "does everything that you would want a speaker to do." Drawing on best practices in adult learning, his programs address the wide spectrum of diverse learning styles, as attested by enthusiastic client testimonials and references. He regularly shares the stage with prominent leaders, for example recently speaking on a roundtable panel with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Elhadj As Sy, Chancellor of Austria Brigitte Bierlein, CEO of Penguin Random House Markus Dohle, and billionaire philanthropist and Chair of the Bertelsmann Management Company Liz Mohn. You can learn more about his speaking and see videos here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/speaking/ Dr. Tsipursky earned his PhD in the History of Behavioral Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, his M.A. at Harvard University in 2004, and his B.A. at New York University in 2002. He lives in and travels from Columbus, OH. In his free time, he enjoys tennis, hiking, and playing with his two cats, and most importantly, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid disasters in his personal life. Learn more about him at https://DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/GlebTsipursky, contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky and Twitter @gleb_tsipursky. Most importantly, help yourself avoid disasters and maximize success, and get a free copy of the “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace,” by signing up for his free Wise Decision Maker Course at https:// DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/Subscribe You can read more about the author here.

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