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Workplace Well-Being

Workplace Well-Being focuses on helping you bring your best self to work and supporting a positive, healthy and productive workplace culture.

We help employees and students be the best they can be at home and at work/school.  We aim to provide services and supports to help individuals avoid work-life conflict which contributes to one's overall well-being. A critical element of that goal involves encouraging a safe and supportive culture at work which honors your values, goals, and multiple identities allowing for successful employee engagement, productivity, creativity, and well-being.  

Workplace well-being is any combination of holistic workplace characteristics that support healthy behavior in the workplace, improve health outcomes, and strengthen workplace culture. Workplace wellness practices have been proven to aid in recruiting and retaining highly skilled employees. Practices that support workplace wellness help reduce health risks, enhance productivity, improve employees’ quality of life and happiness levels, benefit the organization’s bottom line, and help the organization recruit and retain top talent (Proto, 2016; Society for Human Resource Management, n.d.).

Workplace culture can be framed as, “The personality of an organization from the employee perspective” (Siu, 2014). More specifically, it is the environment and atmosphere that employees work in, combining the leadership, beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors, and interactions within the workplace. A positive workplace culture successfully creates a space where employees feel comfortable, trusted, valued, and empowered in their work. An organization’s culture is interwoven into everything they do, stand for, and how they treat their employees (Siu, 2014).

Please visit the Healthy UC Davis page for ALL things well-being at UC Davis for staff, students and faculty (particularly if you are looking for more traditional "wellness"-focused activities, services and programming such as exercise, mindfulness, nutrition, etc).  The site has a search function and events calendar and is a repository for all things well-being coming from the many different units and departments providing services across the Davis and Health campuses.

Workplace well-being and culture encompass every topic from physical and mental health to teambuilding, aspects of the work environment, and beyond.  See some of the WorkLife programming to enhance your work culture and experience below:


  • Cheers for Peers
  • Everyone has a co-worker who does their job in such a way that you are able to do your job more effectively. You know who I’m talking about, the people who always have the answers (or will help you find out), are there for you when you need them, and have a knack for making a cloudy day a little brighter.  Find some tangible ways to cheer a peer.
    Link
  • Plan for Vacation Month & the Importance of Checking out
  • Excessive work without periods of recuperation and opportunities to engage in rewarding activities can lead to burnout or the development of mental health disorders. Our ability to respond to challenges, stay on task, and control our emotions and behaviors can be replenished with rest. We need the positive emotions we naturally feel from taking even brief vacations and engaging in fun and meaningful activities.  Learn how (and why) to Plan for Vacations.
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  • Gunrock Goes
  • Throughout the year we collect and post submitted photos of Gunrock (which you can purchase at the giftshop) joining you on your travels. We want to see you and our buddy Gunrock having fun (or at least creating a great story) riding trains, volunteering at a sanctuary, taking in a Van Gough, enjoying an epic road trip, climbing Kilimanjaro, exploring cities, hiking in the woods, reading at the beach. Whatever you do to refresh - just share your experience with Gunrock and your UC Davis family
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  • Schedule a WorkLife on the Road for your group
  • We would love to visit your team/group/unit and conduct a personalized presentation based upon your team needs and challenges.  We examine the underlying concepts of work-life conflict, explore the myth of "work-life balance," and offer an integrated perspective and pragmatic approach to addressing the oft-competing responsibilities of work and life. We discuss both organizational and personal tools to establish a work-life strategy.  Specifically we address the stress cycle, motivation, values vs. time prioritization, self care and compassion, boundaries, strengths, gratitude and start exploring ways to empower ourselves in negotiating our personal work-life strategy. 
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  • Sign up to receive Monthly Happenings & Quarterly Newsletters from WorkLife
  • Our monthly happenings chronologically lists carefully curated events on campus and across the area to help support your social, environmental, occupational, physical, financial, and mental well-being. Free or low-cost family fun, tours, celebrations, exhibitions, events, groups etc. are listed each month with links for you to learn more and register.

    Our quarterly newsletters focus on worklife and well-being science and topics to help you bring your best self to work. We also have a did-you-know section of cool UC Davis stuff and perks, and highlight campus programming and services you may have missed.

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