Introducing Wellbeing Explained

Today we’re launching Wellbeing Explained, a digital home where we invite experts to answer the questions others won’t, bust myths, and go deeper into the wellbeing science. Be Well Co sits in a unique space between wellbeing research and wellbeing practice, and the gap between the two is much wider than it should be. What we kept hearing is that practitioners are constantly trying to sort what’s proven from what’s just popular, usually around everything else they’re responsible for, and usually without time to stay across the latest research and claims.

Why we built it

Wellbeing has never had more information in it. Everything says evidence-based. Studies get summarised until what people repeat isn’t what the research found, and good findings get stretched so far on the way to practice that the thing that made them work gets lost. Meanwhile the people making decisions about other people’s wellbeing, in HR, people and culture, psychology, coaching and workplace wellbeing roles, are usually the ones with the fullest workload and the least time to go back to the source. So we’ve built somewhere to work through that in the open, with a growing network of researchers and practitioners contributing.

Here’s what to expect

Articles

Substack continues to be the home of our longer-form work, and where we bring in the people we think are worth reading. Some of them you’ll already follow. Some of them publish quietly and deserve a much wider audience than they have. All of them are here because they’ll take a hard question seriously rather than reach for the tidy answer. The aim is to improve the quality of thinking and therefore practice in the wellbeing space, which means we’d rather explore a difficult topic than go with the status quo. We’re not interested in repeating familiar ideas. For practitioners, researchers, leaders, and anyone whose work involves thinking carefully about wellbeing.

Live sessions

Including A Happy Hour, our monthly Friday afternoon session where Joep van Agteren and Dr Matthew Iasiello sit down with a beer and talk honestly about what they’ve seen that month in the world of wellbeing. The chat is open to those who join the live, so we can hear what’s going on in your world of wellbeing too. Our next one hangout is on Friday 11 Sept, join us.

Community chats

The podcast

The video series, coming soon

Each episode takes a popular belief about wellbeing and puts it through the same process. First a fair hearing: where the idea came from and why it caught on. Then the evidence, the case for it, where it cracks, and what’s left standing, with experts brought in to help work through it. The verdict settles on ‘holds up’ or ‘doesn’t hold up’ wherever the evidence puts it. Season one puts workplace wellbeing on trial. Eight beliefs many have likely built your practice around, tested properly, one at a time. Each episode comes with a practical toolkit for those who want to take it direct into their practice.

A space for members

Substack members get access to all contributor pieces, podcast episodes and video series plus the practical toolkits you can use in your own practice. Includes worksheets, checklists, presentation templates and useful one pagers you can use with your team, your clients and yourself.

Better wellbeing practice starts with better conversations. We bring in the experts to answer the questions others won’t, bust myths, and go deeper into the science. Join us.