Why Inner Work® is the ultimate retention strategy

By Kasey Hickey

September 2, 2019 - 4 min read

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Geographic impact on inner work activities

The world of work is changing at a dramatic pace for both employers and employees. To keep up, we must reimagine what the future of work looks like. But this reimagining exercise involves thinking outside the box and exploring how our experiences as human beings (and not just employees) affect our outlook, engagement in our work, and ability to innovate.

Recently, our team of researchers conducted a rigorous study, surveying a group of 3,000+ working individuals about their Inner Work® (defined as “mental acts or activities focused in your inner world to achieve a purpose or result”) and self-care habits.

BetterUp behavioral data scientist Andrew Reece, a Harvard PhD whose expertise lies in using machine learning and statistics to gain new insights into human psychology and decision-making, poured over hundreds of pages of research in organizational and behavioral science to come up with a framework for understanding what Inner Work® is and how it manifests across the American workforce.

We presented the findings from his research survey at Shift, our conference on the topic of reimagining meaning at work.

Our survey uncovered some fascinating insights, both from an individual and organizational perspective.

Geographic impact on Inner Work® activities

At a high level, we discovered that Inner Work® is dictated not only by who we are, but where we live. For example, we found out that:

The #1 Inner Work® activity in Alabama was prayer (3.06 prayer breaks per week)
The #1 Inner Work® activity in Hawaii was meditation (1.44 meditation breaks per week).
Idaho is #1 for walking (4.18 walking breaks per week).
Reading ranked #1 in Mississippi (3.13 reading breaks per week).
Journaling, is #1 in New Mexico (1.13 journaling breaks per week)

These findings were interesting, for sure, and had our team comparing notes on how we practice Inner Work®. But as it turned out, there were even more mind-blowing correlations between Inner Work® and both organizational and personal outcomes, including:

Inner Work® is positively correlated with subjective levels of happiness
Inner Work® breaks are positively correlated with employee promotions

Inner Work® is the ultimate retention strategy.

Alexi Robichaux, CEO and Co-founder, BetterUp

Not only is Inner Work® positively correlated with individual happiness and professional growth, but our team’s research has shown that it contributes to increased engagement and retention.

What does this mean to employers? Investing in people — as human beings — isn’t just something that sounds good. It has undeniable consequences on culture and the bottom line.

Check out all of our findings from this survey.

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Published September 2, 2019

Kasey Hickey

Kasey Hicks is a writer, content strategist, communications professional, and community builder. Above all else, she loves working with people to find the right words to tell a good story, regardless of the medium. Kasey received her B.A. in Sociology from UC San Diego.