An interview with Alan Newton, co-founder, and COO of Eventopedia

Organizational Health and Wellbeing for Assistants is starting a new year. We want to keep sharing with you tips on how to implement Wellbeing Movements in your workplaces. Organizations need to take better care of their people, but first, each one of us needs to take better care of our physical and mental health. Research shows, according to the article 22 Well-Being In the Workplace Initiatives that you Can Start Today, that promoting wellbeing initiatives in the workplace:

1. Increases productivity and motivation – healthy employees can physically perform better because they have more energy. They are also more efficient and more focused.
2. Brings teams together and builds morale - when teams engage in wellness initiatives together outside and inside work they have a shared purpose which builds camaraderie.
3. Decreases work-related stress - Fitness and healthy eating can reduce stress. And if a company can implement mindfulness and meditation this will also help people reduce stress.

This interview with Alan Newton, co-founder, and COO of is about individual choices, balance, combating mental health issues, boosting a wellbeing culture and finding time to take breaks. I call it The Balance Movement.

Organizations need to take an active and positive role in creating an environment promoting health and wellbeing for their employees. Healthy employees will bring their best to work, which means a healthy organization.

JULIA: Why organizational health and wellbeing is so relevant?

ALAN: It’s so relevant because organizations can play a pivotal role, especially considering we spend – on average – one-third of our lives at work. I’ve witnessed how organizations can have a negative impact on someone’s health & wellbeing with long-term and lasting damage. No job is worth that and through a purely business perspective of an organization, it can have impacts on productivity and profitability, so organizations need to take an active and positive role in creating an environment promoting health and for their employees. Healthy employees will bring their best to work, which means a healthy organization. Ultimately though, it’s the right thing to do.

JULIA: Creating a life that matters encompasses a range of elements, such as physical, emotional, financial, social, career, community, environmental, creative, and even spiritual dimensions. How can we ensure that all these elements are creating a life that matters?

ALAN: Balance is the key word here. Many of the elements outlined come down to individual choices and self-determination, so individuals should be free to choose which elements they wish to explore and to find the right balance for their individual goals & objectives, which will – ultimately – change at difficult points in their lives. From an organizational point of view, this means a liberal rather than authoritarian approach to how the business functions. This is a balancing act, as the needs of the business may often encroach on individual freedoms, but organizations that have a conscious understanding of where the borders are between business and personal lives, and create a business environment that allows individuals enough freedom and opportunity to create lives that matter whilst benefiting overall business performance, will ultimately be a key component in terms of enabling broader well-being and greater fulfilment of individual purpose.

In a world increasingly driven by software and algorithms, there is an obvious and inherent danger of us creating a more disconnected and dystopian world, characterized by greater isolation.

JULIA: In your article COMBATING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, you emphasize the importance for human beings of belonging to a community for optimal mental health. You also mention the prejudice of being disconnected and the rise of loneliness. Do you think technological, social and working changes are making us isolated?

ALAN: I think it can be dangerous to generalize too broadly as every situation is different, but is – again – In a world increasingly driven by software and algorithms, there is an obvious and inherent danger of us creating a more disconnected and dystopian world, characterized by greater isolation, but causation is likely to be more complex and deep-rooted. Over the festive period, I spent time with a number of friends who have children and common feedback on “the youth of today” is that they are losing the ability to communicate. “There can be twenty kids at a party and they’re all communicating with each other via their mobile devices rather than having face-to-face conversations”, one friend mused. If you think about it, this isn’t a new phenomenon, as I’ve experienced office environments whereby the of an office hides behind email communication rather than having a simple face-to-face conversation. I believe it has a negative impact on productivity in the workplace, and think it will have an impact on social relationships in the long-term, but there’s no specific science or studies behind this belief, it’s purely based on what I’ve experienced. If you consider how technology has allowed more people to work from home creating distributed (virtual) teams, this can create difficulties in fostering team spirit and potentially lead to individuals feeling isolated. However, this also allows individuals to be closer to friends and family, achieving a better work-life balance and the strengthening of close relationships that are genuinely important to us all. So, there are clearly different ways of looking at the issues, and understanding correlation and causation in terms of isolation is critical.

JULIA: We shall make workplace wellness more than a single program. The primary goal for those who want to build workplace wellness that works and lasts is that everyone in the organization is living and breathing wellness. Do you have any guidelines on how organizations can infuse wellbeing through career-boosting?

ALAN: 3 key elements include:

1. Create a common and shared purpose
2. Encourage a culture that expresses gratitude
3. Respect others by learning how to listen

Some resources organizations can encourage for career-boosting include:

• LinkedIn’s Learning portal, which features provides practical how-to courses and soft skills in bite-sized format by a broad range of industry insiders.
• MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), which have gone some way to revolutionizing access to education. They can be a little hit and miss but there is a wide range of career orientated content from the world’s leading but does require more time commitment to complete courses.

JULIA: Do you have a particular wellbeing activity that Assistants should focus on? Explain why and give five concrete tips on how to initiate the in our workplaces.

ALAN: We have so many distractions today and spend a large proportion of our working days answering emails, fielding calls and completing tasks at all hours of the day and night. This almost constant influx of notifications and communication can make our minds very busy, which can have an impact on our ability to focus and – indeed - memory.

1. Implement a daily period of quiet, a short period of 10 minutes of meditation or reflection – this can help you manage anxiety and stress.
2. Ensure you will be free of distractions and try to schedule a similar time of day to get away from distractions to clear your mind of all the clutter – it takes practice and you need to be committed to doing it to create a habit
3. Consider introducing a group activity to enable you to carve out a regular 10-minutes in your day for quiet – involving others in activities increases the likelihood that you will commit and create a habit. And, in a busy and frenetic workplace, it could be difficult to find a quiet space, so a group commitment can allow you to find a suitable space and time
4. Utilize your schedule breaks to get away from distractions and clear your mind – taking breaks every few hours to clear your mind can have a positive impact on productivity
5. Consider downloading a meditation App to track your progress

Thank you, Alan, for sharing relevant tips. I like your suggestion about introducing a group activity in the workplace to enable regular 10-minute break for quiet moments.

Let’s make a difference.

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This interview, The Balance Movement, was first published on the blog site Organizational Health and Wellbeing for Assistants

About Alan Newton: He is co-founder and COO of Eventopedia. An Executive MBA graduate of Hult International Business School in London, Alan spent 15 years in senior operational, commercial, supply chain & procurement roles within leading EMEA event agencies, serving on multiple hotel advisory boards, before co-founding in April 2014. Eventopedia is a leading cloud-based venue search platform & demand generation tool for the global meeting & events industry, whose mission is to optimise industry efficiency. www.eventopedia.com

You can follow Alan on Tweeter @AlanRNewton

About Julia Schmidt: She is an award-winning Executive Assistant, writer, mentor, and public speaker. She currently works at Basefarm AS in Oslo, Norway. She assists the Chairman of the Board, the CEO and the CFO. Julia is National Chairman at IMA - International Management Assistants in Norway and has published many articles on LinkedIn and Eventopedia’s blog The Proud PA. She is an active networker and has created the hashtag #BeTheBestAssistant. Julia is a proud graduate of University of Norway with a MasterDegree in Portuguese Language and Literature. She has also studied Business Administration. Julia has been promoting organizational health and wellbeing among administrative professionals. She has been speaking at conferences, interviewing assistants and experts, and publishing articles about the subject. Julia has also created a website dedicated exclusively to sharing organizational wellbeing tips, successful stories, and articles www.facebook.com/organizational.health.wellbeing.for.assistants/