Peoplehood, a first-of-its-kind social wellness company created by the founders of SoulCycle, announced the launch of Peoplehood @Work. The @Work program consists of a series of facilitated, interactive team conversations, customized for each company’s specific culture, challenges, and team dynamics.

Strong workplace relationships are highly associated with workplace satisfaction, creativity, and productivity. By emphasizing the importance of transparency and empathy, Peoplehood @Work promotes greater collaboration, meaningful connections, and trust in the workplace. It offers companies a fun, easy, and accessible way to solidify healthy streams of communication, to ensure collaboration and maximum performance.

Companies ranging from seed-funded startups to Fortune 500 corporations including Glamsquad, Northwell Health, theSkimm’, Ever/Body, Bobbie, and more have already tested the program and noted improved results in employee engagement, communication, and team cohesion. “Peoplehood @Work allowed our team to feel more comfortable seeing each other not as coworkers, but as people”, said Gillian Glenn, Manager of Operations at the Emergency Department of Lenox Health Greenwich Village (Northwell Health). “I noticed team members opening up and checking in on each other more frequently after these sessions. It created a better environment in a busy, exhausting profession.”

Peoplehood @Work offers a variety of tailor-made experiences that can be completed in-person or virtually. Offsites and single sessions range from 60 minutes to half-days and are meant to boost social well-being through guided communication. Cultural transformation programs run for 3-12 months and are a more regular practice for teams looking to improve communication patterns and create long-term cultural change. With repetition, the programs help individuals replace deeply ingrained habits of interrupting and responding with advice or solutions with new relational habits such as deep listening, empathy, and asking questions.

Peoplehood’s first three programs include:

• The Watercooler: For teams who’d benefit from getting to know each other
• The Silo Buster: For teams to gain alignment across functions, departments, and roles
• Leadership Program: For managers and above to practice key leadership skills

69 percent of people say their managers have more of an impact on their mental health than their therapist or doctor and have an equal impact as their partner. According to the SHRM survey, 76 percent of U.S. workers who have close friends at work say it makes them more likely to remain with their employer.

In today’s post-pandemic workforce, employees communicate through screens, teams are siloed, and leaders are at a loss. Due to this, it is clear that quality social support and interaction among coworkers of all levels, regardless of location, are key to preventing chronic stress and workplace burnout. Peoplehood’s @Work program addresses these issues head-on by providing a space and format that allows colleagues to interact differently and shift perspectives through active listening and communicating.

“We need to prioritize intentional time with our teams. We schedule external Zoom meetings – but how often do we set aside 30-minutes to catch up with our own teammates?” said Julie Rice, co-founder of Peoplehood. “In an era marked by remote and hybrid work structures, many teams are made up of individuals who hardly ever get the chance to know each other as people. That’s why we created @Work – a solution to give companies the tools and the opportunities to interact and work together better.”