Weekly Wellness With Sukie

By Guimel DeCarvalho

Director of People & Culture and Chief Diversity Officer

Earlier this month, we welcomed our new Coordinator of Wellness and Benefits, Sukie Bansal-Roberts, to our People and Culture team. Sukie joined us at the right time as there is no greater need for wellness strategies than now as we all try to live, work, and take care of our children and families during a global pandemic. Wayside was focusing on enhancing our culture of wellness well before the pandemic; encouraging employees to disconnect from email on the weekends, giving staff an extra day off around the holidays and introducing new programs to help our employees achieve work-life balance. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about wellness and how to best support our employees so much so that it’s part of our next Strategic Plan.

Sukie’s background is a perfect fit – before coming to Wayside, she worked as a curriculum developer and trainer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Over the last 20 years she’s become an expert in mental and physical wellness. Sukie’s philosophy is that to be healthy, all eight dimensions of a person’s life (emotional, environment, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, spiritual) must be considered.

We recognize that in order to bring their best selves to work and the world, our employees need to feel emotionally and physically supported. With Sukie’s help, our staff will focus on career wellness goals, emotional and spiritual health and physical well-being.

Sukie is also making wellness fun and accessible. Every week, she invites our 500 staff to join “Fridays With Sukie” via virtual Microsoft Teams meetings where she explores different wellness themes. This month she covered meditation, mindfulness, self-care and raising your vibration or your energy level to achieve clarity, peace, perspective, connection and sense of purpose.

We are feeling better already.