Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
This article is based on the recent Future of Work® Podcast episode Workplace Wellbeing Success with Bree Groff, Priya Rathod & Selena Rezvani. Click here to watch or listen.
For years, workplace conversations revolved around efficiency, output, and endurance. But as burnout, disengagement, and turnover continue to rise, leaders are confronting a deeper question: What actually makes work worth doing?
In our recent Future of Work® Podcast episode, three seasoned leaders — Bree Groff, Priya Rathod, and Selena Rezvani — offered a compelling answer. Drawing on decades of experience advising executives, designing people systems, and training global teams, they argue that meaning at work is a serious measurable advantage.
Their perspectives converge on a simple truth: when people feel energized, trusted, and able to show up as themselves, organizations perform better.
Joy as Infrastructure, Not a Secondary Thought
Bree Groff has spent her career inside complex organizations — guiding C-suite leaders at Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, and Hilton through large-scale change. As a workplace culture expert, former CEO of NOBL Collective, and Senior Advisor at SYPartners, she has seen firsthand how leadership beliefs shape daily experience.
Her premise is deceptively radical: work doesn’t have to be drudgery to be valuable.
Groff challenges the long-held notion that pain is inherent to productivity. People are paid, she argues, because they create value — not because work is miserable. Enjoyment is not only compatible with performance; it enhances it.
But joy, she’s clear, isn’t accidental. Power exists in organizations, and leaders set the conditions. Sustainable fun comes from structural choices — reasonable workloads, clear boundaries, and managers who model humanity.
When leadership fails to do that, Groff emphasizes that managers and individuals still have agency: building “cozy teams,” creating psychological safety, and even reclaiming small moments of joy in otherwise heavy days.
Her message reframes joy as infrastructure — something designed, maintained, and protected — not a distraction from “real work.”
Wellbeing Lives in the Day-to-Day
Priya Rathod brings a systems lens to wellbeing. With over 20 years across media, tech, and talent platforms — including CareerBuilder, Comcast, MTV Networks, and Indeed — she understands how organizational design shapes lived experience.
As Co-Chair of Indeed’s Parents & Caregivers Inclusion Resource Group, Rathod works at the intersection of equity, data, and people strategy. Her insight: most companies misunderstand wellbeing.
It’s not gym memberships. And it’s definitely not surface-level benefits layered onto broken cultures.
Instead, Rathod points to three core drivers that consistently matter most to employees:
- Feeling energized at work
- Feeling like they belong
- Trusting the people they work with
These drivers come from management practices — how leaders listen, how workloads are set, and whether companies actually measure what employees are experiencing. Rathod highlights the importance of real data: regular surveys, honest feedback loops, and leadership accountability for acting on what they learn.
Her contribution grounds wellbeing in systems, not sentiment — showing how inclusion and performance rise together when organizations pay attention to how work actually feels.
Confidence Is Built in the Room
Selena Rezvani focuses on where culture becomes visible: meetings, conversations, and moments of voice. A LinkedIn Top Voice, leadership speaker, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Quick Confidence, Rezvani has trained leaders at Microsoft, the World Bank, and Nestlé to build presence and trust.
Her authority comes from a blend of journalism, leadership coaching, and deep research into self-advocacy — especially for underrepresented voices.
Rezvani’s insight is practical and powerful: confidence and inclusion are shaped in ordinary moments, not grand initiatives. Meetings, she notes, are one of the biggest drains on energy — and one of the biggest opportunities to rebalance power.
By holding fewer meetings, inviting fewer people, and treating attention as precious, leaders signal respect. Once in the room, small choices like getting everyone speaking early, sharing airtime, rotating ownership of agenda items, and using round-robin questions dramatically change who feels seen and heard.
Her approach dismantles the idea that leaders must be the “main character.” Instead, effective leadership creates space for many voices, building trust and confidence at the same time.
The Throughline: Meaning Is a Leadership Choice
What unites Groff, Rathod, and Rezvani is clarity. Each shows that meaningful work doesn’t emerge from slogans or surface fixes. It comes from intentional leadership choices about power, systems, and daily behavior.
Joy, wellbeing, belonging, and confidence are the mechanisms through which people do their best work.
As organizations rethink the future of work, this conversation offers a roadmap: design for humanity, lead with trust, and remember that how people feel at work determines how well work gets done.
