Sober Not Somber Hour

Hey all. Welcome to Sober Non somber hour with your host here, Jen Parale and my dog Copper. He's going to be probably likely, you know, chiming in in the backdrop. His sober beverage of choice is water. Kind of boring if you ask me. But yeah, we are here to talk about sober, not somber. So the idea that you not drinking alcohol could be fun. Your life could be enriched. Hey, get to the root. Rachel, nice to see you. Today I'm going to be highlighting because I always do non alcoholic beverage of choice that I am enjoying.

Yes, Copper. And so today we have Utopia Borealis and this is called UV well and it's nature's maple ale. Hey, Speak Wonder. I always like to just, you know, crack it open when we're live here and then allow you to see how delicious. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. Puppy wants, Puppy wants to say hi. Yeah, yeah, you gotta say too. Well, it was a little, a little bit of a gamble having him here today. Let's see if he likes you. Be well. So yeah, usually at happy hour time of the day, so 4 o' clock when I'm weekly checking in is usually when I'm about done with my day.

Sometimes I'll log in and do more work in the evening. In fact a lot of times I will and it's just a nice break in the day. And for today's share, I wanted to ask if we, if y' all consider what you are feeling at the end of the workday. We were in an HR session with HR leaders today talking about the impact of alcohol in on employee well being in the workplace. And oh my gosh, you guys, sad to say, it's still a thing. So the conversation with these HR professionals and I would, I'd be curious, oh, the name of the beverage.

Speak Wonder, Utopia Borealis. It's called Ub well, UB Soda. It's actually a maker from Esco, Minnesota. So northern Minnesota. They have their own farm up there and they produce and make everything organically. So I love it. And this one happens to have says clean plant based And I believe 50 calories for this serving size. It's delicious. I should take a pause, have a drink. So the conversation in workplace is still that leadership HR are not necessarily. Although there are advocates that want to address how alcohol shows up in the workplace resoundingly, it is not something that corporate wants to necessarily take a stance on.

Corporations don't want to say we are a dry campus, we are alcohol free. We host our events without alcohol. It still is not very common. Not very common. In trying to have corporate America acknowledge that there is a great need to offer non alcoholic beverages alongside of those alcoholic beverages served at conferences. And we now know that like 38% of the American population identify as mindful drinkers. Which means, you know, they're not necessarily not drinking, but they are making choices and more often than not choosing not to drink, especially at work functions.

So, you know, how should HR and leadership respond to this? It simply is integrating non alcoholic options at their events. So anyway, many of you have heard me talk about this endlessly as I'm trying to make an impact. But I would ask you to chime in. Does alcohol, is alcohol centered in your workplace or in your workplace culture? Some of you might be entrepreneurs. I know myself, I am, and I love it because I'm a culture of one. I can choose to opt out of things if I don't want to socialize at an event that has alcohol.

But some of us don't have a choice. Especially if an employer believes, and leadership believes that they need to ply their employees with alcohol in order to get them to show up and socialize and connect. One of the stats, and I'll leave this little nugget here with you, is that the impression is that people in recovery are those suffering from alcoholism are, you know, going away to treatment or getting help on their own, when in reality one in three employees are dealing not necessarily even with their own substance use disorder, but someone in their family, a loved one, a friend, is affected by substance use disorder or alcohol misuse.

And that's a significant number when you think of people bringing that heaviness into the workplace every day. And alcohol as we know is the root cause, the coping mechanism for the root cause of anxiety and all these other things that happen in our lives. So the conversation today with 17 HR leaders, you guys, it was crazy. And I would consider these individuals in their organizations who are non alcoholic advocates and want to see culture change for the positive, but are not able to necessarily do that on their own through their own means as a person of one in a massive organization.

So we bonded together to try to start having some of these more in depth conversations and making a case for why it should be addressed more. Actually, Luke Wendland of Cadre is on my board. So really, really wonderful to have Luke's insight from the mental health perspective because as we know, mental health and addiction are just inextricably, they're just intertwined. They're so closely intertwined, it's hard to separate them out in a lot of cases in the workplace speak. Wonder says retired now.

But my workplace definitely did not have alcohol available at functions a government entity. Well, there you go. So we are finding that there are cultures that for whatever reason, don't have alcohol. In fact, there was one of the stories shared in our group. One of their clients is based out of Utah and the Mormon population, for religious reasons, just never has alcohol. And so it was interesting to talk about what might a culture that doesn't have alcohol ever look like? And might we show that productivity increases?

Employee, worker, co worker relationships are healthier. People are just healthier in general. So I have to say there are definitely models that we can look to that show the advantages of not having alcohol centered the workplace. And apparently copper agrees 100%. Oh my gosh, you guys, I'm so sorry. I thought he would be a good little pup, but he is pretty handsome. He was just groomed the other day. Aren't you? You're just the cutest. But that does not give him the excuse to just whine through my whole share with you guys.

I'm sorry, but thanks for tuning in. And yeah, I do want to, especially if you're listening after, to just comment. How does it show up in your workplace on a scale of 1 to 10, is it an issue? Where do you. Where do you feel like your workplace kind of falls when it. When it. When thinking about how, you know, alcohol is centered events and things. I know the workplace I left 12 years ago. 5 in terms of centralization of alcohol. So. So hopefully in the near future, in the next two months, I'll be developing what's called a cultural readiness worksheet and process for corporations to go through to assess where they might be on the scale of shifting their corporate culture to the positive and starting to do away with alcohol.

Yeah, Copper is great. Well, thanks everyone. And it's four o' clock. But as we know with nonalcoholic, we can have these beverages any time of the day. So I'll give you a little na Cheers with my ub well, and Copper and I are wishing you well. Have a great evening. Oh, goodness.