Flourishing at Work: Diane O’Connell’s Roadmap to Wellbeing Reinvention

For many, the goal is to fight the good fight, no matter their walk of life. But the battle hinges on one crucial thing: knowing what you’re fighting for. As a Wellbeing Reinvention Strategist and attorney, Diane O’Connell doesn’t just fight to promote mental wellness in the workplace; she coaches employers to understand the fight themselves.

Diane’s mission comes from her own personal journey. After being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder in 2018, she began to focus on why discussing mental illness is so stigmatized and how it affects diversity and inclusion in the workplace. She found that the available initiatives were generally inadequate, failing to address the core issue – that everyone needs to feel safe, valued, and like they belong.

With a wealth of experience as an international corporate attorney, arbitrator, mediator, and mental health coach, Diane is on a mission to remove the stigma holding people back from having those real and caring conversations, embracing individual uniqueness.

As the founder of Sorting It Out, a business bridging the gap between mental wellness needs and productivity, Diane discovered that organizations merely throwing resources like time and money at wellness initiatives do little to nurture true well-being. “It goes beyond having a meditation room or health insurance,” Diane emphasizes. “True well-being arises from a culture where each person feels valued, understood, and secure.”

Drawing from her experience in international business development and risk management, Diane takes a commercial and practical approach to workplace well-being, generating measurable results for businesses while making employees more productive and happy.

Diane asserts that cultivating an inclusive culture of well-being demands more than simply offering resources. Nurturing such an environment requires meticulous planning, patience, close attention, and active leadership involvement from the top down and the bottom up. When these two fronts converge, a fully formed, thriving wellness culture emerges.

Sorting It Out puts Diane’s holistic philosophy into practice, guiding companies to build cultures that prioritize both employee well-being and business performance. One of their key offerings, the Workplace Culture Audit, helps organizations cultivate a mindset that balances these two critical elements. However, their approach goes far beyond simply implementing wellness programs. Sorting It Out ensures organizations have the consistent resources and sustained commitment to make initiatives truly effective through continuous monitoring and adjustments.

Their customized Workshops and Training Sessions empower employees with practical strategies to manage workloads while navigating personal challenges like loneliness, caregiver duties, and other stressors that can impact mental health. Complementing this bottom-up approach is Leadership Coaching and Workplace Culture Audit, which focus on the top-down aspect of fostering a culture of well-being and psychological safety. These sessions guide employers to deepen their understanding of their employees’ unique needs, concerns, and struggles, while also enhancing their own self-awareness as leaders.

“Well-being isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” Diane says. “It demands a nuanced understanding of individual experiences and backgrounds.” Her goal is to bridge the gap between individual needs and productivity, creating a safe space for employees to be themselves without sacrificing performance.

At the core of Diane’s mission is a belief that organizations can unlock incredible potential by embracing what makes each team member unique. Rather than promoting an environment of unhealthy competition, her vision is to help companies foster cultures of connection, where high performance thrives through collaboration and understanding.

As a prominent advocate for mental well-being in the workplace, Diane is resolute in building a compelling business case that prioritizing psychological safety is not just an ethical choice, but a strategic imperative. By empowering leaders to create psychologically safe spaces, she aims to demonstrate the measurable impact it can have – reducing risk, boosting profitability, and delivering clear, reportable results that drive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) progress.

With a deep personal understanding of mental health challenges and their impact, Diane brings a transformative perspective to workplace well-being. Her clients have seen reduced attrition rates, fewer employee lawsuits, and cost savings on well-being benefits – tangible results that underscore the value of her reinvention strategies.

By removing the stigma surrounding mental health and fostering cultures of belonging, Diane O’Connell is paving the way for a world where businesses thrive through collaboration, not competition – a world of ethical, well-nurtured environments that ultimately contribute to a better society.

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