Sustainability Practices for 2022 - Health Care Team Well-Being Recommendations - Healthy E-mail, Meetings, Teams

Aug 29, 2026

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Sustainability Practices for 2022 outlines three core, no-cost well-being interventions recommended by the Office of Professional Wellbeing for health care workforces. The guidance addresses burnout driven by email, inefficient meeting practices, and breakdowns in trust and belonging. It provides actionable Healthy E-mail principles for leaders, including clear email hours, explicit turnaround expectations, reduced message volume, and strategies to limit anticipatory stress so teams can recover, refocus, and sustain engagement.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

WELL-BEING RECOMMENDATION 1: Healthy E-mail

Background

Healthy Email Guidelines

Expected turnaround response time for emails

Hours of operation for sending and responding to emails

Controlling volume of email

RECOMMENDATION 2: Healthy Meetings

RECOMMENDATION 3: Healthy Teams

Sustainability Practices for 2022 It’s two years into this pandemic, and many of us are looking for ways to sustain our wholeness and our dedication as health care workers. As institutional leaders, you have heard many ideas on how to support the resiliency and well-being of your teams. Some of these ideas have resonated, while others have seemed impractical, irrelevant, or unattainable. The Office of Professional Wellbeing (OPW) is recommending that you implement three sustainability practices-concrete steps-that if implemented widely, will support your workforce. These recommendations are considered basic, core well-being interventions. They are generally simple to implement and do not cost anything. They are based on newly released guidelines by the National Academy of Medicine and by other national well-being thought leaders. I want to thank my colleagues at USC Keck School of Medicine for generously allowing me to use their content and format to publicize these ideas. * Please refer to the following pages for details. If you or your team would like to consult with the wellness team for other ideas or for implementation, please [contact](contact OPW@salud.unm.edu)[ ](contact OPW@salud.unm.edu)[OPW@salud.unm.edu](contact OPW@salud.unm.edu) or [Elawrence@salud.unm.edu](Elawrence@salud.unm.edu). RECOMMENDATION 1 : Healthy E-mail. Consider how your team can reduce burnout and improve work-life boundaries by reducing overall volume of emails, making email hours of operation explicit, and role modeling through leadership. RECOMMENDATION 2 : Healthy Meetings. Consider how your team can reduce burnout and improve morale by increasing the effectiveness of meetings, reducing the overall number of meetings, and preserving meeting-free times for bigpicture thinking and flow state. RECOMMENDATION 3 : Healthy Teams. Consider how your team can reduce burnout and build trust, camaraderie, and positive feelings by implementing consistent practices of appreciation and belonging – based on everyone’s unique strengths rather than performance, per se. *Thanks to Dr. Chantal Young and her colleagues at Keck SOM. Email taskforce: Carmen Carillo, MSHRM, SHRM-CP, Debra Cuellar, MSHRM, SHRM-CP, Kevin Tang, and Lindsey Reeves, OTD, OTR/L, CEAS. Meetings taskforce: Dara Weintraub, MSW, Joyce Perez, and Suzanne Huynh. Appreciation and Recognition taskforce: Jeffrey I. Gold, PhD, Suzanne Huynh, Cortney Montgomery, Lindsey Morrison, and Elizabeth O’Toole. WELL-BEING RECOMMENDATION 1 : Healthy E-mail. Information for Leaders Background Email communication is a major contributor to burnout. In just a couple of decades, email has become the primary form of professional communication and it has taken over our school and work lives. Poor email boundaries have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work. Each UNM SOM department and division has their own unique “email culture.” Email culture refers to unwritten expectations regarding how many emails are sent, expected response time for emails, and hours of operation during which people are expected to respond to emails. The culture often develops organically over time and without intentional decisions by the group. When expectations are not made explicit, people often assume that they should mirror the email behavior of their leadership and/or be available via email during off-work hours. The “anticipatory stress” of feeling always ready to receive a work-or school-related email after hours, even if one never arrives, can lead to professional and personal distress. People who check emails at night, for example, report increased anxiety, decreased sleep quality, and lower relationship satisfaction. Use of blue light emitting devices at night has negative impacts on sleep routines and circadian rhythms. When we can take a true break from work email, we can adequately care for ourselves and return to work rejuvenated and motivated. Healthy Email Guidelines Here are

FAQs

What are the three sustainability practices recommended for 2022?

The recommendations are Healthy E-mail, Healthy Meetings, and Healthy Teams. Each is designed to reduce burnout and support resilience and well-being for health care teams.

How should email turnaround response times be managed?

During the regular work or school day, responses are expected within 24 hours and no sooner. If urgent same-day replies are needed, a phone call is recommended, or the email should clearly signal urgency in the subject and body.

What actions help reduce anticipatory stress from after-hours email?

Leaders should make email hours explicit, avoid expecting replies outside normal schedules, and use strategies such as drafting for later or delayed send. Reducing unnecessary after-hours expectations helps protect sleep and well-being.

Aug 29, 2026

Upload by Gloria