Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently
Asked Questions
Gain Some Clarity
You’ve asked and we’ve listened. Check out our answers to some of the most commonly asked questions we recieve.
How is Living Well connected to Texas A&M? Under which department does Living Well operate?
Living Well reports to the Division of Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness. We are affiliated with Texas A&M University and partner with organizations all over the campus community.
Is Living Well just for full-time university employees?
Living Well’s funding is based on full-time, benefits-eligible headcount – which is why we tailor our programming and digital presence first and foremost to full-time, Texas A&M staff, faculty, and retirees.
We also know that being exclusive doesn’t support the well-being for anyone. If you sit next to people in your office who are participating in Living Well events, we want you to come too. The Texas A&M community will be stronger for it.
If you have recently retired or are about to, feel free to continue participating in our offerings. Although you will no longer receive our weekly campus emails, check our app and socials for event details and news. Regardless of your status, please do register for events. Our calendar and registration system helps us track participation, and greater participation leads to more funding, which in turn allows more and more people access to Living Well.
Help! I haven’t received an app email or link to your program!
We want to ensure you can attend our programs as seamlessly as possible and appreciate your patience as we work through changes. We encourage you to register in advance to inquire if necessary about program information details before it starts.
If you haven’t gotten a confirmation email from us after registering, please try the following:
- Visit the MindBody (our app’s developer) help page to learn how to resend a confirmation email to yourself.
- Make sure you are enabled to receive communications by checking the setting on the app: Sign in on our web interface and under the ‘My Info’ tab, make sure the boxes are checked to hear from us. If already checked, please unmark and remark the desired boxes for your communication preferences.
- Double-check to make sure they haven’t gone to your spam/junk folders and check your Blocked Senders list and remove our new email address if necessary.
- Add LivingWellatTexasAM856524@mindbodyonline.com and confirm@mindbodyonline.com to your contact list to reduce the chances of their email provider marking MINDBODY content as spam in the future.
- Phone app users, uninstall and reinstall the Living Well app on your mobile device.
After testing the above steps, please try canceling and re-enrolling for the desired class to test if the issue is resolved and if a new confirmation email comes through. If you are still having trouble:
- Please send an email to livingwell@tamu.edu with your name, email used with our app, and program name(s) you registered for. We will check with our app software host to see if you’ve been added to their bounce list or if you have a duplicate account. This may take a week to resolve and appreciate your patience as we diligently work with IT for resolutions.
- In the meantime, try registering via our mobile app for reminders/notifications via your phone. Make sure that you allow notifications in your phone settings and app settings: Click the 3 dots/More button in the app. Under Settings, chose the time interval for “Calendar Reminder” you prefer. Under Permissions, enable “Allow access to calendar”).
Please note: If you are messaging us about a Zoom link or physical location of a program/event right before the program or after it has started, it is hard for our small team to respond as we are hosting the programming.
Texas A&M IT has updated its DMARC compliance requirements and there’s no way to know beyond the above steps why some confirmation emails go through and others don’t.
We deeply appreciate your support and patience in achieving a resolution. Thank you for your participation and for letting us know of these issues in advance.
Can I get a recording of this program?
We don’t record all of our programming. In addition to the vulnerability that certain events and exercise & movement classes hold space for, the quality of recordings are not that great, some of the information shared during programming is confidential, we partner with and/or hire on and off-campus partners to facilitate live and want to have live participation to make it worth their while. We also don’t have the staff to produce them or bandwidth to send recordings to participants post-program due to the volume of hosted programs, and we like to encourage participation in real-time. Attending our events as they happen allows for connections to grow, a deeper focus on the subject matter, and possibly even bringing the program back in future semesters.
However, we have begun adding recordings of select exercise & movement classes to our YouTube channel. Check it out and be sure to like and subscribe!
Can Living Well set up a table or come talk to our team?
Due to the small size of our team, we do not always have the bandwidth to attend all requested tabling or speaking events. We ask that you reach out to us with which unit/dept/office you are in, how many people will be in attendance, and a minimum of 4 weeks in advance notice so that we can work to schedule a representative from our team to support your request.
We are more than happy to send you a PowerPoint slide to add to any presentations and files to handouts that can be used at your event. You can contact us at livingwell@tamu.edu to obtain.
I sent you a message, when will you respond?
Our email and social media inboxes are checked periodically Monday – Friday from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm. We’re happy to help and aim to get back to you within a day during business hours.
What can I do if classes don’t fit my schedule or my supervisor won’t sign off for me to attend?
We do our best to provide a wide array of offerings at various times, and at different locations all over campus. View our calendar here.
At the end of the day, our mission is to serve the largest number of staff and faculty possible. Class participation numbers are perhaps the number one consideration when we are weighing whether or not to continue offering certain classes. If you love a certain class, you can help to make sure it stays on the schedule by recruiting as many friends and colleagues as possible to attend with you.
We are happy to provide you with information on Wellness Release Time and tips for having conversations about wellness release time with your manager, but ultimately supervisors have the final say in when and how wellness release time is used.
Are departments obligated to allow employees wellness leave? Or is this a benefit to the employee?
Wellness Release Time (WRT) and wellness programs are comprehensive worksite health promotion initiatives designed to help employees grow and thrive by focusing on overall wellness and work/life integration through healthy living, community, and personal interest programs. These voluntary wellness and release time programs are designed to improve overall wellbeing, encourage employees to adopt healthy behaviors and positive lifestyles, improve job performance, increase engagement, and work satisfaction to reduce health care expenditures and insurance premiums. Wellness programs create a culture of self-betterment that benefits the university at all levels.
It is intended to be used in a manner that best meets the needs of the individual employee while still meeting the needs of the office. We encourage employees to be creative and flexible in the implementation of WRT in a manner that works best for them and their employees/supervisors (in a manner that promotes a culture of trust between a supervisor and employee rather than fear of abuse). All full-time, benefits-eligible employees are allowed to participate in wellness programs without requiring the use of personal leave time or Wellness Release Time.
Do I need the app to participate in classes and events?
Registration for classes and events will only be available through our app either by phone or web interface which is super cool and easy to use. Find our app by searching “Living Well at Texas A&M” in Google Play or the App Store.
What are peer groups? How do I start one?
Peer groups (formerly known as personal interest groups) are a place for people with similar interests, hobbies, and experiences to come together for support and community. If you’d like to start a peer group, we’re happy to help coordinate space and promotion. Please email us at livingwell@tamu.edu with the group’s purpose, desired meeting times, and location (virtual or in-person).
How can I get more involved with Living Well?
Living Well is a for us, by us model. Our programming is better when employees are involved in its inception and execution, and our community is stronger when more people have a seat at the table. We recruit ambassadors as part of our Well Leader Initiative by providing unit-level support and advocacy for wellness and engagement in your workspaces. Please email us at livingwell@tamu.edu with your ideas for events, groups to help us get started, or information on people or resources we should know about on campus.
How is this program going to benefit me or my work life?
What you get out of Living Well is ultimately up to you. Like most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it.
We know that wellness isn’t just about physical activity. What else does it involve?
The three words that encapsulate holistic wellness for us at Living Well are: thrive, connect, and grow.
Living Well at Texas A&M University is about shared experiences, rooted in helping our employees grow and thrive together. It’s more than a program name. Living Well is a call to action that is more important now than ever: to find our own balance by embracing work/life integration. To ignite inspiration. Embrace compassion. Living Well is supporting one another as a family, finding joy – or maybe even a new friend.
While fitness is an important vehicle for all of these things, it is not the only factor in what makes people and communities live well.
Can you give us resources for X, Y, or Z? What do you offer for mental health?
We don’t have a “library” or catalog of resources to share, but you can check out our Wellness Resources page for available help with life changes and challenges including benefits available to all employees.
Living Well looks at yearly claims data to address the needs and issues facing employees. Claims addressing mental health have skyrocketed since the pandemic. 95% of Living Well programming can be tied back to mental health. From Community Supported Agriculture Shares to Financial Counseling to clubs around common interests, and everything in between, we aim to target wellness as a whole to meet your needs.
We would love for you to encourage staff and faculty in your department to participate in our programming. Feel free to reference our app (search “Living Well Texas AM” in the App Store or Google Play) or visit our website here and plan to attend together or on your own.
The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) (ComPysch Guidance Resources) offers 5 complimentary counseling sessions to employees for each issue. We also partner with the EAP program to offer frequent webinars every semester on a variety of topics related to stress and anxiety that a lot of employees are facing. These sessions take place most Mondays from 10:00am – 11:00am. All other details can be found on our app.
If you want to have your own EAP program for your team, you can contact us (livingwell@tamu.edu) and we can connect you to our EAP contact. Please note some of these programs comes with a charge that your department would be responsible for.
If your department is looking to plan some of your own programming (similar to Living Well programming), we’d be happy to provide contact information and refer you to vendors/partners we have worked with. Of course, any expenses incurred would need to come from your department.
Here is a list of additional resources available to staff and faculty:
Texas A&M Mental Health Employee Resources
Counseling & Psychological Services: 979-845-4427
Counseling and Assessment Clinic: 979-595-1770
TAMU Psychology Clinic: 979-845-8017
HelpLine: 979-845-2700
What are the top three wellness tips for someone just starting?
Start small and be consistent. Drinking enough water, moving your body for 20 minutes, taking five minutes for quiet time, or self-care (whatever that means for you). Doing this every day has a much more significant impact than any big goal you tackle sporadically.
Do something that makes you feel good. There is a big difference between tackling hard things that bring you joy and punishing yourself and your body.
Find your groove and meet those who like to groove similar to how you do. Support on any journey is critical.
What are some tips for anyone who realized a long time ago that wellness equals balance?
Balance is a myth. The way we live and work needs to evolve. Across campus, we are departmentalized. At home, our life becomes compartmentalized. Even when we’re constantly connected by technology, we’re disconnected from each other.
Just thinking about trying to balance all of those disparate parts feels overwhelming. Most of us want to be more connected. To be recognized for who we are, not just what we do. And that is about integration, not balance.
Integration can feel messy, but Living Well is here to help.
When is Staff Appreciation Week? Is it coming back?
Staff appreciation week was discontinued as a standalone event in 2020 in response to feedback from employees and supervisors who said that having a designated week of campus-wide activities made it difficult for numerous staff to participate. The intention was to expand staff appreciation to a full calendar of activities that would happen year-round with Living Well taking the lead in this effort. Living Well maintains a robust slate of activities and outreach throughout this year, however, budget reductions prevent us from hosting a large-scale effort like the former staff appreciation week.
We encourage supervisors and units to host events and other forms of recognition throughout the year. For some ideas on how to show recognition for your team, check out this list.
Why do you hand out cookies – isn’t that the opposite of wellness?
Being able to fully enjoy a cookie once in a while is an opportunity to practice making room for things that bring you joy, with no guilt, apologizing, or feelings of failure.
Plus, Living Well is in the business of creating community first and foremost. If we make a genuine connection with you over a cookie, the likelihood that you will join us for programming around healthy food, fitness, or just for fun is infinitely greater. So whether you come to enjoy a cookie or come for a friendly conversation, we look forward to seeing you!
Can I opt-out of receiving your emails?
We send out two types of emails via campus-wide and our app. How do you know which is which? At the bottom of our app emails, you will see “Powered by mindbody business”.
Campus-wide: Our emails are sent to all employees to make them aware of the benefits and services offered to them as an employee of the university. Our email distribution list is pulled from the payroll system to ensure that all current employees are notified. We are not able to alter this distribution list.
If you are receiving Living Well emails to your Texas A&M email address, please note that our emails are sent once per week and there is no option to unsubscribe from this list.
If you are receiving Living Well emails in an email address other than your Texas A&M email, please follow the steps below to check what email you have listed in Workday for campus emails:
- Log-in to Workday at https://sso.tamus.edu/, click on your profile, under your photo, go to Contact > Edit > Scroll down to WORK CONTACT INFORMATION
- To the far right of your Work email address you’ll see a pencil icon, click that THEN update the email AND click the SUBMIT button at the bottom of the page to save your edit. In that same contact area, you’ll see the other emails you have listed for contact information.
App: We try to limit our app emails to just the important stuff like exclusive giveaways and news before it is announced anywhere else. This version of emails from us is the only one that you can unsubscribe from. There are two ways to unsubscribe:
- Scroll to the bottom of an app-communicated email. Between our contact information and the “Powered by mindbody business” stamp, there’s a sentence that reads “No longer want these emails? Unsubscribe”. Click the hyperlinked unsubscribe text in blue and complete the steps.
- Log-in to our app on your desktop. Under the My Info tab, you’ll see your Profile section. Click the Edit pencil or text to alter your information in the Personal section. Unselect the email option under News and promos. Click Save.
- NOTE: Do not disable the email options for Your account or Reminders and schedule changes as you will not receive emails regarding your account like password resets or booking confirmations.