Heal The Workplace
We are learning more than ever about human longevity: how to extend not only our lifespan but also our healthspan. Yet we rarely ask the same question of organizations: What helps a workplace remain healthy, resilient and capable of thriving over the long term?
Heal The Workplace makes the case for taking organizational longevity as seriously as we increasingly take human longevity.
Published by Westland Business
The best workplaces do not ask people to sacrifice themselves to succeed.
The data tells a compelling story:
- In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined burnout as an occupational phenomenon
- According to a UKG 2024 Workforce Institute study, 82% employees, 86% managers and 73% C-Suite executives reported experiencing job burnout
- Glassdoor’s word of the year for 2025 for the workplace was ‘fatigue’
- According to an MIT study, toxic work culture is 10 times more powerful a predictor of attrition, compared to compensation.
Burnout, toxic cultures, chronic urgency, and performative wellbeing are often treated as separate workplace problems. Heal the Workplace examines the systems, leadership habits, and everyday choices that allow these conditions to take root — and the practical work required to change them.
Drawing on research, lived experience, and conversations with leaders, founders, employees, psychologists, researchers, and caregivers, the book explores how healthier organizations are built intentionally. Alongside difficult workplace realities, it shares stories of people and organizations choosing more sustainable ways to work.
- 01How can leaders recognize burnout before it becomes overwhelming?
- 02What causes workplace cultures to become toxic, and what does meaningful repair require?
- 03How can organizations replace chronic urgency with sustainable performance?
- 04What can new work models and AI teach us about redesigning work?
- 05How can wellbeing become part of everyday leadership rather than a standalone initiative?
Praise for Heal the Workplace
Daniel H. Pink#1 New York Times bestselling author of DRIVE and THE POWER OF REGRET
“For too long, we’ve treated burnout as a private failing. Kalpathi marshals the evidence to advance a more convincing explanation: Exhaustion is usually a signal from the environment, not a defect in the person. HEAL THE WORKPLACE is a human, rigorous guide to help organizations fix the mine instead of blaming the canary.”
Amy EdmondsonProfessor, Harvard Business School; Author of Right Kind of Wrong
“Heal The Workplace offers a guide to building healthier organizations, by blending compelling stories and research evidence. In a world struggling with burnout and apathy, author Subramanian Kalpathi offers a hopeful, practical roadmap for creating workplaces where people can thrive and do their best thinking.”
Dave UlrichRensis Likert Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan; Partner, the RBL Group
“What a fantastic book! Subbu has woven it with great care, bringing together logic, tools, stories, and action in a remarkably cohesive way. In particular, the RENEW framework offers hope for every employee, leader, and organization. Ideas come from research; tools from experience; actions from application; and impact from making this book personal.”
Vivek GambhirVenture Partner, Lightspeed India
“Before you add another meditation app, Friday yoga class or ‘wellness day’, pause on this question: why do so many workplaces create the stress they later try to fix? Heal The Workplace gets into the everyday machinery of work and shows how changing these can change the experience of work itself. The research is strong, the stories are compelling.”
Organizations choosing to build differently
Subramanian (Subbu) Kalpathi
Subramanian (Subbu) Kalpathi has spent close to two decades helping organizations grow by building stronger leaders, healthier cultures, and more effective talent systems. His experience spans learning and leadership development, talent strategy, employee engagement, employer branding, organizational development, and culture, across both consulting and industry.
As agentic AI begins to reshape jobs, organizations, and the very nature of work, he is increasingly focused on a challenge that sits at the heart of Heal the Workplace: How do we build organizations that endure and humans that flourish?
Conversations on the forces that shape how people experience work
Subbu Kalpathi talks with leading academics, researchers, authors, corporate leaders, consultants and subject matter experts on the topic of organizational culture. From harnessing the power of AI at work to innovations such as the 4-day workweek, Culture Matters will challenge the way you think about your people strategy for the new world of work.
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For speaking engagements, keynote invitations or book-related conversations, get in touch.
