“The role of the employer is expanding,” said Matt Legere, the SVP of employee benefits consulting at brokerage firm Brown & Brown Insurance. “You have to be relevant to what employees are talking about and what they’re stressed out about at their kitchen table. Are you as an employer offering something that’s relevant in those moments?”

At From Day One’s Manhattan conference on building a culture for workers and companies to thrive in times of change, Legere and his colleagues in employee wellness gathered to discuss how employers can use company culture to demonstrate their commitment to well-being. Crucial to success, the group agreed, are making well-being a centerpiece, respecting individual boundaries, and localizing policies and benefits to the people who use them.

Make Well-Being an Ordinary Topic of Conversation

“We’re humans, we’re all at work, and we’re here to be productive, of course, but our humanity doesn’t leave us just because we get to our desk,” said Morgan Bass Roper, director of inclusion and belonging at financial services firm BNY Mellon.

Leaders must set this example openly and consistently. Some companies are making mental health and personal wellness a centerpiece for discussion, hoping to make it an ordinary part of the employee experience. BNY Mellon invited Maeve Duvally, author of Maeve Rising: Coming Out Trans in Corporate America, for a fireside chat with the company’s corporate affairs chief.

“They had a conversation around authenticity in the workplace, allyship in the workplace, and about the coming-out journey. But in particular, they talked about Maeve’s mental health journey and how the resources and the allyship she received allowed her to feel comfortable to come out at work,” Bass Roper said. “Bringing Maeve to our company–a financial services company that’s been around for over 200 years–sends a message to folks who were listening to that, that ‘Maybe I can feel comfortable sharing a little bit more of myself and my journey, because it’s being put on this big stage at work.”

Set the Example for Work-Life Balance

Nobody but you can draw the line for world-life balance, says Chuck Abramo, the VP of human resources at hospitality company Delaware North. “Make sure you understand where your boundary is, both on the professional side and the personal side. Be able to say, ‘This is where I need to close the laptop today.’” It’s imperative that leaders do this in full view of their teams.

Abramo says that he might prefer working late at night, which some might perceive as an imbalance. However, this approach enables him to work more flexibly. “I think that flexibility, and knowing that I can do that without somebody looking at me sideways, is incredibly important. Creating that culture is key. You could never put a dollar amount on it, I could never get X amount of comp at a different organization to replace that flexibility.”

Alyson Watson, founder and CEO of employee healthcare platform Modern Health, sets aside time in the work day for therapy and coaching sessions, and every evening carves out an extra hour or so to spend with her son–absolutely no work interruptions allowed.

Everyone will balance the portions of their life differently, and the balance will certainly shift over time. For Watson, whose position puts her on call at all hours, wellness and high-performance are not mutually exclusive. “A lot of life is sacrifice. There may be moments in my life where I need to prioritize my family, and maybe the way I show up at work slips a little bit. Sometimes it’s the opposite, and I’m really focused on work because we’re raising around a funding or we’re launching a big new client,” she said. “I think there’s a world where we can do both: We can take care of ourselves, prioritize our mental health, prioritize our physical health, and support people to reach their potential.”

Localizing Well-Being for All Workers

Just as work-life balance is best judged by the individual, so are the benefits workers use to achieve that equilibrium. That’s why HR leaders must commit to soliciting employee feedback and taking advice with an open mind. “We don’t know what they need until we ask them,” said Legere.

He’s become quite keen on localizing wellness benefits and policies too. “You can look at your plan from a wellness perspective, physical, emotional, financial, and social,” Legere said. “But you can’t apply broad-based philosophies to every single location.”

Legere pays close attention to communication and language. There’s little value in providing benefits and policy information to a predominantly Spanish-speaking workforce only in English, for instance. “Do they feel valued if we can’t communicate something that’s really complex in a way that they can understand?”

In order for everyone to uphold a culture of well-being, and reinforce it consistently, Abramo says it begins as soon as workers walk in the door. “As HR leaders, we have defined it in our values so that we can tell people as we’re bringing them on board, so that we can take this to the other side and say, ‘Hold people accountable to those values.’”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.