Lisa H's Story

Nowadays it can be hard to remain active or awake at work when staring at a computer all day. But for Lisa Hutchins, moving around and staying well is just a part of her job as Senior Auditor at OU.

Her main goal is creating a healthy work-life balance, which started about seven years ago when she began working out and doing more activities with her husband like writing together, cycling and going to local parks like Stoney Creek. Her husband used to do triathlons and even though he has retired from that, Hutchins has recently completed her first marathon in April.

“Another thing I do is I challenge myself. I have this motto to chase meaning, so find something that's important to you and go after it,” she says. “Keep it as a goal in the back of your head. And it's going to be hard. It might be stressful, hard to accomplish, but in the end it will be worth it.”

Of course everyone has their motivation, and for Hutchins it comes down to family and just generally feeling better with her healthy lifestyle. She feels more tired and lazy when she doesn’t exercise or stays active, so she is taking any chance she can to move.

“So staying healthy for them, taking care of others and then it all falls into balance with the work-life balance,” she says. “You're better at work. You're able to focus more when you're healthier.”

Looking at the work aspect of work-life balance, Hutchins takes advantage of her lunch break to utilize the Group X classes and be generally active during that time. Some classes include the cycle class, arms and abs but she also partakes in the webinars and uses the Rec Center routinely.

Her main thing with that is trying to get away from her desk, something she did not always do. Her boss sparked the change, going on his lunch break to do things like play racquetball, and now with the Rec being free for Hutchins she tries to use it as much as possible.

These programs are just part of what makes her feel so great at work, in addition to constantly learning new things and the variety of work that she does.

“I think that’s part of the well-being; keeping your mind going, learning new stuff. When we do audits they are never the same,” Hutchins says. “I'm all over campus meeting different people. There's nothing routine about the job, we never do the same thing over and over. So that I think makes my job very interesting and challenging.”