Weeks after leaving her eponymous news website tolaunch a corporate wellness service called Thrive, AriannaHuffington has hired former New York Times and Google executivesfor the new venture, aiming to teach companiesto "treat the whole human being."

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As it enters the crowded workplace wellness industry, withits quit-smoking incentives and step challenges, Thriveintends to go beyond the usual offerings to focus on "themental aspects of our lives, what's happening in ourheads," Huffington said in an interview.

"This is all something that you bring to work," she added.

Huffington spent more than a decade running the Huffington Post,which she founded in 2005, but over the years her interestshifted from news to the pursuit of elusive work-life balance. Inthe last two years, she has published two books — Thrive: TheThird Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life ofWell-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder andthe nap-at-work manifesto The Sleep Revolution— full of theories she's now spinning into her newbusiness. Last month,she announced she was leaving her namesakesite to pursue her latest venture.

Thrive will officially launch Nov. 30, Huffington said. Inthe meantime, the company is staffing up: Rajiv Pant, aformer chief technology officer at the New York Times,has come on as CTO, and Kathryn Friedrich, who spent thebetter part of a decade at Google and YouTube, will join nextmonth as chief marketing officer.

Both said Huffington's plea for a more humanework-life balance drew them tothe organization. "I was truly stressed out. This is somethingI personally connected with," said Pant. "If you look at my tweets,they're about behavior, getting enough sleep. This is the rightcompany."

Friedrich thinks Thrive can create a more positive work-lifeexperience than even Google, considered an Eden of workplaceculture. "Google tries to create a good existence for theiremployees. They do a fantastic job," she said. "The one thing thatmight be missing that Arianna wants to bring to the table aremetrics. It's one thing to put all the offerings out there. It’sanother thing to measure the success of those things." (Googleis known for studying its company culture'seffects on employees' productivity and happiness.)

At its core, Thrive is a corporate wellness consultancy:Companies pay Thrive-trained coaches to bestow health andwellness tips on their overworked and underperforming staffs. Theycan opt for online courses or in-person trainings, withsessions ranging from a couple of hours tosix weeks. Huffington said that the consulting firmAccenture has already piloted trainings and that JPMorganChase has also signed on for a partnership.

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In addition to its courses, Thrive will also have a mediaarm, as Bloomberg reported inJune. Huffington has previously said Thrive is not a mediacompany but said in an interview that it will have "aconsumer platform attached to the corporate platform that will beconstantly reinforcing our message." Much like the HuffingtonPost, the site will rely on big names, like athletes andexperts, for its content. It will alsosell wellness-related products like pillows and foodsupplements, and Huffington hopes it willeventually become a discussion platform open to thepublic — something the company is working on with Medium, shesaid.

The sell? All of this, in theory, services Thrive'sclients' bottom lines.

But with its entry into the corporate wellnessindustry, which market research firm IBISWorld valuesat $6 billion, Thrive is competing within analready crowded space. And Huffington — whochampions digital detoxing, office napping and actuallyunplugging on vacation — is not alone in pushing mindfulness oncompanies. Many other wellness companies address both body andmind, too, offering office fitness alongside meditation.(Here's justone example.)

Corporate wellness budgets have ballooned ascompanies try to curb health insurance costs, since ahealthier workforce means lower insurance costs and higherproductivity. But a much-cited RAND Corporation studyhas called manysuch wellness offerings into question, finding that for allthe money poured into them, they save little on health care: Forevery $1 spent on "lifestyle management" programs — like smokingcessation and weight-loss initiatives — companies savedjust 50 cents, the study found.

Huffington is confident Thrive's holistic approach willyield better results for both clients and workers,saying the Rand study "really didn't address things likestress and burnout." Thrive, she said, will rely only on"evidence-based" methods for its courses; it has hired Adam Grant,a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, tostudy its work with Accenture.

"As we get more evidence, we will be adopting and adjustingeverything we are doing," said Huffington. Maybe napping at theoffice only works during certain times of day? Or maybe meetingsare actually better when everyone has a cell phone?

For now, in its own SoHo offices, Thrive plans to practicewhat it preaches. Meetings will be device-free. ("We havebeautiful notebooks," said Huffington.) And, yes, there willbe a place to nap.

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