How To Build Resilient And Thriving Teams

Wellbeing At Work is an essential read for leaders who want to create a thriving and resilient workplace culture. Doing so is critical when you consider Gallup’s research of a few years ago that found that one-third of Americans have shown signs of clinical anxiety or depression.

To strengthen wellbeing in the workplace the book provides leaders various solutions, including a new metric to track suffering, struggling, and thriving — Gallup Net Thriving.

In addition, the book covers:

The five elements of wellbeing: career, social, financial, physical, community.
Why career wellbeing is the foundation of the best possible life.
How net thriving teams can improve businesses, neighborhoods, and governments.
Why wellbeing initiatives work substantially better when people have great managers who engage them in their work first and establish trust.
Why the fastest road to net thriving is playing to each individual’s strengths.

“As workplaces around the world face the challenges of an increasingly remote workforce perhaps forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic, it has never been more important to measure and expand wellbeing in organizations,” explain the book authors Jim Clifton and Jim Harter.

The authors further share that most people spend one-third or more of their waking time working. Gallup’s analytics and academic research show that there is a reciprocal relationship between work and life overall—that is, people take their work experience home and their home experience to work. “Organizations demand a person’s full energy at work. It is in both the individual’s and the organization’s best interest for people to thrive in all aspects of their life,” say Clifton and Harter.

“The quality of an employee’s work experience has three times the impact on their overall wellbeing as the number of hours they work,” report the authors.

Other Gallup findings from its 100 million global interviews across 160 countries to measure wellbeing in the daily lives of more than 98% of the world’s population are:

By increasing the ratio of employees who know what is expected of them from one in two to eight in 10, organizations can realize a 22% reduction in turnover, a 29% reduction in safety incidents and a 10% increase in productivity.

Thriving employees have 53% fewer missed days due to health issues. Suffering and struggling employees have substantially higher disease burden due to diagnoses of depression and anxiety, among others. This translates into big differences in productivity.

Thriving individuals are 20% more likely to have thriving team members. Peers have a major influence because they can measure and compare their struggles and successes.

Actively disengaged workers will change jobs for almost any raise, while the majority of engaged workers would require more than a 20% raise to leave their current company.

Taking all this into consideration, it is vitally important for organizations to focus on career wellbeing of their employees. That includes taking these actions:

Make sure everyone in your organization knows their strengths.
Remove abusive managers.
Upskill managers to move from boss to coach.
Make wellbeing part of career development conversations.

Other recommendations for leaders include:

Publicly recognize your team’s most productive partnerships.
Ask coworkers to share their health strategies and successes. People will connect naturally as they learn more about each other’s processes and goals.
Ensure managers give frequent and meaningful feedback. The combination of autonomy and meaningful feedback is the magic formula that produces the greatest benefit.
Use community volunteering as employee socializing time. Encourage employees to work together on shared community goals.

“Create regular opportunities for employees to get to know one another through work. Then let human nature prevail,” say Clifton and Harter.

Jim Clifton

Jim Harter

Finally, leaders should encourage their employees ask their team members these five questions:

Of all the things you do well I your job, which ones do you do best?
If you could make one change for the better, what would it be?
How does our work fulfill our purpose as a team?
How will your work today fulfill your purpose?
What parts of your role give you the most energy?

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me a copy of the book.

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