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
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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