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We all want work to be a positive and engaging experience. The positive benefits of staff engagement and wellbeing are known even to managerial dinosaurs.
The rhetoric around workplace wellbeing is familiar. We are told the key to a happier workplace is to encourage self-care, or ‘working smarter not harder,’ or ‘work-life balance’. What Grinch could take issue with these motherhood statements; besides me?
One reason these notions remain popular is so few people try to actively implement them. If we did we would find they are often unworkable, poorly defined and lacking any evidence-base. Despite a proliferation of wellbeing research in recent years the prevailing orthodoxy languishes in the gap between the science of wellbeing and its practice. The organisational emperor, down to his athletic support, continues to promote wellbeing ideas that are untouched by human hands, or at least uniformed by evidence. Consider these familiar examples.
This is an excerpt from a presentation awarded the ‘best forum paper’ prize at the recent 2015 APS Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference in Melbourne.
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Prof Martin Seligman and Brad Desmond at the 2014 Fourth Australian Positive Psychology and Well-being Conference; convened the University of Melbourne.
Self-care
Caring and sharing types that we are we naturally encourage staff to practice ‘self-care.’ This sounds great until we try to make it work in practice. ‘Self-care’ conjures up images of some burnout worker struggling under a high workload or constant change- armed with little more than a bubble bath, a scented candle and a Himalayan Salt Lamp. No wonder most people’s idea of self-care is a vat of chardonnay.
Working smarter, not harder
It’s not enough that so many people are stressed at work. Now we’re telling people it’s their own fault for working stupidly; which of course would never explain our own stress.
Aside from being condescending, this message is mathematically unsound. Let’s assume working so much smarter you are done by 3.30pm. Will the organisation just let you kick back until stumps?
Unlikely. The fact is with new technology, software and outsourcing we are working smarter and harder. So while ‘working smarter’ may inform a discussion about productivity (a good thing) it is irrelevant to staff wellbeing (a vital thing).
Work life balance
Work/life balance is the intuitive idea that maximising leisure time will make us more resilient during work time.
Back in the real world, with smart phones and emails, people can be contacted anytime and anywhere. Some workplace agreements even allow the trading back of holidays; presumably to pay for the 4WD you’ll never be able to go away in.
Moreover if your work is making you unhappy no amount of golf will make Mondays any easier. Like the proverbial economist with one hand on the hot plate and the other in the freezer, you are not doing well on average.
Positive psychology at work
Beyond the popular platitudes what does the science actually say about building positive workplaces?
Positive Psychology is the evidence-based discipline that studies the conditions in which people and organisations flourish. It is the science of wellbeing; of going from good to great. Over the last 15 years this growing field, pioneered by Professor Martin Seligman (University of Pennsylvania), has developed an evidence based model for the active ingredients of wellbeing known as PERMA; Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment.
So how can PERMA improve workplaces?
Positive emotions
People thrive when they are happier. When mood becomes brighter we set higher goals and persist longer towards them. We experience less stress and fatigue, and show better team cooperation and problem solving.
So how do we make people happier?
Brains scans show when subjects are instructed to count their blessings there is increased activity in the part of the brain associated with happiness. So although it’s difficult to force feelings of happiness when we cultivate a ‘grateful mindset’ our happiness is dragged along for the ride, kicking and screaming in some cases.
Some organisations have adapted these ideas in innovative ways. For example, by listing ‘appreciations’ as a standing agenda item at the beginning of staff meetings individuals can be invited to nominate someone, or something for which they are grateful.
E.g., “My appreciation is for Sarah. Last week she stayed back to show me how to complete my spreadsheets and since then I’ve been finishing on time.”
E.g., “My appreciation is for Frank. He knows my father passed away last month and his support and understanding has made a real difference. Coming into work has actually been helpful for me.”
When people share gratitude like this there’s rarely a dry eye in the house and the impact on mood is lasting.
Engagement
The formula for building staff engagement is to maximise the extent to which people are using and applying their strengths. When individuals apply their strengths they experience higher wellbeing and job satisfaction (Littman-Ovadia and Steger, 2010) and are more likely to describe work as a calling (Harzer, & Ruch, 2012).
To identify a person’s strengths Professor Seligman’s team developed the VIA Inventory of Strengths, available on-line free of charge. This instrument takes about 40 minutes to complete and provides a list of the individual’s top strengths. Managers then have a shared vocabulary for discussing a person’s strengths with a view to negotiating more ways for the person to apply their strengths towards team goals.
With this approach staff performance reviews or performance plans are transformed into opportunities to build engagement; instead of the non evidence-based waste of time they frequently are now.
Relationships
Many organisations approach the challenge of staff retention as if it were some unknowable esoteric mystery. Some managers are more skilled at fluid retention than staff retention.
There are some difficult truths here. In their popular book “First Break all the Rules” Buckingham and Coffman conclude that how long an employee stays in their job and how productive they are while they remain there is determined by their relationship with their immediate supervisor. This may be the elephant in the boardroom for many organisations; people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers!
Given most staff retention initiatives are still aimed at workers not managers this is another example of the gap between the science and the practice of wellbeing.
Taking all this to another level Professor Seligman’s team has partnered with the largest leadership orientated organisation on the planet; the United States army. The result is a leadership development program designed to build resilience in 1.1 million frontline soldiers, administrative staff and civilian personnel (and their families).
So far this program has trained over ten thousand army Drill Sergeants in cognitive-behaviour skills and constructive communication techniques. For example, contrary to the Sergeant Carter stereotype on TV, Drill Sergeants are trained to catch subordinates doing something right and provide detailed and specific feedback about what they did right. Resilience factors are then measured across rates of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and suicide in combat troops.
Management can be a tough gig. But if Drill Sergeants can learn to build wellbeing in combat zones there are few excuses for those of us back in our air conditioned offices leading the charge towards Performance Indicators.
Meaning
Adam Grant, author and business school professor at Pennsylvania University, devised an innovative experiment into team productivity.
Working with call centre staff employed to canvass donations for university scholarship funds, he arranged for staff to meet with an actual beneficiary of a scholarship. The meeting was only five minutes long- just enough to ask some questions and put a face to a name.
This team went on to raise three times more money, and record consistently longer and more engaged conversations with potential donors, compared with a control group.
While there’s nothing wrong with taking staff off for a day of team building and rope climbing (plenty actually) when staff see how their efforts have a genuine impact on the lives of others even mundane work becomes more rewarding.
Accomplishment
Leaders can build achievement in their people by involving a person’s strengths in future discussions about organisational goals. Leaders can adopt a supportive, coaching approach by asking strengths based questions. For example…
- Tell me about a previous achievement of which you are genuinely proud. It may or may not be work related. A time when you really outdid yourself?
- Which top strength/s do you think helped you achieve this impressive outcome? Which talents did you demonstrate at the time? (The VIA is useful here).
- Given that particular strength/s has the track record of helping you at your best, how can you apply the same strength/s towards your next goal?
Coaching your staff can be as simple as taking an interest in their strengths and exploring more ways to apply them toward agreed goals or professional development challenges. Like so many other ideas emerging from Positive Psychology this is a genuine win-win.
Brad Desmond. MAPS.
Melbourne 2015.
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