Wellbeing

In her pioneering work in 1999, Amy Edmondson identified the concept of Psychological Safety - a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.  She discovered that the best-functioning teams are the ones where people feel safe to speak up - to make mistakes, to own up, to share ideas and offer opinions.  Since then, organisations such as Google have done their own studies whose findings support this, showing that this one factor could make the biggest difference in how a team and an organisation performs.

Since the advent of email on our mobile devices work has gradually crept into more of our lives. One piece of research said the working day had increased by 27% up from 7.5 hours to 9.5 hours as we find ourselves adding email to every waking moment of travel and lunch.

Gremlins are the little voices that sabotage your efforts to succeed.  They tell you that you’re not good enough, you’ll never succeed, basically, they keep you on the safe path.  Today we are focusing specifically on how your Gremlins accompany you through your day.

If you’ve seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind” about John Nash, he struggled with paranoid schizophrenia.  As he started to learn to manage the disease, his gremlins no longer controlled him, but they walked alongside him about 50 feet away.  

For a long time I would ignore such questions as I wrongly concluded that they only applied to those who lacked some form of self-discipline but in reality, our ability to ‘manage’ what, for many, is a digital deluge is a challenge we all face whether young or old.

So you’re a Type A Professional? Of course!

1. You live for your job and you love the adrenaline rush that you get from being busy.
2. You feel more productive the more work you have.
3. You experience another level of mental clarity that comes from the hundred and one things you put on your plate.

Feel amazing, right? I hear you!

In recent times, more and more attention is given to the importance of mental health in the workplace. We now know what is at stake when we don’t create safe, sound working environments. In Australia, mental health compensation claims annually cost $145.9 million and the resulting absenteeism costs a further $4.7 billion.

I attended the most recent DisruptHR event in London, which always has the most amazing speakers, and was encouraged to hear the talk by Antony Sloan, HR Director of Legal.

Engaging employees is one of the most critical components of building successful businesses, yet how to achieve it remains elusive. Some approaches focus on the reasons for change and appeal to employees critical thinking. Yet without also incorporating a ‘why’ to change, that is the emotional connection to the work, employee engagement is less.

Recently we did a straw poll of delegates at the CIPD conference and the results showed that Wellbeing was the number one priority going forward for many organisations.