We’re delighted to feature this guest post by Madeleine Evans, who will be speaking at Workplace Trends: Towards a New Era of Work and Workplace, in London on 15 October 2019. For details on her presentation, “Mental health and productivity in work culture”, fellow speakers, attendees, and how to register, visit the conference page here.
Exhaustion, burnout, chronic stress, frustration, and dis-engagement impact 60% of workers, differentially women, those in high-pressure services jobs, and in high-demand low-resource industries. According to data collected from Levell’s proprietary survey of 2,000 UK and European workers together with Streetbees, as well as insights from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s Emotion Revolution in the Workplace dataset – these mental and emotional health barriers are significantly correlated with lower life satisfaction, lower job satisfaction, and greater intention to leave.
In an interview for MadWorld, Dr Shaun Davis, global director of safety, health, wellbeing and sustainability, Royal Mail Group, explained the importance of culture and conversation – and internal forums – in creating a healthy and sustainable population. Another leader to mention is Andy Croxford, in the government’s Environment Agency, who facilitated a shift in social norms and expectations around mental health by creating space for employees to build an inter-departmental network that enabled greater peer-to-peer support.
Individual conversations about mental health in the workplace, and strategies to break the taboos around mental health issues, are gaining traction. Employees are beginning to get the psychological and physical opportunity to exchange information about their wellbeing, mental and emotional health, and life satisfaction alongside or in tandem to conversations about work performance. This is a fantastic shift.
Over the next five years, the leading companies will go further. Frontier companies will build on the opportunities afforded by today’s movement for greater mental health awareness, combined with a refreshed attention to diversity and inclusiveness, to make comprehensive workforce organisation, work environment, and process changes.
These changes are – and will be – triggered by a new level emotional honesty and self-reflection by C-level leaders and reinforced by the increasingly obvious desire of employees (particularly Millennial women) to have more inclusive, psychologically satisfying, and emotionally rich experiences at work.
These are the questions that will be asked in the C-suite:
In response, this is the question that will be asked by mission-driven technologists, wellbeing and mental health activists, and social innovators:
This is the question I set out to answer, together with Dr. Julia Moeller, specialist in emotion and motivation in the workplace, Yale affiliate and our lead Research Adviser at Levell.
Research gives us statistics on incidence, as well as frameworks for finding a solution. At Levell, we’ve done a comprehensive review of academic literature to create an integrated model of the links between engagement, performance, retention, and burnout, and overlaid this with the framework proposed by the Mayo Clinic – developed after 20 years of research – for defining and operationalising organisational wellbeing.
Here are the components.
At the first level, we look for four critical feelings, which we call wellbeing signals – mood, stress, energy, motivation – that link to key components of engagement, performance, burnout, and mental and emotional health.
Why are these signals important?
We all know stress is fundamentally linked to performance (see the Lazarus & Folkman model). Stress also links to creativity (we like this meta-analysis), which impacts strategic and innovative performance over the long term. Energy is required for delivering on work product, but it is also a primary sub-component of engagement, as made clear by the widely-accepted component model of engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) in academic literature today. The state of being motivated is effectively the state of engagement – but is differentiated in practice by a sense of drive and desire rather than just the capacity to act. Mood – let’s call it positive or negative valence, as well as arousal – can be a signal of emotional energy as well as satisfaction or frustration with work.
Beneath these signals lie wellbeing and performance drivers, which can be split into four factors.
At the heart, is the balance of demands vs. resources that individual experience on a daily basis, along with their values and motivational alignment to their situation at work. Over time, the balance of demands and resources should be viewed from the lens of stress vs. recovery, and person-work alignment needs to be evaluated to see if it is translating into meeting individual needs.
Beneath this lie, individual habits, their work and life environment, and workplace culture.
These factors influence the presence or perception of demands vs. resources, and the likelihood of alignment of a person’s values and motivations with their situation at work.
Given the nature of these interlinkages, the next obvious solution is to integrate wellbeing directly into the management process and make it a cornerstone of workplace culture.
Companies can apply these insights from occupational and applied psychology, and the science of stress and performance, in a strategic roadmap for making integrated changes.
Here are the steps.
1. Deep individual awareness.
Frontier companies will help their leaders, and all their employees, accelerate the process of self-awareness through a consistent and structured process of self-observation and self-reflection on wellbeing and performance drivers, as well as blockers or enabling factors from habits or culture.
2. Structured communication.
To optimise joint performance, companies will need to consistently gather about how where and when their employees are struggling with their wellbeing or facing blockers. To overcome the trust barrier, companies need a bottom-up “need to know” process that enables individuals to share data on personal status (relevant to performance), alongside information on common blockers or ideas for improvement, up to leaders in the company or their teams.
3. Coordinated changes.
Exhaustion, frustration, and burnout – and on the flip side, wellbeing – are driven by factors that are individual-specific, company-specific, and/or a result of an interaction between the individual and their environment. To address this problem, frontier companies will empower their employees with clear sets of expectations, as well as latitude, to innovate in both individual behaviour as well as collective work process. This means supporting individual habit-building, team-based innovation, and coordinated multi-department structural change.
Over the next five years, new companies will emerge that go way beyond wellbeing perks, and breaking mental health barriers, to position wellbeing as the frontier, and core, of workforce management.
These frontier companies will directly integrate people management processes with processes for managing wellbeing and mental health at the level of the company, team and individual.
To get there, these companies’ leaders will make strong statements about creating work great workplace cultures – which require human wellbeing alongside performance, provide a common definition of wellbeing and performance drivers, and set the tone and expectations for the quality and quantity of innovation through self-reflection, communication, and experimentation at all levels.
This means empowering their employees to work together, to build a much deeper level of individual and interpersonal awareness, share work-relevant information about their wellbeing through a structured and secure platform for communications, and utilising collective inputs and advanced data analysis to identify prioritised culture changes – designed to optimise for both company performance and human wellbeing.
In one of my early conversations I spoke to Geoff McDonald, ex-global VP and HR lead at Unilever, who made Unilever one of the most sought-after places to work over his tenure of 10+ years. His words sum it up nicely.
“Most organisations are paying lip service to wellbeing at the moment, with bananas in the staff room and so forth… What is needed is to directly integrate, as you say, wellbeing into the management process, as a systems intervention. That is really the solution and the frontier.”
Our takeaway
If you’re at the frontier, keep going. If you’re not there yet, hop on board.
Guest post by Madeleine Evans, who will be speaking at Workplace Trends: Towards a New Era of Work and Workplace, in London on 15 October 2019. For details on her presentation, “Mental health and productivity in work culture”, fellow speakers, attendees, and how to register, visit the conference page here.
Madeleine is an ex-investor and social activist with varied experience across mature, high-growth and transforming companies. She is also the founder/CEO of the management technology company, Levell. Levell helps people and companies integrate wellbeing into work culture, improving personal productivity, team performance, and company results.
First published at Mad World Summit
Does your workplace bring people together? Or do you feel its design actively pushes people apart?
Loneliness at work is a growing problem, and although advances in technology make it easier than ever before to be connected to others, in reality people are feeling increasingly isolated from their peers.
IQL, in collaboration with British Red Cross and BuroHappold want to understand this problem better, and to investigate to what extent the design and layout of a workplace can impact the feeling of connectedness amongst its occupants.
‘Connecting in the Workplace’ is a new research study looking at the problem of loneliness in the workplace. It originated from the Loneliness Lab, an incubator for collective action to design out loneliness from our cities, founded by Lendlease and Collectively.
Please help with this important research by completing this survey, letting us know how you feel about your workplace, whether it be a large-scale corporation, or the comfort of your own home. The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete, and all responses will be anonymous.
We’re honoured that our friends at Lendlease have kindly agreed to present the results of the survey to delegates at our up-coming London Conference, Workplace Trends: Towards a New Era of Work and Workplace on 15 October in London.
Please take ten minutes to complete the survey here!
The debate on open plan versus enclosed offices rages on, but it’s not binary, it’s not black or white, it’s not a dichotomy.
Plus office occupants appear to have different preferences from the wide range of workplace design solutions that are available. We need to understand what drives these individual preferences. Is it factors like personality, personalisation, flexibility, sense of belonging and familiarity that affect where people prefer to work?
Together with partners Nigel Oseland of Workplace Unlimited, and Herman Miller, Workplace Trends is conducting independent research into people’s preferences for their work environments.
As part of the study we’d be very grateful if you could complete a short questionnaire. It takes less than ten minutes and as a thank you for your time you can choose to enter a prize draw for a free ticket to a Workplace Trends Conference and also to receive an early copy of our research report.
Please also share this page and our survey with your employees and colleagues!
Click here to take the Office Preferences Survey
PS Registration for our next London Workplace Trends Conference is open now – will you be there?
Catherine Gall of Steelcase, speaking at our 2012 Workplace Trends Conference, on Office Culture and Wellbeing.
It’s interesting to look back on this six years later. Workplace has definitely moved on, but there’s still much to do.
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Understanding local culture is vital to using space as a key strategic tool for global organizations. Whether you think your company is global or not, you’re global. Businesses compete in a global marketplace.
Catherine presented new research that demonstrates the importance of understanding the differences in how people work, their sense of hierarchy and teamwork, how they manage others, negotiate, and conduct knowledge work activities.
We aim to highlight new thinking at Workplace Trends events. Happiness and wellness are today’s buzzwords, but even way back in 2012 we were honoured to have Nic Marks, whose happiness and wellbeing research methodology is world-renowned, give the keynote at our Workplace Trends autumn conference.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Bf7ilDUrw&w=560&h=315]
Sometimes people think that happiness is somewhat frivolous in a business context but Nic argues that happiness is in fact highly functional. Happiness helps people build stronger relationships, become better able to deal with unexpected events and be generally more creative and innovative. People are happier at work if they are able to be themselves, have a sense of control and progress, are surrounded by people they along with and importantly feel their work is meaningful and socially valuable. A focus on happiness can help make organisations higher performing as well as a better places to work.
Nic is perhaps best known for his trailblazing work on the Happy Planet Index, National Accounts of Well-being and the Five Ways to Well-being which is used extensively within health and education institutions as well as within governmental policy. Nic is the founder of Friday, an organisation that changes the world of work for the better and is a fellow of nef (new economics foundation) and on the board for Action for Happiness. Read more about Nic at https://nicmarks.org/about/
In his introduction to our recent Workplace Trends Autumn Conference in London: People, Place, Performance, Nigel Oseland referred to the Workplace Zoo. Here’s his original blog post from back in 2012 – still as relevant today for the workplace and learning environments as it was then then.
I visited Colchester Zoo over the Christmas holidays and was really impressed with the quality of the animal enclosures. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into their design and a great deal of effort made in meeting the animals’ needs and making them comfortable. This was evident in the way the animals behaved and through the success of their breeding programme.
It got me wondering whether any lessons learned in zoo design are relevant to the workplace. However, I am not the first to make this comparison. Judith Heerwagen suggests “For insights, it is useful to look not at buildings, but at zoos. Zoo design has gone through a radical transformation in the past several decades. Cages have been replaced by natural habitats and geographic clustering of animals. And, as in nature, the animals have much greater control over their behaviour. They can be on view if they want, or out of sight. They forage, play, rest, mate, and act like normal animals”[1]. She continues “A key factor was concern over the animals’ psychological and social well-being. Zoos could keep animals alive, but they couldn’t make them flourish”. Heerwagen proposed that we learn from the new philosophy of enriched zoo enclosures, providing for well-being rather than simple survival, but can we also learn from the basic design principles in zoo enclosures?
Provision of a suitable environment is the most fundamental of five key principles in zoo practice – “the temperature, ventilation, lighting and noise levels of enclosures must be suitable for the comfort and well-being of the particular species of animal at all times”[2]. Painstaking effort and meticulous detail has been taken to ensure the enclosures at modern zoos provide each species and sub-species of animal with the best environment to allow them to “flourish”. In contrast, in the workplace, post occupancy evaluations (POEs) repeatedly show that satisfaction is low with temperature, ventilation and noise[3]. Although much effort is made to ensure that comfortable environments are provided in the workplace, POEs often show satisfaction with comfort is significantly below 50%. Individual preferences, behaviours and activities mean it is difficult to provide comfort for everyone, but such a, repeatedly, low level of satisfaction is neither acceptable nor considered good design. Similarly, when commuting into London last summer when temperatures on the Underground reached 40°C, as I stood sweating in a crowded carriage I often wondered to myself why it is illegal to transport livestock at temperatures above 35°C but not humans[4].
I am a fan of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs[5]; he proposed that for humans to perform to their maximum capability several categories of needs must be met in acceding order. The lower order needs refer to comfort and safety, the basics of zoo enclosures, and if these fundamental needs are not met then our performance is inhibited. In contrast, the higher order needs refer to more psychological, emotional and social factors. Interestingly, another core provision for animal enclosures is the opportunity to express most normal behaviour – “accommodation should take account of the natural habitat of the species and seek to meet the physiological and psychological needs of the animal”[2]. I have previously explored the psychological needs of humans in some detail and have also expressed my concern that they are not being met in modern homogenised workplaces[6]. It seems that a focus on space efficiency and reduced property costs override the individual needs required for maximum well-being and performance in the workplace.
It might be argued that zoo enclosure design is easier than workplace design as it accommodates a single species with a basic animalistic drive for survival. Firstly, humans have evolved into different races that have adapted to different climates, but nevertheless we are one species. Secondly, Richard Dawkins postulated in theSelfish Gene[7] that the single motivator for human behaviour is survival. So, on the one hand it could be counter-argued that both the design of zoo enclosures and workplaces comes down to a thorough understanding of the occupants’ needs and designing to meet them. Although we share the territorial and social behaviours of animals, these are often overlooked in the workplace. In addition, I believe that there are many other factors that drive how humans behave on a daily basis. We are a complicated species, separated from the animals by our intelligence and personality, as well as neo-cortex size and opposable thumbs. We know that specific personality traits, e.g. introvert versus extrovert and internal versus external, lead to certain behaviours and needs. In a zoo, if an animal exhibits a particular characteristic that requires a specific environmental adjustment for them to “flourish” then it is very likely that the zoo keeper would make the provision. However, this is not the case in the workplace; we provide a homogenous environment for a “single species” and there is little recognition of individual differences and the associated requirements to enhance comfort and performance.
Although Heerwagen beat me to the analogy between the workplace and zoo enclosures, I think I was the first to compare the modern workplace to chicken coups[8]. Battery-farm hens are accommodated in high density environments with poor daylight and ventilation. In contrast free-range hens have lots of space in which they can roam and explore, and have access to the outside with unlimited daylight and ventilation. Battery hens are sad unhealthy chickens with a short life-span, whereas free-range hens are happy, healthy, inquisitive and playful chickens that live around five times as long as a battery hen. In terms of productivity, there is a high yield of eggs per sqm for battery hens, but the quality of the eggs is poor and the demand and market value of them is low compared to free-range eggs which offer a higher return on investment. So I recommend free-range workplaces with high quality space which offers people achoice of environments where they can explore and socialise or alternatively seek privacy. I wonder if the original bürolandschaft office might be considered free-range whereas the modern open-plan office is more akin to a battery-farm?
So isn’t it about time that we follow the example of the modern zoo and design workplaces so that individuals (and businesses) flourish rather than simply survive?
References
From an original post by Nigel Oseland at the blog of Workplace Unlimited,
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
Read the Live Conference Blog by Su Butcher here on 17 October. Use #wtrends18 to join in!
(If you have trouble viewing the page below please try this link.)
Further in our series of guest blogs by speakers and supporters of our up-coming Workplace Trends Autumn Conference in London: People, Place, Performance, HB Reavis’ Michal Matloň has some observations on fashion in the workplace (no, not apparel).
The urge to follow fashions is strongly ingrained in our nature. Imitation is one of the basic learning mechanisms that we use as children to quickly adopt behaviour appropriate for the society we live in. Fashion saves us from burdensome decision making, because it offers us an easy, socially accepted solution to any problem. Do what other people do and the worst thing that can happen is that you make the same mistake as everyone else.
This is not so bad if the effects of our decisions apply only to ourselves. When wearing fashionable, but uncomfortable clothes, the only miserable person will be us. But it’s something very different if we make decisions based on fashion that influence daily lives of many other people. The reason is that fashion helps ideas and solutions spread quickly, based on shallow or non-existent understanding of why it emerged in the first place.
And so, managers, architects and consultants are often caught in this trap of fashionable thinking. Instead of thoroughly analysing the real and specific needs of their organization, employees or clients, they limit their scope to what they see others are using. They let their fear of judgement prevail over actually choosing a superior solution that might not, at first glance, look that well. They fear others might say it’s uncool, old-fashioned or perhaps, boring.
As a part of a certain project, I’ve been watching dozens of videos of office tours in American technological start-ups and companies. I’ve been noting down the characteristics and features these offices have and the way they look. After finishing, I realized, that with some minor differences, they are all the same. We think these companies carry innovation in their hearts. We expect them to be radically open to making things better, even if it means being different than everyone else. But the reality doesn’t match. Because they too, only follow the fashion.
So, you could ask: how can we expect a manager in a corporation or an architect in an established studio to heroically face the social pressure to conform? I say we should. Because the inability to do so has already created many working environments, which, although fashionable, don’t serve the real purpose of enabling people to work in the most effective and enjoyable way.
Fashion (supported by short-term financial goals) brought us the incorrect use of the open-space environment for purposes for which it’s not fit. Fashion allowed us to easily sell it under the claim that it increases the quality of collaboration, while it can often do the complete opposite. Fashion helped us decrease our productivity, while feeling good about the result.
And there are many other fashions. They change in time and are often cyclical. But what never changes is the fact, that we should invest the majority of our energy into solving the most fundamental and timeless problems, which often has the highest impact, while looking inconspicuous from the outside.
It’s possible that the happiest and the most productive workplace in the world will never show up in your social media feed. Because who would click on such a boring thing?
Guest post by Michal Matloň of HB Reavis.
Michal will be speaking on “Crisis of Focus: What we are forgetting about in the age of connectedness” at Workplace Trends London on 17 October 2018.
Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash
Continuing our series of guest blogs by speakers and supporters of our up-coming Workplace Trends Autumn Conference in London: People, Place, Performance, Vantage Spaces write about biophilia, health, wellbeing = business efficiency.
We know that the simplest things make a real difference. Walking into work to the smell of freshly ground coffee. Connecting with nature through green walls and plants.
Biophilia is described as ‘an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world’ and means “love of life” from bio- + -philia. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that by incorporating simple changes into our working environments, we can increase our health and wellbeing which in turn impacts business efficiency.
Biophilic design recognises that we are unconsciously connected to nature and that this connection within the spaces that we live and work in can positively influence our physical and psychological health.
This biophilic principle is one of the most flexible aspects when it comes to design. Typically, colours that occur naturally (especially green) are used in conjunction with materials such as cork or distressed wood.
Simply adding a touch of greenery with something as small as indoor plants can have major positive benefits for employees, enabling them to feel more in tune with nature and making their day simply better.
There is a variety of ways to incorporate greenery into the workplace in addition to floor standing or table top solutions. Living or replica walls, moss walls, hanging plants, wall art and planter tops are now a staple in the modern office due to wellbeing becoming such an important factor for employees. In fact, Human Spaces study The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace (2015) reports that plants are the second most wanted element in the workplace.
Creating a more natural environment in your office is said to enhance employee performance, including memory retention, reduced staff turnover and deterring stress related illness. Being able to enjoy natures beauty and feel more connected to the outside world can ultimately lead to happier and healthier employees and visitors alike.
Another way to ensure natural wellbeing is by encouraging employees to stay hydrated throughout the day. A reduction in dehydration levels of as little as 2% of body weight can influence mood, leading to greater feelings of fatigue and reduced levels of alertness1. Investing in a water cooler for your employees can serve as a reminder to keep hydrated while also preventing the need to purchase bottled water.
The workplace today is constantly evolving, and the moral views and wellbeing requirements of the modern worker are changing with it. Employers are having to keep up with the demand for the changing office but these ‘simply better’ and easy to implement changes will add instant results into your place of work.
1 Masento NA et al. Effects of hydration status on cognitive performance and mood. Br J Nutr 111(10):1841-52
Guest post by Vantage Spaces,
delegates and exhibitors at Workplace Trends London on 17 October 2018.
With almost a third of those over 60 still in the workforce, a new retirement age is on the cards. For those looking to enter the job market, they may have to compete with an older workforce for a position. But it’s not all about the money, those above retirement age are holding onto their jobs for other reasons too. The ideation of those at retirement age dancing a jig on their last day at the office in order to spend their time travelling and fishing are slowly coming to an end as retirees decide to keep their expertise within the job market.
While it’s no secret that those at retirement age can hardly afford to retire, the financial drawcard isn’t the only one keeping retirees fixed to their posts. There is a strong sense of still wanting to be part of a thriving society and being able to contribute to the economy holds a stronger pull than the possibility of spending endless days tinkering away in a garage or hobby room. While the percentage of the older workforce hit a record low of 10.1% in 1995, this figure doubled to close to 20% by 2015.
While those at retirement age have the option to take their retirement benefits, they may want to delay the retirement withdrawals as long as they can. This not only allows them to build a bigger lump sum for later, but may also help them secure a bigger monthly income. In fact, in some instances, benefits can be up to 76% bigger for those who wait until 70 to retire. Those who are in debt can reduce their payments in this period and perhaps even settle their debt. This allows them to have more funds available for travel and unexpected medical expenses.
While a large portion of older citizens who decide not to put down the tools just yet do so because they want to remain part of an active society, necessity still drives a large portion of seniors who work beyond their retirement date. With the market slump of 2008, many who are at retirement age now have to make up a significant portion of their retirement savings again as they have suffered huge losses. The UK still loses up to £6,000 in lost income due to this event. Brexit may also have an effect on the job market and those wishing to re-enter the job market after the proposed exit might not find a suitable position.
Working beyond retirement is the perfect way to remain engaged and for those who enjoyed their corporate journey, retiring just based on age is simply not an option. The financial benefits can’t be neglected either.
Author: freelance writer Lucy Wyndham
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash