I was given the best present ever last weekend; a giant Tony Chocolonely Advent Calendar. I’m sure I must have had an advent calendar when I was a kid, but if I did, I don’t remember it. And anyway this is my new favourite brand of chocolate and it’s GIANT sized. So I am all round delighted. But it got me thinking about the whole count down to Christmas / holiday thing and wondering how many people are doing that right now and why.
Countdown to lie down
For me, it’s not really about a countdown to Christmas at all. I enjoy the run up to Christmas more than Christmas itself. It’s the opposite in this respect to the mindset of millions of workers all over the (Christian) world who are limping through the last month of the year and counting the days until they can fall in a heap onto a plate of turkey and a box of Celebrations.
That’s part of the challenge of Christmas: – most people are too exhausted to be able to enjoy it that much, or so under par physically and mentally that they make it difficult for those around them to enjoy it!
According to a recent McKinsey report (Reframing Employee Health: Moving Beyond Burn-Out to Holistic Health), the global level of burn-out is around 20%, while the global level of exhaustion (defined as a severe loss of energy resulting in mental and physical tiredness) is even higher at around 40%.
I bet many of those people are counting down the days until they get a break from work. Or perhaps those closer to burn-out are dreading the holiday break because – while they may desperately need a rest – they are more concerned about what will not get done while they are off work.
Why is employee wellbeing so important?
Now, I do understand that there are a number of factors contributing to people’s wellbeing come the end of the calendar year. And I do understand that work can’t be uplifting all of the time. But is this really the best we can do? And how hard is too hard?
My dream is that more people enjoy their experience of work and feel at their best more of the time when they are in the workplace. I refuse to accept that the current way is the only way. And I refuse to accept that millions of people have no choice but to count down their days until the weekend, or until whichever point in the year it is when they have some time off. In a previous post – TGIF – I explore this further, referencing in particular the depressing quote of Studs Terkel who wrote in 1997 about American workers seeking:
“a sort of life rather than a Monday to Friday sort of dying”.
Why do I care?
- First of all, because the average person spends 80,000 hours of their lives at work – so it feels right that we create environments that enable them to thrive in that time?
- And second of all, there is ample evidence now of the positive impact of employee wellbeing on organisational performance. Research by MHI and Business in the Community showed that the UK economic value of improved employee well-being could be between £130 billion to £370 billion per year or from 6 to 17 percent of the United Kingdom’s GDP. That’s the equivalent of £4,000 to £12,000 per UK employee (see McKinsey Reframing Employee Health: Moving Beyond Burn out to Holistic Health). So there is a productivity argument too.
So what enables employee wellbeing?
There is much written these days about wellbeing at work. I am constantly frustrated by the references to 4-day weeks, yoga classes and wellbeing days as a means of solving the problem we have. These interventions tackle the symptoms, not the causes. To tackle the causes, we need to talk about leadership and culture and how they can create the conditions in which people can really thrive.
I have condensed this into an equation of sorts, drawing inspiration from the Trust Equation of Charles Green and David Maister of 2000. My Employee Wellbeing Equation is below.
In my world view, leadership, culture and infrastructure all need to be Deeply Human in essence in order to contribute to employee wellbeing. This is essentially a movement away from the Hamster Wheel paradigm where the workforce chases its tail in an infinitely frenetic kind of madness, losing all sense of purpose, meaning, performance and wellbeing along the way. It is a movement towards a more people-centred, impact generating organisational paradigm. How to lead in this way is at the core of my executive leadership coaching work.
Employee wellbeing also, in my view, requires the individual to make choices and take steps to take responsibility for their own wellbeing. This includes a whole range of things, from making sure you are in a job you enjoy and is best suited to you, to asking for the development, help, training and support you need, to taking the holiday to which you are entitled, to taking care of your basic needs such as sleep, diet and exercise– to name but a few. This is the stuff of many coaching sessions with private clients that I coach.
The ten components of employee wellbeing
So what does an individual need in order to thrive at work?
From my experience of coaching and consulting over the last twenty years, I have developed what I now call ‘The Neon Thriveometer’. It shows the ten main ingredients of employee wellbeing and is shown here:
Each of the ten ingredients deserves a short post of their own, but for now I want to highlight a few things:
- There is very little evidence that money is the biggest driver of wellbeing at work. Recognition? Yes. Some of that may come in the form of financial recognition but seeing, feeling and believing that you are valued as a human being as well as a contributor, by your boss / employer, is crucial.
- There is a lot of evidence that connection and community are very significant drivers of wellbeing, both in and out of work (see my post My Work is Social Work in 2015). I spend a lot of time in my team development work helping create more connected team cultures where relationship is central.
- Feeling like you belong is also a huge factor in feeling well at work. I am currently reading the book ‘Belonging’ by Owen Eastwood who was the performance coach of Gareth Southgate’s England football squad for a time. It is a fascinating read not least because of the stories it tells of different teams and how a stronger sense of identity, purpose and belonging was created that contributed to their success. More of that to come soon in another post.
Employee wellbeing is a partnership endeavour
All of the ten ingredients in the Neon Thriveometer are important. Leadership, culture and infrastructure are key contributors to all of them. Individual responsibility is also key to most of them. The fact of the matter is that employee wellbeing is a partnership between employer and employee.
Is this asking for too much? Is it unrealistic? I would love to know what you think? I believe it is absolutely achievable. This is not the fluffy soft stuff. It is the hard stuff of how to look after your people so that they look after you. Your people are always your greatest asset. You are nowhere without them.
Where could you do better as a leader or manager? Where are you struggling as an employee?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how I can help.
