Friday, December 07, 2012

Employees React Negatively When Prompted to Think About Money

money-head
Here are some studies that show that reminders about money led consumers to react against people who would normally influence their decisions.

For all the talk and research about the extent to which money motivates people, I”m certain its very important. My personal stance is that people get a job for money but, unless they have a routine, linear and unthinking job, money doesn’t motivate them to do any more or better work. Money gets people to show up and it’s a control mechanism. Calling the carrot or stick of money a motivator is giving it too much credit. And if there’s one thing money doesn’t like, it’s credit.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Christmas The Season For Layoffs? Ho Ho No!

Santa_Claus

Let’s compare and contrast two recent New Zealand newspaper articles about bosses. (Do they still call them ‘newspapers’? Other than crumpling them up to pack into boxes of crockery when shifting house, I haven’t touched news in paper form for years.)

They’re both good articles. One notices that a disproportionate number of redundancies occur nearing the end of the calendar year. This might possibly be due to planning schedules and so forth but it also has the double-whammy effect of being at the same time some tribalistic ritual and consumer frenzy called Christmas occurs. Have a read. It’s position is probably that New Zealand employers are not that much concerned about employee engagement or being tarred with a Grinchiness brush.

Contrasting that is this article from a competing newspaper. It says that gone are the days of splashing talented employees with status trinkets and disposable goods and experiences and they’re being gradually replaced with things of meaning to nurture a culture that talent will want to belong to and stick around with. It does lament that New Zealand is a bit behind but the trend is positive.

The only criticism of the 2nd article is my usual one – they have all the right research but make a sloppy observation that employee engagement equals happiness. It doesn’t. Engagement is the choice to apply discretionary effort. Happiness is just nice.

My Christmas shopping this year is easy. Everyone’s getting my new book ‘The Brain-Based Boss’. I have yet to to hear how my teenage kids feel about that. Luckily I”m not relying on them for reviews…

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Well Well Wellness - Employee Engagement Is Healthy

stress-wellness-yoga-lady 

Smart employers provide a wellness-supportive work environment and try to nudge their employees into healthier lifestyle choices. They’re not being nice, they’re being smart.

I used to work in local Government. When I started, there was a ‘Rubbish’ department. It became ‘Refuse and Recycling.’ Last I heard, it had become ‘Waste Minimisation.’ These aren’t just superficial labels, they represent a shift in thinking. A similar shift has occurred when it comes to wellness at work. It’s gone from ambulances at the bottom of cliffs (sometimes literally) to prevention and a broadening of scope from the merely physical and work-related.

I’ve worked with organisations that offer subsidised gym memberships, 10,000 Step programmes and reward-point-scoring health insurance schemes. In-house Occupational Therapists teach posture and micro-pausing to the masses, ergonomic furniture is installed while Sven the masseuse takes your shoulder massage booking. I actually saw one company intranet’s homepage announcing the boss was paying for a diet specialist to come in and speak, although this was right next to an advert for the social club’s fish ‘n’ chip evening. I love those situations, like my local supermarket which had a sale bin of toothpaste right next to a sale bin of chocolate bars – 5-for-$4! An aisle of value but also an aisle of irony.

My point here is that even if you’re not an employer that doles out massages and gym memberships, your workplace has a tremendous capacity to affect your people’s physical and mental health one way or the other. That some employers make efforts to bolster worker wellness isn’t altruistic. They reap the benefits of attendance, attitude, engagement, productivity and more. A study published in the U.S. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that for every dollar a worker’s illness cost, the average impact on their employer’s productivity was $2.30. So, for example, preventing staff illnesses causing $10,000 of medical costs could enhance your bottom line by $23,000.

I read a book last Christmas called ‘The Blue Zone. Lessons for living longer from those who’ve lived the longest’ by Dan Buettner. He and his team have studied the four little pockets of humanity where they have a ridiculously long length and quality of life. (None are in New Zealand. They’re in Sardinia, Costa Rica, Japan and California.) There’s a quick online quiz, after which it tells you how long they reckon you’ll live if you keep going the way you’re going and how long you could live if you take their advice. Take the test but do it with friends. (Ironically, doing it with friends is part of their advice.)

I need to get a pet and at least one more friend at ‘organ-donor’ level. Otherwise, I’m pretty sweet. You might be pleasantly surprised at their alcohol and exercise advice. Having a reason to live is important and, for some, work can provide that. Friendship is generally good for your health but there are different levels of friend. I think we all know that. We might not have it written down but we have a ‘friend matrix’ somewhere. When you’re a kid, you need a friend with an X-Box. When you leave home, you need a friend with a van to help you move. When you’re my age, you need a friend with a spare (functional) kidney.
I'm doing a show in the 2013 New Zealand International Comedy Festival. I'm not too sure if any / many of my 'Brain-Based Boss' readers know that I also  perform stand-up comedy? Anyways, my show is based around this book 'The Blue Zones' and is all about health. They do say laughter is the best medicine. My show is called 'The Grin Reaper.'

In 2007, Gallup research found that “having a best friend at work” increased the likelihood of someone being engaged at work by 700%. Sarah Burgard from the University of Michigan has shown that job insecurity (fear) causes more illness than actually losing a job. Disconnected employees are more likely to get sick and more likely to miss work. A study by the Confederation of British Industry estimated that fifteen percent of illness days taken were not due to actual illnesses.

A recent episode of TV’s ‘The Biggest Loser’ was filmed in New Zealand. I presume New Zealand paid for this because it seemed that the phrase, “In New Zealand” had to be said at least every ninety seconds. “I’m eating an apple IN NEW ZEALAND.” “I never thought I’d be doing push-ups IN NEW ZEALAND.”
There is a lot of time on screen of exercise, dieting and dramatic weigh-ins which probably makes for good TV but is unlikely to lead to ongoing long-term wellness-supportive lifestyle changes. What does help are social proof, goals, regular non-judgemental behaviour-based feedback and a sense of purpose. Not surprisingly (hopefully), these things are also powerful drivers of workplace behaviours that support not only wellness but productivity and profitability.

An obese person sat next to me on the plane recently. Despite he and I both paying for one seat, he was taking up a good third of my space. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me IN NEW ZEALAND.