I was reading the paper quickly yesterday while microwaving my lunch when I came across this article and I thought it might be worthwhile sharing it. While the survey was only of around 800 people, there some concerning statistics in there. For instance, Graeme Cowan (Director of R U OK?) said “Work stress has become pervasive, with many feeling it on a daily basis”.

It made me think about the amount of hours we are doing and the kinds of things we deal with every day, and how stressful that can be if it is for prolonged periods of time. It’s just not sustainable.

So sitting in the HR hot seat- is there anything we can be doing about this?

It must be said that the individual must be responsible for taking a proactive approach to looking after themselves i.e. The business cannot force employees to eat properly, exercise and look after their mental wellbeing however they can encourage these activities (think wellbeing programs, Leaders role modelling the right behaviours, participation in R U OK?, EAP etc).

However with regards to serious depression, anxiety and even suicide you will read a lot about people looking for the signs or indicators in colleagues at work. Often if it were one of our friends, we would say something straight away, but at work its a little bit different. You feel like it might be the wrong thing to. Hopefully R U OK? At work will change this perception.

The article also says that survey participants “believe there is no one at work who cares about them as a person”, and this was interesting to me because it reminded me of one of the Gallup Organization’s 12 questions; “Do you have a best friend at work?”

Gallup’s employee engagement work is based on more than 30 years of in-depth behavioral economic research involving more than 17 million employees. This research has appeared in prestigious business and scientific publications, including the Journal of Applied Psychology and the Harvard Business Review, and in our bestselling books First, Break All the Rules and 12: The Elements of Great Managing. Through rigorous research, we have identified 12 core elements — the Q12 — that link powerfully to key business outcomes. These 12 statements emerged as those that best predict employee and workgroup performance.

The 12 statements are:

Do you know what is expected of you at work?
Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
At work, do your opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
Do you have a best friend at work?
In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Source

So as a business, you might be using Gallup to monitor employee engagement, or another annual survey- but how else can you keep a regular check in on the wellbeing (and in particular mental health) of your people? Do your engagement surveys adequately capture this? How often do you run these and what do you do with the results?

On the weekend I was browsing online when I came across this story “Culture key to success” by Glenn McFarlane in the Herald Sun.

No it wasn’t your usual Jessica-reading, so get ready for the sports analogy. I’m actually quite interested in sports having played a lot when I was growing up, however AFL is generally not my thing unless it involves good company, beer and some sunshine.

So here’s how the article went:

CARLTON coach Brett Ratten would refuse to pick a player if he found out they had already committed to another club, even if he could be the difference between a premiership and missing out.

Ratten told SEN yesterday that it all came back to culture, and that was as important as anything else.

“I’d move past (the player) and develop someone in that time and if they want to continue their football somewhere else, that’s fine,” Ratten said.

“But they can’t use our time to benefit themselves.”

“I suppose it’s about your club culture and what you stand for against the window of trying to win finals.

“That’s the big call, what do you stand for?”

“I think it’s really critical about creating that culture to make sure that when people come in, they come in for the right reasons, and it’s not all about money.

“Money is not everything.”

This guy, the Coach (i.e. Leader or Manager) is looking for people who are committed to the organisation and the overall goal/strategy. He’s placing those committed players in front of others, irrespective of whether they are the ‘favourites’ or ‘stars’ that have been pegged to win the match.

He’s openly talking about culture, its importance and asking his players to question what they stand for.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

This Coach knows a thing or two about engagement. He knows that money isn’t the key motivator and it won’t get him or the team the success they are after. He knows the importance of culture and wants his players to explore how their values and goals align with that of the organisation.

Best of all, he’s willing to tell the star to stick it if he’s not going to be a team player. I wish all Leaders felt this way because we’ve all worked in businesses where someone is allowed to get away with murder because they are the leading salesperson, they bring in the big bucks, they are well connected or well known in the industry.

Anyone you might send this article to?

At the AHRI National Convention this year I had a pretty awesome time because I got to hear Dave and Wendy Ulrich speak. I also got them to sign my book and have a photo with me! Yep, I am a nerd.

Anyways, people have been asking me about what I’ve learned and what I thought was good so I got my butt into gear and started writing up some of my notes to share with you all. First cab off the rank is of course, Dave and Wendy Ulrich.

I’m sure you’ve heard of him before but Dave has been named the number one management educator and guru by Business Week, selected by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative and creative leaders and he is consistently named as the most influential person in HR in publications across the globe. Wendy Ulrich has been a practicing psychologist for 20 years exploring the personal dynamics of corporate complexities. Wendy helps organizations build people’s skills and personal strengths to succeed. Some of the areas she focuses on include communication, relationships, trained creativity resilience and happiness.

The first thing I’ll share is that they make a great team who are actually pretty warm, genuine and funny to listen to. It’s easy to be engaged by them and not notice how much time is passing. Very important to be engaged on day two of an AHRI Conference after the Gala Dinner!

Dave started out by saying that they wanted to talk to us about something a little more personal than how to structure a HR department; they wanted to talk to us about how to create meaning and purpose, not only in our lives but in the lives of the employees where we work. He said “If you create more meaning in a company- good things will happen. It’s simple”.

*MAKE MEANING in the workplace—to bring out the best in everyone.
*CREATE VALUE for your employees, your customers, your company, and yourself.
*BUILD HOPE for the future by building “the abundant organization.”

The Abundant Organization Flower

When we think about what gives us a sense of meaning, we often think about things like having children, travel, our faith or relationships. What do these things have in common? They have nothing to do with work. We don’t necessary find meaning in work. This is a problem because we spend most of our time at work but we aren’t finding same sense of purpose and meaning at work. We are finding it outside of work. It’s a tragedy.

The ultimate source of happiness is not pleasure or engagement; it’s meaning. Are you connected to your deepest values?

In HR we want to shift away from measuring from job satisfaction, away from engagement (i.e. does your job give you discretionary energy?) to does my job give me meaning. We want to ask, does my job allow me to find purpose?

Before talking about their new book “The Why of Work” and introducing the 7 things that Leaders can do to become meaning makers, they revealed that the title of the their book actually came from this quote from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s search for Meaning”.

“He who has a WHY to live can bear with almost any HOW” – Nietzsche

Some further resources to check out when you have the time or the inclination!

So what are the 7 things that Leaders can do to become meaning makers (Key Questions for abundant thinking)?

1) Identity- What am I known for? Think Gallop Strength finding attributes. It’s about help people match their personal strengths with the organisation identity (brand/culture).
2) Purpose and Motivation- Where am I going? What are your passions and the passions of your employees? In your development discussions with your employees, do you ask about their passions? Are you able to not impose your passions on them?
3) Relationships and Teamwork- Whom do I travel with? Gallop 12 questions- having a best friend at work produces those kind of outcomes. How do you control/facilitate this?
4) Positive work environment- How do I build a positive work environment?
5) Engagement/Challenge- What challenges interest me? Is there a line of sight between what I love and what I do?
6) Resilience and Learning- How do I learn from setbacks? If it’s worth doing- it’s worth doing badly i.e. failure is important.
7) Civility and Delight-What delights me? Even though they seem small, they can make a difference in how someone feels about their work.

Well these are just my back of the napkin notes but for all the details on this, please visit their website where all seven steps are discussed and explained in detail.

I’m pretty excited about this as it builds upon a lot of stuff I’ve been working on already. Does anyone else think they could incorporate this into their work?

As HR professionals, it’s hard not to have heard about employee engagement and the true impact it has on the success of of the business. While it may sound fluffy to some (yeah I think we still have a way to go in convincing some CFOs!), there is just so much research out there now that says if you don’t tap into the key drivers of employee engagement- you will lose them. And losing employees is losing money that your company could be spending on really awesome things.

Talent always has options, and it would be ignorant to say otherwise. You may pay well, but money isn’t everything and people have certainly remembered that recently in Australia.

It’s great to be able to offer two very lucky HR Club Sydney members a free ticket to an “Employee Engagement Bootcamp” facilitated by Employee Engagement Speaker, Trainer and Mentor, Kate Boorer on Thursday 24th March in Sydney CBD.

Kate has a Senior Finance background and some might say she’s on a bit of a mission to help HR pros like you, convince even the most cynical CFOs that this is something that will impact the bottom line and overall sustainability of the business.

In this workshop participants will:

1) Learn about the engine room of motivation framework that doesn’t involve money or external rewards; that is discover the 4 internal building blocks that ignites self driven motivation and engagement
2) Discover what floats your career boat-Step into a time machine and take a journey back through your past to uncover the patterns of motivation & engagement that have been present throughout your career. Then use it to build your very own engagement profile.
3) Master the tools to assess whether you are facing a motivation issue or a training issue when it comes to the performance of you and your people; and
4) Identify the reason why your people turn up to work every day- Learn you about the importance of Career Values, help you uncover your own and then understand how it impacts engagement every day.

Each participant will also walk away with a customised engagement profile and action plan to begin implementing so you and your organisation see results immediately!

To ensure maximum value is delivered to every participant, there will be a limited number of places available. This is to ensure every person can share individually with Kate throughout the day and receive customised strategies and advice.

If you would like to put your name in the ring for a free ticket, please leave your name and a contact email as a comment on this blog. Names will be drawn on 15th March, 2011. If you do happen to miss out or want to secure a ticket, you can also do so at this website for the discounted price of $99 for HR Club Sydney fans. Just use the discount code HRCLUBSYD.

Recently at a People and Culture Conference, I was given a copy of the ‘Eight steps to happiness; the science of getting happy and how it can work for you’. Obviously being the nerd that I am, I was pretty excited as I had seen a few episodes of the TV show and was keen to read more.

If you haven’t seen the show, it’s called Making Australia Happy, and essentially they took eight volunteers from Marrickville and with an expert coaching team, the aim was to improve their happiness. The reason why Marrickville was chosen was because according to a National survey, residents of Marrickville have the lowest well-being in Australia.

Happiness sounds a little fluffy and intangible to some; however this book has a strong emphasis on referring everything they do to a proven science or quality research (particularly from the field of Positive Psychology).

The book takes you through each of the eight steps to happiness and while some may seem quite straight forward, the reality is that people don’t put this into practice. We all know that things like smoking, eating junk food and not exercising is bad for us, but even mentally- we deep down know that there are certain things that we do all the time, that are detrimental to our mental health. Or alternatively, things that we could be doing to make ourselves feel a lot better.

If you are into quizzes, reports or measures for these things. The Happy 100 index is a good way to check in and see how you are travelling. It may also be a good tool for someone who is not very self-aware of their own moods and hence how they may affect others in the workplace.

The eight steps are:

1. Goals and values
2. Random acts of kindness
3. Mindfulness
4. Strengths and solutions
5. Gratitude
6. Forgiveness
7. Social Networks
8. Reflect, review, renew

Things I am fan of:
 

• This book is easy to read and understand- you don’t need to be a scientist, psychologist or professional anything to read it
• Uses a simple tool to measure happiness and keep track of progress (Happy 100 index)
• Random acts of kindness- explains a way that you can do nice things for other people, feel great about it, and then not have any negative after shocks like anger or resentment if the recipient is not grateful. Plus it makes other people happy!
• Mindfulness- we should really slow down and take the time (regularly) to look at what is around us rather than constantly being on autopilot
• Mindfulness also presents another option for those from a traditional CBT perspective who find it difficult to dispute or get rid of negative thoughts- this methodology teaches individuals to change their relationship with those thoughts instead
• Understanding character strengths- go to www.viacharacter.org to identify your top strengths so that you can start using them in daily life (Mine were kindness and generosity; humour and playfulness; gratitude; hope, optimism and future-mindedness; and zest, enthusiasm and energy).
• Learning how to adapt a solutions-focused mindset and using ‘possibility language’
• Gratitude- write down three good things that went well during the course of the day and why it happened. Watch this clip from Martin Seligman for more info. There’s also an app for that.
• The book really goes into the science behind the program and every bit of research mentioned is fully referenced- meaning that you can find the exact paper and delve deeper into any areas that interest you.

I recommend grabbing a copy of the book if you are interested or checking out the abc website http://makingaustraliahappy.abc.net.au/

It’s been pretty busy in life lately. New job, new house and it is almost Christmas. This year has flown! I have also been spending my free time reading an excellent book called “Why should anyone be led by you?” by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. My organisation is going to be doing a lot of cool things in the Authentic Leadership space next year so I thought I would get a jump start and read it. As per usual, sharing is caring- so anything interesting I plan to blog about here and hopefully you might find something useful in it.

The first chapter is called “Be Yourself- More- with Skill”.

It starts out with an awesome little gem about the structure of an organisation.

It seems every organisation whether it’s the local cricket club, the not-for-profit or the big company- wants to see leadership. When answering the questions of why effective leadership is in such short supply, Goffee and Jones say that some organisations are structured in such a way that means they are ‘machines for the destruction of leadership’.

“They encourage either conformists or role players with an impoverished sense of who they are and what they stand for. Neither makes for effective leaders. And of course, this gives rise to the legions of disenchanted followers, producing the deepest organizational malaise of modern times: cynicism”.

Whether it be an experience in a public sector organisation, one that’s highly beaurcratic, or ancient in its operations; I think we may have all experienced this at some point. You know, a place where doing things the way it’s always been done is a thousand times easier than coming up with something new and getting it approved. I’m also willing to bet that there are others of you who have worked in professionals services organisations for example, which micromanages and controls employees to the point of which their brains disintegrate and they become lemmings!

How do you want your structure to make people feel? Is this articulated in your EVP?

Every now and again I come across something a bit different, and share it because I think people will be interested. You may have read about this in HC Magazine or even heard the reviews from our sister club, HR Club Newcastle.

I think most of us in HR are interested in employee engagement and value services like Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) for the support that they can provide people during difficult times.

Current research shows the extent of financial ill health in the Australian community is significant – 70% of Australian couples experience conflict over money, 86% of individuals saying they should know more about personal finance than what they do, and 95% say they experience difficulties with managing money.

Financial stress leads to significant mental, emotional and physical costs to the individual, and in turn, the organisations they are a part of.

This is one way to look at it. Another is to look at a benefit that you could provide for your employees that could mean much, much more than a pay rise or bonus- and this is what interested me. I was first introduced to Innergi when I was working at a law firm, and spoke to a lot of employees in their 30s who were earning extremely good money but weren’t doing anything useful with it. This is a tool that could help employees get in control of their finances and value the total reward package you offer them.

Intrigued?

On Wednesday 1st December, Matt Linnert will share a light hearted look at the serious challenge of raising financial wellbeing in Australia, including an overview of the strategies which leading organisations are using today and are predicted to use in the near future.

The event will be held in the Oak Room, at Swissotel Sydney, Level 8, 68 Market Street, Sydney. There will be a light breakfast served from 7.15am (yum!) and the presentation starts at 7.40am sharp so you can head off to start your day.

Registration is essential so please register via the eventbrite link. It’s a good way to meet and network with others in the HR Community

Hey there! Apologies for the hiatus. The last few weeks have been busy and full of awesome. You may have noticed I’ve just taken up a contract at Lion Nathan National Foods and I am having the best time working there. I intend to chat a bit about why it is so awesome a bit later, but it is fitting that today’s post is about ‘Dream Employers’.

A little while back you may remember a post asking you to participate in the Dream Employers Survey. Well kiddies, the results are in. Get your copy here.

To be honest, there weren’t too many surprises there. No matter what sort of engagement model you follow, they usually involve one of two of the following components; having your people say great things about you as an employer to family and friends, allowing people to be empowered to do their jobs, and engaging people to do something that has an impact on other people or a purpose.

For instance, the report states that “word of mouth is an extremely powerful tool to promote positive messages to the market (Reichheld, 2003)” and Coca Cola Amatil is cited as an example where people learn about the culture through word of mouth because people are so passionate about the brands and the company. This is why their employee referral program is so successful.

Google says that “talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world” and Disney says that what they do for a living makes people happy and that has a huge impact of their employees. People also want to work for a brand or culture they can be proud of, or that is fun and makes them happy. There’s no doubt Virgin does this well as Branson says “Our people need to be 100% proud of where they work and believe in what they do everyday”.

I’d argue that ‘generous pay and trendy products or services’ hasn’t been enough to make an employer stand out as a desirable place to work for a little while now. Herzberg’s hygiene factors taught us about that a number of years ago. Perhaps employers still aren’t getting the message.

I guess one thing that is highlighted in the report is the benefit in having AND delivering upon an employee value proposition (EVP). Now while this may sound fluffy to the business, if held accountable an EVP can hold a vital key in talent attraction and retention.

So I guess my Friday question to you is- do you have an employee value proposition and if yes, what is it and how do you ensure that you deliver upon that promise to your people?

The good folk at Red Balloon have contacted me online about participating  in a survey for them. I’m always keen to hear the results of interesting surveys so of course I participated- and I thought it was worthy of sharing with you all if you’re interested.

So Red Balloon have partnered with Insync Surveys to release the Dream Employers Survey, an online survey http://www.dreamemployers.com.au/ that will identify which organisations are the most desired employers for Australians and New Zealanders.

The aim is to find out what people’s aspirations are, in an ideal world who would they love to work for and why? Do they work for their Dream Employer already?  Who is the Dream Employer in their industry? Who would they would least like to work for and why?

I must admit I was a bit stumped by this question. I mean, I know what I like in a workplace and it’s not unlike most research on the topic suggests. A good manager is important to me, as well as flexibility to do what I do best.

Have I ever thought about working for a specific employer though? I’ve really appreciated working in a variety of industries as it has allowed me to be versatile and learn about some very different cultures, but specific employers?

When I was 15 I worked at McDonald’s for three years. It was my very first job and the place where I realised that HR was what I wanted to do. I love the training opportunities, the strong culture where most of the people in Head Office had “flipped burgers” in a past life- hell I even loved those goofy training videos. I got heaps of training experience and learned about what management styles I liked and what sort of leader I wanted to be. I still look back fondly on that experience and have often thought about seeking employment there.

Anyway I digress. Fill out the survey! I’d be keen to hear what the people think makes a Dream Employer.

* Survey closes 15th August

Today we have a guest post from JoelyRighteous (my better half) who works in the media industry. If nothing else, this post shows he has been listening to all the HR crap I talk about when I get home. Alternatively, it does also illustrate again that people are just not going to hang around and put up with sub-par work environments that are disengaging.

It seems to me that businesses have lost a bit of that discerning nature that makes them the long term successes they want to be.

Every decision should be made for the good of the company. This is a fact of business and often the key factor that can make the difference between a mediocre leader and a great one. Where the difficulty lies is that a lot of people only think of the good of the company as ensuring that their monthly/quarterly/yearly profits are as high as possible and that in the public eye there are sweeping positive reviews, but there is so much more to it than that. It is inevitable that there will be some level of negative sentiment about a business, be it from past employees, a negative event that occurred or a current employee that has had a bad day and is having a vent. The issue is with seeing all of this as a completely negative thing that is to be controlled. People expect employees to have bad days, nobody is happy all the time, work is stressful and at times depressing. This is the way things are in even the best of companies.

What we are seeing at the moment is companies rushing to control this output through monitoring of employees online activity and then taking action off the back of it the problem with this is that it is in no way a cost efficient use of anybodies time. If employees are complaining en-mass a standard level of brand monitoring throughout social channels should pick this up, there is no need to monitor employees specifically. Furthermore the way in which businesses are treating employees that do complain is counter-productive, in fact if an employee that is typically happy complains online they are just as likely to promote the business through the same channel when they have a good day. If there are high levels of complaints occurring from employees throughout the business, or even from within particular business teams the issue is not that people are complaining, it is that they are unhappy at work. This, whether businesses like it or not is a management/leadership issue.

If businesses put the same amount of time, effort and money into leadership training, employee reward and recognition programs and talent development that they put into attempting to control their employees online behaviour they would not only see the amount of negative sentiment from employees fade, they would additionally be left with a more engaged and productive workforce. This is the largest issue with businesses rushing to get on board the latest trend, they are not thinking about the long term cost associated with this behaviour. When you lose an employee t it costs the business on average a minimum of 2x their salary to recruit, train and replace the employee. Add to this the damage and cost of having dis-engaged employees to begin with and what you are left with is an extremely detrimental cost to the business, so instead of punishing and restricting the expression of employees who will only feel further unhappy about their situation knowing that work is now encroaching on their personal space, businesses should look internally at employee engagement (there are a multitude of providers who run assessments around this) and figuring out how they can improve the workplace for everyone. Hypothetically speaking you could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars saved annually in turnover and productivity.

It’s just smart business.

Joel is an Online Account Manager at PHD Media, who is deeply passionate about developing strategic digital communication solutions that allow brands to connect and trade with consumers. He is currently studying a business degree and his outside interests include music, consumer psychology, technology and single malt scotch. Originally posted here.