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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Reach new levels of organizational productivity and achievement by redefining the phrase "workplace health" In Make Work Healthy, a team of distinguished organizational transformation professionals delivers an insightful how-to manual for improving organizational performance with a new approach to workforce management. The book offers organizations, leaders, and managers with the knowledge, data, frameworks, and methodologies they need to radically transform how they approach day-to-day operations into a sustainable and resilient business success model. The authors focus on workplace health--in a broad sense--as a way of focusing organizational attention on culture, building work capacity, productivity, and sustainability. They explain the tangible business value that comes from focusing on wellbeing as well as the symbiotic relationship between organizational health and employee health. Make Work Healthy includes: * Strategies for moving beyond typical "wellness" initiatives such as just addressing illness and absence reduction to a more holistic understanding of "healthy work" * Ways to locate, attract, recruit, and retain talent over the long-term by aligning organizational goals with employee health * Tactics to help managers of dispersed, hybrid, and remote teams manage feelings of pressure and isolation An indispensable, effective, and holistic new take on organizational and employee health, Make Work Healthy will earn a place in the hands of managers, executives, board members, and other business and human resources leaders who seek impressive gains in company productivity and fulfilment.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: A Critical Moment
THE PROBLEM WITH LEADERS
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THIS BOOK
PART I
CHAPTER 1: The Ultimate Driver of Organizational Performance
DEFINING “HEALTHY WORKPLACE”
KNOWING VERSUS DOING
MODELING THE HEALTHY WAY
DEMONSTRATING CARE AS LEADERS
WHY TALK ABOUT HEALTH NOW?
CHAPTER 2: Why Work Isn't Working
PANDEMIC OVERLOAD AND OTHER EXTRAORDINARY DEMANDS
THE HORRIBLE MICROMANAGING BOSS
NO ROOM FOR DIFFERENCE
ULTIMATE BETRAYALS
THE STRESS OF THE DAILY GRIND
SOCIAL POLLUTION
CHAPTER 3: How Work Can Be the Solution
THINKING ABOUT WORK IN TERMS OF ENERGY
ONE OF OUR BIGGEST HEALTH DECISIONS
FINDING A ROLE THAT HELPS YOU FLOURISH
TAKE THE EXPERT ASSESSMENT QUIZ
WILMAR SCHAUFELI
CHAPTER 4: The Evolution of Workforce Health
THE CONCEPT OF “A GOOD AND VIRTUOUS LIFE” IN ANCIENT TIMES
WELL‐BEING BEGINNINGS IN SPAIN AND ITALY
DEVELOPMENTS IN GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
IMPROVEMENTS IN THE EARLY PART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
CHANGES IN THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE WORLD WARS
STUDIES AND RESEARCH FROM GOVERNMENTS AND UNIVERSITIES
CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY
CHAPTER 5: Salutogenesis: A New Model for Workplace Health
A PATHOGENIC ORIENTATION VERSUS A SALUTOGENIC ORIENTATION
THE EASE TO DIS‐EASE CONTINUUM
SALUTOGENESIS IN AN ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
GEORG BAUER, MD, DrPH
PART II
CHAPTER 6: Accelerating to Success: Where Some Get It Right and Others Get It Wrong
KNOWING WHAT SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATIONS DO
AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES
RON GOETZEL
CHAPTER 7: The Symbiotic Relationship of Workforce and Workplace Health
INDIVIDUAL HEALTH FACTORS
ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH FACTORS
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
CHAPTER 8: The Development Scale: Where Is Your Organization?
LEADERSHIP
OWNERSHIP
INVESTMENT
APPROACH
INTERVENTIONS
SHOWS UP AS: HOW MANAGERS THINK ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH
EMPLOYER PERCEPTION OF EMPLOYEES
PETER CHEESE
CHAPTER 9: A New Lens: Individual and Organizational Measures
UNHEALTHY TO HEALTHY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE JOURNEY
THE CRUCIAL STEPS TO BECOMING A HEALTHY WORKPLACE
DAVE ULRICH
JEFFREY PFEFFER
CHAPTER 10: From Unhealthy to Healthy: A Plan for Success
CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE CHANGE
CORE CONSIDERATIONS FOR A HEALTHY PLAN
MAPPING THE TERRAIN
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
PAUL LITCHFIELD
SUSIE ELLIS
CHAPTER 11: Healthy Interventions
MOVING FROM “NORMAL” TO AN EQUITY LENS
HEALTHY INTERVENTIONS BASED ON THE DATA
CHAPTER 12: Stories of Healthy Success
CENTIRO, SWEDEN, ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN
THAMES WATER COMPANY, UNITED KINGDOM, WORKFORCE ANALYTICS
DELOITTE, UNITED STATES, HEALTHY SPONSORSHIP
AVIVA, UNITED KINGDOM, NET POSITIVE WORK
IIH NORDIC, DENMARK, FOUR‐DAY WORKWEEK
TAKEDA, SWITZERLAND, RESPONDING TO PRESENTING NEEDS
COHESIVE, THE NETHERLANDS, HEALTHY MANAGER CONVERSATIONS
P&G, LATIN AMERICA, INCENTIVIZING HEALTHY BEHAVIORS
SAP, IRELAND, NEURODIVERSITY
RSPCA, UNITED KINGDOM, TRAUMA SUPPORT
CONCENTRIX, GLOBAL, FLEXIBLE WORKING
FUTURICE, FINLAND, HEALTHY CLIENTS
SAS INSTITUTE, UNITED STATES, RECRUIT WELL‐BEING
AMÊNDOAS DO BRASIL, BRAZIL, A CULTURE OF WELL‐BEING
LEEK UNITED BUILDING SOCIETY, UNITED KINGDOM, HEALTHY STRATEGY
ISS, DENMARK, DIVERSITY AT ITS CORE
PwC, BUILDING A VERY PERSONALIZED LEARNING FUTURE
KINGSTON COUNCIL, UNITED KINGDOM, LEADING THE WAY
DANSKE BANK, UNITED KINGDOM, PODCASTING HEALTH
DUBAI POLICE, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, PHYSICAL READINESS
VERSION 1, EUROPE, A HEALTHY STRATEGY
CHAPTER 13: A Deep Dive into the Science of Well‐being
PURPOSE
MENTAL RESILIENCE
CONNECTION
PHYSICAL HEALTH
THE FOUR PILLARS AND 21 ELEMENTS
DR. ELS VAN DER HELM
ARNOLD BAKKER
INTERNATIONAL WELL BUILDING INSTITUTE
CHAPTER 14: A Healthy Conclusion
A DIFFERENT APPROACH
THE PANDEMIC: HEROES TAKE A BOW AND WORKERS DELIVER AGAIN
A NEED FOR A MAJOR SHIFT
BOARD MEMBERS’ ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
A LEGACY IN THE MAKING
JIM LOEHR
Notes
Appendix AppendixAssessment and Impact—Supportive Leadership and Resources Correlate to Improved Employee Health Status
CONTEXT
METHOD
KEY FINDINGS
SUMMARY
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
JOHN RYAN
MICHAEL BURCHELL, EdD
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Appendix
TABLE A.1 Sample and Response Rate
TABLE A.2 Demographic Characteristics of the Sample
TABLE A.3 Impact of Organizational Resources on Employee Financial Health
TABLE A.4 Impact of Organizational Resources on Employee Social Health
TABLE A.5 Impact of organizational Resources on Employee Psychological Healt...
TABLE A.6 Impact of Organizational Resources on Employee Physical Health
TABLE A.7 Impact of Employee Health on Employee and Organizational Outcomes...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5.1 Organizational Health Development (OHD) model (Adapted from Bauer...
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6.1 The move to a more strategic implementation of health in organiza...
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7.1 Individual health factors.
FIGURE 7.2 Organizational health factors.
FIGURE 7.3 The Healthy Place to Work lens.
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8.1 Development scale for organizational health.
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9.1 The healthy workplace matrix.
FIGURE 9.2 Individual health indicators.
FIGURE 9.3 Workforce health indicators.
FIGURE 9.4 Organizational health indicators.
FIGURE 9.5 A simple view of the healthy place lens.
Appendix
FIGURE A.1 HPTW Impact Model.
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: A Critical Moment
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Notes
Appendix Assessment and Impact—Supportive Leadership and Resources Correlate to Improved Employee Health Status
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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MAKE WORK HEALTHY
Create a Sustainable Organization with High-Performing Employees
JOHN S. RYAN AND MICHAEL J. BURCHELL
Copyright © 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Ryan, John S., author. | Burchell, Michael J., author.
Title: Make Work healthy: create a sustainable organization with high‐performing employees / John S. Ryan and Michael J. Burchell.
Description: First edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022054050 (print) | LCCN 2022054051 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119989806 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119989820 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119989813 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Personnel management. | Employee health promotion. | Work environment. | Organizational effectiveness.
Classification: LCC HF5549 .R93 2023 (print) | LCC HF5549 (ebook) | DDC 658.3—dc23/eng/20221215
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054050
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054051
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © VectorMine/Shutterstock
Dedicated to the managers and leaders championing healthy workplaces. We hope you will see this book as an inspiration as to what is possible when you put well‐being at the center of your people strategy and an invitation to connect with others so that all of us widen our understanding of what healthy workplaces are and can be.
Introduction: A Critical Moment
In April of 2014, Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer took the stage in New Orleans and dramatically announced that workplaces were killing people. His shocking slides showed data for suicides, heart attacks, cancers, and many other diseases that could be correlated to unhealthy workplaces. He shared the astonishing fact that in Japan, because death by overworking is so prevalent, they have a name for it: karoshi.
And if that wasn't bad enough, he told his engrossed listeners that nobody cared!
Sitting in the audience, we immediately thought that he was exaggerating the situation for effect. But as we listened intently, the data he shared grew increasingly shocking. It seemed that work had become a dangerous thing to do, the workplace a dangerous place to be.
Having spent the previous 25 years working with organizations in a range of industries, from big pharma to high tech, retail to finance, professional services to the public sector, we thought that we'd seen it all and knew just about everything there was to know about work and the workplace. We had consulted with hundreds of organizations on their transformation journeys, guiding them from low‐performance to higher‐performance workplaces. We had witnessed the positive and negative effects of leaders, those who were trusted and those who were despised. We were sure that we knew the key factors that mattered, believing that organizational culture was paramount to performance and that trust was the secret sauce to unlock discretionary effort, inspire collaboration and innovation, and drive productivity, creating the much‐envied agile workplace of the future.
Sitting through Pfeffer's presentation, we began to question if we'd gotten it all wrong.
Pfeffer's presentation evolved into his book Dying for a Paycheck, which was published in 2018. We consider it a critical moment, a catalyst that has inspired a movement that is spreading across the world. His presentation inspired John to set up the organization Healthy Place to Work, and it has become a North Star for Michael since leaving Great Place to Work in the US. We believe it has helped set a new aspirational standard for organizations.
Since that transformational moment in New Orleans, we have uncovered an important gap in our knowledge and experience. We have identified a critical factor that is a true game changer for organizations chasing the ultimate high‐performance workplace. It brings together all the elusive elements that are necessary in addressing the complex issues in today's zeitgeist, from individual and corporate purpose to sustainability, mental health to gender equality, from diversity, equity, and inclusion to the creation of a safe place of belonging that is free from racism and discrimination.
It's HEALTH!
It has become clear to us that workforce/workplace health is the biggest predictor of organizational performance. However, most organizations are getting it completely wrong and are wasting huge amounts of money and resources in the process.
First, they are using an outdated definition, which focuses on a pathogenic approach to health, meaning they view health as the avoidance of disease. Instead, they should be taking a salutogenic approach, focusing on the elements that will make workers healthier and more resilient in the face of today's difficult living and working challenges. In addition, the tactical, event‐based, tick‐the‐box approach to the issue of health is deeply flawed. A strategic, evidence‐based, and data‐driven approach is required.
THE PROBLEM WITH LEADERS
It also became abundantly clear that the leaders of many organizations are the biggest obstacle to workplace health. Employees need role models, and the leaders were modeling the worst behaviors. In many cases leaders had knowingly sacrificed their own health in the pursuit of power and profit. They operate in a toxic, politically driven culture focused on winning at all costs. Quarter‐by‐quarter reporting has created a pressure cooker that has resulted in employees being viewed as replaceable resources rather than unique individuals with personalized needs.
Most leaders, speaking confidentially, admit to being worn out, at their wit's end and close to burnout. They are working long hours, experiencing extreme pressure and stress, and attempting to achieve the impossible art of running a business in a pandemic while also being there for their families and friends.
“Things were tough anyway and then the COVID came to town,” remarked one exhausted leader we interviewed. Another questioned the trade‐off he had made in pursuit of career progression and a great pension; “This is why they pay me the big bucks” was his resentful comment. Some admitted to thinking twice about attracting others to take the same career route, but like a Ponzi scheme, it needed more newbies so the others could check out with the goodies.
When the COVID‐19 pandemic hit, the pace of work life was already manic, the challenges significant. Leaders were juggling too many balls, hoping not to drop any important ones that could be catastrophic to the business. That was the game they all played.
And as the coronavirus lingered and mutated, in addition to worrying about their own health and safety as well as their family's and employees’, leaders were confronted with a tight labor market and growing expectations around the employee experience. Heap on to those complex challenges ambitious targets around diversity and inclusion, the need to address the gender pay gap, demands for a racist‐free, LGBTQ+‐friendly workplace, and employee demands that companies make serious commitments to fight climate change, and you have a tinderbox of stressed‐out leaders and competing priorities. There was no playbook for CEOs and executive teams who are desperately trying to navigate this new terrain.
The pandemic highlighted the fact that the system was broken. It gave people time to think. Employees realized that work simply wasn't working and in many cases was damaging their health and their relationships, and robbing them of treasured moments with friends and family members.
So is work the enemy of health? Well, not quite.
While bad work and poor workplaces can be lethal to your health, life without work is also harmful. The statistics around retirement are a bit frightening. When you remove the purpose for getting up every morning and a feeling that you are contributing to the world with your skills and talents, health declines at a significant rate. Think twice before you make retirement your life's ambition!
While it is clear that work can make you sick, it can also be the best part of your life. Work that matches your ambitions, plays on your strengths rather than exploiting your weaknesses, work that allows your talents to shine, enabling you to feel successful—that kind of work can make you the healthiest you have ever been.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THIS BOOK
Our intention for this book is to provide you with the theoretical and practical understanding of what healthy workplaces are and how you can create one in your organization—regardless of its size or industry or location. We begin by doing a deeper dive into why work isn't working but also why work is also (paradoxically) the answer. It's important to understand the problem clearly but also what the promise holds for leaders and managers willing to lean in and create salutogenic‐focused organizations: organizations that center health as a business strategy and organizing principle.
In the pages that follow, we will share insights from experts including Jeffrey Pfeffer, Ron Goetzel, David Ulrich, Jim Loehr, and many more. You will also learn from the firsthand accounts of leaders around the globe as we relay their journeys. These brave leaders recovered from missteps and navigated dead ends as they transformed their companies into healthy organizations.
We will also share some important theoretical and historical elements as well as practical frameworks to assist you in this journey. We think that doing this will be helpful to you as a reader to understand not only how we got to where we are but will also point the way for how to think about and measure health. As you know based on your leadership experience, what is measured gets managed.
We then will pivot to examining the journey toward creating and sustaining a healthy workplace. We'll examine the symbiotic relationship between workforce and workplace health and how that informs the “lens” with which you can understand the dynamics in your own organization. We will highlight the lessons we've learned about where most organizations get it wrong and how you can accelerate progress.
For those of you with high‐minded motives, that is to actually make a significant impact on the lives of the people you work with every day and the lives of those they come in contact with, their friends and family, we hope you will find answers and inspiration.
Importantly, we hope you will see and use this book as an ongoing resource. We hope you will turn to this book again and again to explore the tools, resources, helpful tips, and voice of inspiration as you take on one of the greatest opportunities to make a meaningful impact on your organization's people and its performance.
PART I
Chapter 1: The Ultimate Driver of Organizational Performance
Chapter 2: Why Work Isn't Working
Chapter 3: How Work Can Be the Solution
Chapter 4: The Evolution of Workforce Health
Chapter 5: Salutogenesis: A New Model for Workplace Health
CHAPTER 1The Ultimate Driver of Organizational Performance
How healthy are you? How healthy are your people? How healthy is your organization?
These are vitally important questions—the answers to which determine the limits of your life, your team's effectiveness, and your organization's success. These questions are interrelated. Your team and your organization have a direct impact on your own health and well‐being. And your organization's performance and success are dependent on the health of its people. This symbiotic relationship between your people's health and your organization's health and performance may seem like a no‐brainer. You might be thinking, “Of course that would be the case.” But in our research and experience in working with organizations over several decades, we find that very few organizations act on this understanding. If they do make some effort, we find that employees are typically offered some sort of wellness or workplace well‐being program. These might be useful, necessary even, but not sufficient. And more importantly, they fail to address the organization's strategic opportunity in organizing itself and developing more ways of working that actually promote and support employee health.
What if leaders seriously entertained the idea that higher performance is a result of businesses organizing around their people rather than people having to organize around the business? We have taken as fact that the way to increase productivity and profit is through an absolute adherence to Taylorism, the management theory made popular by Frederick Taylor that is characterized by standards, being mechanistic, inflexible, and precise. These ideas have made a significant contribution to our understanding of organizations and productivity; they have their place. However, the wholesale shift to this organizational mindset has its limits and isn't without cost. We find that an adherence to old ways of working and relating results in a decreased sense of personal purpose and accomplishment, less role and strategic clarity, and disconnection and lack of control over one's work environment. It's unfortunate, as organizations then must invest in programs and interventions just to address the problems that this mindset created in the first place!
A people‐centered workplace might seem like a tough shift to make. If you're a leader, manager, or small business owner and looking to realize increased effectiveness with your people or productivity and financial results, reimagining how to organize your business and its culture seems like a bigger project than you might have the appetite for. The usual way of managing and leading may be tempting, but if you have picked up this book, we imagine that you're open to making a shift in mental mindset and aligning your behaviors to achieve outsized business gains and, concurrently, have a more authentic and fulfilling experience as a leader. In other words, it's worth the investment of creating a healthy place to work, and the energy you put into this will yield significant returns. This book aims to equip leaders with a road map and tools to make a demonstrable impact with their people and their organization. We argue here that rather than work and the workplace being the cause of disease, dysfunction, and limited performance, a healthy workplace is the key to unlocking the full value of your people and your organization.
When we ask the question, “How healthy is your organization?” we often hear from our clients’ employees that it's not or maybe it's “sort of.” Rarely do we hear that they work in a consistently and reliably healthy workplace. Employees at all levels will describe how it is difficult to balance competing demands at work or that their contributions aren't fully valued or that they don't feel like they belong. Sometimes their manager takes credit for their ideas, or they are given unachievable deadlines within a regular workweek, or there is little role or strategic clarity. One leader shared with us, “I'm wiped out and exhausted by the end of the week, and so I need the weekend to recharge, but that's difficult to do because I have family responsibilities on the weekend too.”
DEFINING “HEALTHY WORKPLACE”
A healthy workplace is one that incorporates a strong sense of alignment to organizational values and purpose. The leaders and managers in healthy workplaces role‐model a supportive and healthy workplace culture. They also support people in being the best version of themselves. They give employees opportunities to contribute their best and create an inclusive and just workplace. Employees in these workplaces feel like they have a strong supply of productive energy. They operate in an energizing physical environment, and they have a similar level of energy at the end of the day as when they started. They can attend to the demands of work and their families and communities with equitable attention. They also have healthy relationships at work, and they often feel like their work just flows.
You'll notice that this expanded definition is more than just physical health. Quite often, leaders think health is equivalent to physical health. In reality, that is just the beginning. When we look at healthy organizations, we find there is a clear sense of purpose. There is a way in which employees are aligned with the organization, both in terms of values and how their work contributes to the larger whole. Health is also made manifest in how the organization bolsters employees’ mental resilience. The organization encourages a learning mindset and encourages employees to grow and expand their contributions. Work requirements are manageable, and employees have control over how they work. Healthy workplaces encourage connection. Employees feel like they belong and can develop authentic, productive relationships. Beyond inclusion, healthy workplaces do not tolerate racist or sexist behaviors or ways of engaging that are oppressive or unjust. These and other aspects of a healthy workplace will be explored further later in this book, but you'll note that we are taking a much larger lens when we think of health.
Key to understanding all of this is that our work affects our health, and in turn, our health affects our work. In some organizations, this reciprocal relationship creates a virtuous cycle whereas in other organizations, the relationship creates a vicious cycle. The symbiotic nature between worker health and organizational performance is something that will be explored throughout this book.
For managers and leaders who understand that the biggest driver of organizational performance is developing and maintaining a healthy workplace, decreasing whatever organizational friction exists and increasing employee well‐being yields a powerful flywheel effect. The upside value to business can be substantial in terms of increased worker productivity, decreased sickness absences, reduced health care costs, and a compelling employer brand that attracts and retains talent (see www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/the-business-benefits-of-a-healthy-workforce/). Research into the business benefits points out that healthy workplace cultures are 1.9 times more likely to innovate effectively and 2.8 times more likely to adapt well to change. (See https://joshbersin.com/2021/10/the-healthy-organization-the-next-big-thing-in-employee-wellbeing/.)
KNOWING VERSUS DOING
We find that many managers and leaders think they see how this works, and yet our experience is that they act counter to their understanding. Perhaps it is because leaders are looking at this problem entirely the wrong way. It may be an issue of awareness and knowledge of what health really is and understanding the individual and collective impact on organizational success. We'll discuss the science of well‐being in Chapter 13 and what we've learned about this area; it is broader and deeper than most people think. We'll also differentiate this idea from the current wellness, well‐being, and lifestyle trends that we see. They're related but not the same.
Perhaps, however, it is something more intransigent than knowing what to do. Perhaps the disconnect between “if we provide a gym and a mindfulness app, we've covered our bases” and then sending out an email at 10:00 p.m. at night is more of a “knowing‐doing gap” as Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton call it (see www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/knowing-doing-gap). As leaders and managers, we know that our actions have both intentional and unintentional consequences and that how we integrate an understanding of health into our own personal models of leadership needs to be refined and sharpened. The bigger issue is how we act or execute on our understanding—in real time—to support employees’ mental, emotional, financial, and physical health. Perhaps, though, our organizational systems are intentionally designed to be unhealthy. Our business processes, policies, procedures, and practices—our workplace culture—aim to support the opposite of employee health and well‐being. This is a tougher problem to solve, for sure, but it is vitally important for leaders and managers that this be examined and addressed. You can't be healthy in an unhealthy and toxic work environment. At the same time, an organization can't be healthy (and all the tangible value that brings) with a workforce that isn't healthy. It doesn't work that way.
If the goal of leaders is to enhance organizational capabilities and performance and not simply decrease “unnecessary costs,” then focusing on creating and sustaining workplace health is a useful core strategy and organizing principle. Creating an organization that is healthy and employees who are healthy is good for people and good for business (see www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/the-business-benefits-of-a-healthy-workforce/). While we haven't experienced healthy workplaces with unhealthy employees in our consulting work, such workplaces could theoretically exist. Employees might have life circumstances or face other issues that produce unhealthy habits and behaviors. More often the case, we see healthy employees in unhealthy workplaces. Over time, however, employees experience negative health outcomes, disengage, or—if they are resilient—leave the organization for someplace less toxic and more supportive. A lot of our work, unfortunately, is focused on unhealthy workplaces that have unhealthy employees. Not only are individual health outcomes low but organizational performance is not as strong as it might otherwise be. Even if the financial results are solid in the short term, longer term the organization will have to address the problematic voluntary turnover of key talent, diminished ability to innovate, and the inability to move with agility to support new business opportunities. (For more information, see https://hbr.org/2020/06/times-up-for-toxic-workplaces and https://business.kaiserpermanente.org/insights/mental-health-workplace/workplace-stress-business-problem-getting-worse.)
The purpose of this book is to equip leaders with a road map or playbook of sorts—one in which you can center creating and sustaining workplace health as a core strategy and reap the benefits by enhanced organizational capacity and performance.
MODELING THE HEALTHY WAY
“Your health is your wealth,” as the saying goes. Do you start work each day refreshed and ready to jump in? Do you get sufficient rest, and do you have good energy throughout the day? Are your relationships at home, at work, and with friends generative and nurturing? Do you have the opportunity to bring the best of you to work? Are you encouraged and recognized for doing so? Do you believe you can manage home and work demands and pressures in a fulsome, integrated, and healthy way? We find that most of us aren't able to give an emphatic “yes” to all of these questions. While this book is not about individual health and well‐being per se, one item in our research has an outsized effect on whether employees experience their organization as healthy: senior leaders demonstrate healthy behaviors.
The significance of role‐modeling the right behaviors is hard to understate as employees observe what is important and what is encouraged. We unconsciously and consciously mirror individuals and groups around us. Leaders and managers are uniquely positioned to influence behavior, given their inherent power and authority. Beyond their authority, elements of rational, social, or emotional techniques (Bacon 2011) can be learned and utilized by managers and leaders to influence employees in living healthier, connected lives. Leaders and managers can also improve workplace health by nudging employees toward certain decision choices that promote a wellness culture.
While the vast majority of adults self‐report that they feel healthy or lead a healthy lifestyle, a recent study indicated that only 3% of Americans actually live a healthy lifestyle. And a “healthy lifestyle” was defined as moderate exercise, having body fat of less than 20% if you're a man or 30% if you're a woman, a good score on the Healthy Eating Index, and not smoking. Europeans didn't fare much better. A similar study indicated that only about 6% of adults across 20 countries had a healthy lifestyle (see https://research.unl.pt/ws/portalfiles/portal/11656704/Marques_Am_J_Hea_Prom_2018_1.pdf). The bar is not particularly high, and yet most of us are failing to address basic issues of physical health. But our overall health is simply not a function of our physical health.
If we turn to include mental and emotional health, we find that most of us struggle with varying levels of stress and anxiety (42% of women and 35% of men report feeling burned out often or almost always; see https://time.com/6101751/burnout-women-in-the-workplace-2021/). A more recent study by job aggregator Indeed (www.indeed.com/lead/preventing-employee-burnout-report) found that 52% of respondents experienced burnout, partially owing to the stresses of the recent COVID‐19 pandemic.
A culture of overwork, stress, and burnout is not limited to North American and European workers. It is a global phenomenon. In East Asia, for example, Japanese workers have been working 60‐plus‐hour workweeks for decades. “Death by overwork” is actually a term in East Asia: karoshi in Japan, guolaosi in China, and gwarosa in South Korea. A 2016 Japanese paper on karoshi by Kamesaka and Tamura found that working more than 60 hours per week significantly increases the risk of karoshi for males, while the threshold for females is about 45 hours. Because Japanese women tend to bear more of the burden of housework, when housework is added to working time, women face a serious risk of karoshi. Thus, a fuller picture of our own health suggests that we are more likely to be stressed out, tired, anxious, and physically unhealthy than not, and it can lead to devastating consequences.
With the recent COVID‐19 pandemic, our lives were upended. Many of us couldn't work from home. Instead, we had to physically show up for work somewhere, putting at risk our own lives, our families, and our co‐workers. This created a different level of fear and stress that scientists are still trying to understand the effects of. For those who could work from home, that brought with it a different set of challenges. Isolation and loss of connection coupled with an “always on” expectation that was more constant than pre‐pandemic created new mental health challenges. Many of us juggled being a parent with children learning from home, while attending to the demands of a changed work environment and workday. Millions of people around the world lost their jobs and incomes and were worried about how to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table. And, of course, millions of people lost their lives.
To be sure, our lives weren't stress‐free nor were most of us engaged in a physically healthy lifestyle before the pandemic. In the Western world, the push and pull of our daily lives, unrelenting social media and social pressure, political tensions, economic changes, and so on have resulted in increasingly poor health outcomes. Layer in disparate health outcomes based on gender, race, and socioeconomic status, and the complexity and challenges just increase. And for many of us in other parts of the world, struggling economies and political upheaval bring with it another level of health challenges. In short, the pandemic just enhanced the already existing dread and burnout many people were facing.
All of this is cumulative, both for us individually but also collectively. If we step back and examine the impact at a macro level, we find that although people are living longer (today most people in the world can expect to live as long as those in the very richest countries in 1950; see https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy), we are living with and managing an increasing range of diseases. The world's biggest killer is cardiovascular disease, making up a total of 27% of global deaths (see www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)). Not only is cardiovascular disease the number one killer in the world, but it is also the most expensive disease, costing governments, business, and individuals billions of dollars annually. That cardiovascular disease is largely preventable suggests that there is a significant opportunity to significantly improve health outcomes.
It is broader than cardiovascular disease, however. There exists a great body of research that an enormous percentage of health care costs stem from chronic disease, which also includes diabetes, circulatory disease, and hypertension. And research also underscores how much of that is caused by stress. McKinsey research (www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/in-the-news/good-health-is-good-business) highlights that poor health costs around 15% of global GDP from premature death and lost productive potential. The cost to business is tremendous. Role‐modeling the way is the first step toward creating a healthy organization.
DEMONSTRATING CARE AS LEADERS
Besides role‐modeling healthy behaviors, the other distinguishing feature we see from the healthiest workplaces are managers and leaders demonstrating caring behaviors for the well‐being of their employees. This demonstration goes beyond the occasional check‐in or spending the extra 60 seconds to invite a conversation on how employees are doing, but making an intentional effort to increase the level of trust and connection that you have with your people. It requires active listening and creative problem solving. In the healthiest workplaces, it means putting aside the rules of “this is what is available” in order to fashion a meaningful solution that centers on an employee's well‐being. It means thinking through how to fit work around the person rather than the person around their work.
In most organizations today, leaders typically are stretched such that pausing to really consider the impact and implications of work demands on employee well‐being is rarely an option. Leaders don't feel like they have the time given the push and pull demands of their role. For some leaders, asking these broader and deeper questions of their people, and then finding solutions that work for them, hasn't been a part of their repertoire. One senior manager confided to us, “I don't even know where I'd begin.” For some leaders, the thought that this would even be a consideration doesn't really compute. Individual lives and needs that are not directly related to work product is outside work—a variation on “address your personal problems on your own time.” However, leaders who are on the cutting edge of cultivating healthy workplace cultures understand that the personal affects the business and vice versa. Our lives can't be segmented and the boundaries defined so clearly.
The other issue that we find in our work is that most of this “caring stuff” has become the province of human resources. This is primarily how wellness or well‐being programs were delegated (or relegated) to HR to begin with. It allows managers to redirect employees to the employee assistance program (EAP) or human resources department. And human resources, to manage a large population, creates rules, guidelines, boundaries, and policies that work for most but not for all. It's important for managers and leaders to understand the capacity of the organizational system to support employee health and well‐being (and their own health and well‐being). Without adding to labor costs, most organizations can expand beyond their present boundaries—akin to a balloon that can usually take in more air and expand a bit further. The challenge is equipping managers and leaders to engage employees in conversations that matter.
Aaron Antonovsky was a sociologist whose work concerned the relationship between stress, health, and well‐being. He coined the term salutogenesis based on research of how Holocaust survivors coped with the stress they experienced. Despite going through the dramatic tragedy of the Holocaust, some survivors were able to thrive later in life. The discovery that there must be powerful health‐causing factors led to the development of salutogenesis. For our purposes here, it's important to note that the workplace has the potential to be salutogenic or pathogenic. It's not “all or nothing” because the workplace is not free from tension or stress, and there is going to be conflict as goals and resources are contested. There are always going to be fewer resources than the need for resources. And that's not really the issue here. Managers and leaders can go a long way in creating “shock absorbers” so that people know how to cope with what the typical workplace throws at them. And managers and leaders can help better answer the question that Antonovksy asked: “How can this person be helped to move toward greater health?” When we do that, we leverage one of the biggest influencers of employee health and performance.
WHY TALK ABOUT HEALTH NOW?
Workplace health has long been an issue. In fact, historians trace workplace wellness back to Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), who is believed to be one of the first to write about the effects of work exposure on workers and was interested in the possibilities of taking preventative measures (Gainer 2008). Dr. Michael Rucker notes that workplace wellness was generally an afterthought for most organizations up until the 1950s, when employee assistance programs (EAPs) started to be offered in many organizations to address alcoholism and mental health issues (https://michaelrucker.com/well-being/the-history-of-workplace-wellness/). Certainly, EAPs have helped a great many people, but again, EAPs are an organizational intervention to address a symptom for which the organization itself is sometimes the cause. Jennifer Reardon (1998) notes that in the 1970s, workplace wellness programs were developed as the financial responsibility for health care, at least in the United States, moved from the government to businesses. These programs were largely seen as a way of maintaining or decreasing costs. It also coincided with the occupational health and safety movement, both in North America and many Western European countries.
In the early 2000s, smoking cessation programs, stress management, and nutrition programs became more commonplace in organizations. The idea here was to target high‐risk groups, again in an effort to reduce health care costs. Leaders thought this was a beneficial use of resources, but many of these programs were unsuccessful in achieving the goal of reduced costs. This ushered in a change in approach from targeting specific groups to offering all employees wellness programs. The target of the intervention was still on employees and less on changing the organizational culture or how leaders led. More recently, organizations and government agencies have increased the number of disease management programs, corporate wellness programs, stress reduction and management, and health promotion programs. While all of this has been helpful, it has largely been insufficient to the task at hand. The current state can largely be summed up by Robert Chapman, CEO of Barry‐Wehmiller, who reportedly stood in front of 1,000 other CEOs and said, “You are the cause of the health care crisis.”
Given this, a new approach to workplace health is required—one that centers employee health and well‐being as a business strategy, not an HR program. It comes at an opportune time. The recent COVID‐19 pandemic has exacerbated several trends that were already in place. The first is the desire for employees to have more control over their work lives—how, when, and where work gets done. And a recent McKinsey study (www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19) highlighted that upward of 25% of workforces in advanced economies could work from home between three and five days per week without a loss in productivity. The second trend has been for employees, particularly millennials and gen Z workers, to take periodic sabbaticals and exit the workforce (see www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/what-gen-z-and-millennials-want-from-employers-amid-great-resignation.html). The third trend is a shifting psychological contract between employees and employers. The employer‐employee psychological contract is the unwritten, intangible agreement between an employee and their employer that describes the informal commitments, expectations, and understandings that make up their relationship. Recent changes to this contract suggests a larger dynamic is at play.
Remember when your parent or grandparent had a job for life? They worked at one company their entire career and collected a gold watch and a pension when they were ready to retire. That was their employer‐employee psychological contract. In the 1980s that contract changed dramatically after companies downsized, “right‐sized,” and reengineered many dedicated employees out of their jobs. Loyalty on both sides vanished, and job hopping became the norm. The psychological contract between employer and worker shifted dramatically.
Then, in the midst of the 2008 economic downturn, millions of jobs were shed again. When multinationals started to recover, they hired contract workers or temporary employees. For many people, being a part of this gig economy became the way forward. It was a win for businesses because they could moderate their staffing based on needs and requirements as well as save on worker benefits. Again, the psychological contract changed, making it less likely that a worker could rely on a business.
Now, with the COVID‐19 pandemic, we once again find ourselves with millions of workers globally out of work, and for millions more, they have “had enough” and are exiting the labor force in the Great Resignation. The psychological contract is changing again, and how employees are viewing their employers is fundamentally changing. The new contract is characterized by a desire for improved work‐life balance, flexibility, empathic leadership, diversity and inclusion, and matching values. (See www.hrexchangenetwork.com/employee-engagement/articles/renegotiating-the-psychological-contract-for-the-post-covid-world.)
The result of all this is that we find ourselves in a massively altered world. Most managers and leaders are struggling with how to find a foothold in this new business landscape. There are more jobs than available workers, and even if that dynamic changes, and the labor market evens out (and it likely will), and leaders can find the best talent to deliver value for the organization, employee expectations have changed. Employees expect that health and safety come first. The pandemic has put their health and the health of their families in a whole new light. Flexibility and time and the ability to work a hybrid schedule (for office employees) is more important than strict monetary benefits. And employees wanted to be treated as human, with full lives. They expect their managers to treat them with that kind of respect, rather than just assets in a transaction. Employees now see the risk to themselves and their families quite differently.
Finally, at a macro level, the big problem is that to be healthy you must be wealthy, because governments can no longer help meet the demand for services and we, therefore, need another solution to these global health crises. The next most powerful institution in society, after the government, is business. And as life expectancy continues to increase in much of the industrialized world, the responsibility and financial burden of taking care of citizens will shift to businesses and to individuals. Governments are becoming less able to finance the health and related costs of their citizens. Therefore, business leaders will need to step forward and lead on this issue. The wonderful thing is that it is in their short‐term and long‐term interests to encourage public health, and the ones that lead first will get the biggest benefit. Businesses can move the dial on employee health and make a real and significant difference in people's lives.
CHAPTER 2Why Work Isn't Working
In our research for this book, one of the core themes that we kept returning to is that work isn't working for most people, and our goal was to offer a different approach and solution for leaders and managers to make work work. As we analyzed survey data and stories of employees, we identified a variety of reasons why work isn't working, and here we provide an overview of some of the consistent issues that employees experience.
PANDEMIC OVERLOAD AND OTHER EXTRAORDINARY DEMANDS
Sometimes when a workplace isn't performing well, we try to find someone to blame. But sometimes there is a system overload, a situation that is so unexpected that it demands an unprecedented response from all involved. The early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic brought with it some of the worst scenes experienced by many. They were simply unprepared and overwhelmed to deal with a tsunami of illness.
We have struggled with life‐or‐death cases constantly. Honestly this wasn't what I signed up for. Yes, I wanted to help people. Yes, I wanted to nurse them back to health, but now every patient was a carrier of a disease that we knew little about and it could kill us as was evidenced by the death and pain that had become a daily occurrence. You might not think death and dying should be unusual in a hospital; however, this was very different, it was my colleagues, my team members who were dying. Fit and healthy people of all ages suddenly becoming patients, struggling to breath, and dying right in front of us. We were helpless to fix the situation. We didn't know how to respond. We never received training to deal with this situation. I was terrified. It could be me next. I was absolutely exhausted. I was emotionally drained. There was nobody to turn to because everybody felt the same way. I wasn't sure if I could go on in this war zone, but there was nobody to take my place. I simply had to soldier on and compartmentalize my feelings, hope and pray that others would discover a cure and stop this constant flow of suffering.
One of the biggest presenting issues in our workplace assessments over the last two years has been work demand. Many organizations found themselves delivering beyond their capacity, and that had a human cost. Those nurses and doctors, those transport operatives, those retail stores employees, the emergency services, frontline, backline, and many, many more were thrown into situations that were terrifying. The level of post‐traumatic stress that some organizations are dealing with is simply off the charts.
However, there are organizations that run their business operations in such a way that places unfair demands on their people outside of the extraordinary events of the last 24 months. Burnout can be the result. For those in a position to leave, the exit door is the best way to escape the situation. For others not so lucky, the misery continues on a daily basis and takes its toll on them and their families. This is causing them significant health problems, and it doesn't have to be this way.
THE HORRIBLE MICROMANAGING BOSS
For others, their daily lives are miserable when they suffer under the oppression of some truly horrible bosses. They are living with a heightened stress response, which has horrific consequences on their bodies and their health. Of course, some of these bosses are particularly good at managing up, and the leaders in the organization are blissfully unaware of the impact on their people.
I feel like I'm back at school and my teacher is about to correct my homework. He watches everything I do, and at times I feel that nothing I do will be good enough. We seem to have a parent‐child relationship. My daily life depends on the face that comes through the door every day. Some days the face is smiling and there is a subtle demand that everybody respond in turn and join in the hilarity of the situation, but then the next minute the face changes to a frown and everything becomes tense. Who will be picked out for admonishment today? My boss is a schizophrenic from moment to moment. Combine that with his need to control every aspect of everything, a level of micromanagement I have never experienced before. I can never relax. I am always on guard. What way will it go today?
The relationship between an employee and their manager or supervisor is critically important. Many managers are task oriented and simply want to get the job done without considering their impact on the individual employee. Some organizations now hire people and then let those individuals interview and select their managers, understanding how important the chemistry of this relationship is to the future success of the team.
NO ROOM FOR DIFFERENCE
To turn up to work each day and not be accepted for who you are is bad enough, but millions of workers around the world are hiding who they are for fear of the reaction it might provoke. That constant fear erodes confidence, ensuring those individuals will never bring their best whole selves to work. They will never be as creative or innovative as they can be because they are not operating in a psychologically safe environment.
I'm not like them, I know that, but all I want is to be accepted, included, and treated with respect. They can't seem to get over the fact that as a Black gay woman, I'm not the norm in this organization. I was attracted to the narrative on the website which proclaimed an ambition to be more diverse, and I found the leadership's approach to be refreshing. However, the reality on the ground is very different. I suppose some people feel threatened by difference. I understand that it is easier for them to be around people who are just like them and see the world the same way they do, but do they have no room in their lives to welcome other views, other ideas, other people? I try to give the impression that it doesn't really bother me, but there are private moments where I simply lose it and cry uncontrollably. But I don't want to leave. I don't want these bullies to win with their subtle below‐the‐radar discrimination. I really want to fit in and belong, but I don't think I will ever be accepted for who I am. They know I'm Black, but they don't know I'm gay. Can you imagine what would happen if they discovered that? I will just have to continue hiding that part of who I am in my workplace. That is just the way life is here.
Many organizations have introduced chief diversity officers tasked with driving a more progressive approach to their diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies and practices. Many proclaim that they now welcome everybody with open arms to their companies, whereas the truth is that this new culture may often not have permeated the organization and all its layers. This can result in talent being attracted by the proclaimed employer brand communicated on their website and social media channels, but the reality on the ground can be very different. It is critical that organizations listen closely to the views of new employees to ensure that there is alignment between the real culture, the real employee experience, and the organization's recruitment messaging.
ULTIMATE BETRAYALS
In some organizations there is war being waged at the highest levels, and looking at it as a “blood sport” is not hyperbole. People pick sides and get busy undermining others. Many leaders are destroyed in the “games” that are played. We have talked to “tough men” who threw up several times before going into a board meeting because they knew they would be taken apart.
