opinion

What is wellbeing at work – and how does it show up?

Recent clients of mine have included a Director who was poorly managed by a disengaged boss and who was possibly at the lowest ebb of his career in terms of confidence and health. There was the skilled senior manager who had always been happy, successful and well-regarded in her organisation but whose output and mental health began to decline when she got a new manager with whom she found it impossible to develop a good relationship. And the senior leader who was seriously overburdened and stressed but who didn’t dare speak to anyone inside her organisation as she feared that even having the conversation would damage her career prospects.

All these clients – and others – were suffering from low levels of wellbeing.

Indicators of wellbeing

Wellbeing at work manifests itself in a variety of ways, including:

Individuals’ sense of confidence and ease, which come from a balance between being supported and being challenged to achieve the next level of development;
A mood of energy, dynamism, motivation and a release of more of employees’ potential;
Collegiality – a spirit of collaboration, and an absence of inappropriate competitiveness within the organisation, so that obstacles in the path of achieving positive results are minimised;
Employees having a sense of empowerment and a degree of autonomy;
High levels of engagement. See more on the link between wellbeing and engagement at the Engage for Success White Paper of May 2014 ‘The evidence: Wellbeing and Employee Engagement’; and
High levels of happiness – and happy employees are typically more productive and effective employees

Benefits of corporate wellbeing

Organisations with high levels of wellbeing retain their people. According to the Corporate Leadership Council (reported in the Huffington Post) ‘replacing employees who leave can cost up to 150% of the departing employee’s salary when you take into account recruitment, hiring and training costs, [while] organisations that have a highly engaged workforce have the potential of reducing staff turnover by 87%’. Imagine what that can do to the productivity, culture and overall performance of the business.

The benefits also show up in:

Creativity and innovation (which boosts development and can sharpen a competitive edge);
Personal initiative and a willingness to take responsibility (so that progress is made and problems dealt with promptly – and lessons learned without blame);
Employees contributing discretionary effort (so that more gets done with existing resources);
Lower rates of absenteeism and presenteeism (so the organisation gets a better return on investment in its people);
Higher levels of retention (see for example ‘Workplace Wellbeing – What is the Business Impact?’ ;
A reputation as a good place to work

In short, profitability, efficiency and effectiveness increase. Positivity breeds positivity.

Factors that enable wellbeing

Employees who understand where the expectations and demands of them sit within the corporate strategy and its translation into corporate tactics, and who understand the place of their contribution in the organisation’s output, will have a greater sense of the relationship between their role and the corporate goals.

This in turn will enable a more substantial sense of purpose – and a higher level of wellbeing – than for those who are simply doing a job in response to a ‘do as I say’ style of leadership. And that sense of purpose – which gives meaning to an organisation’s work and the work of its employees – is a critical factor in the building and sustaining of wellbeing.

Other key factors for enabling wellbeing include:

A caring and supportive environment where employees feel listened to and valued;
Unconditional support and consideration for individual circumstances (including disability, diversity, capacity or incapacity, or other constraints on the release of personal potential, perhaps for family reasons);
A listening environment which is empathically in touch with the themes and currents in its workforce so that it is less likely to be caught off-guard;
A constructive and productive approach to the management of conflict;
Working conditions that create physical comfort (everything from furnishings to working hours) and that demonstrate care for the individual;
Management confidence in employees so that they have confidence in themselves (this, of course, has implications for trust, recruitment and selection, and development and training);
Employees knowing what motivates them and gives meaning and purpose in their lives (this is a key ingredient of happiness at work, as set out by Action for Happiness

For most organisations this represents a challenging list, but one which warrants careful consideration. It can contribute a foundation for a wellbeing strategy, starting with a piece of self-examination by leaders to explore where their organisations currently stand and where the gaps might be.

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Wellbeing: a direct impact on the bottom line

Organisations with high levels of wellbeing retain their people and in many other ways too, profitability, efficiency and effectiveness increase as wellbeing increases. Positivity breeds positivity. A sense of purpose – which gives meaning to an organisation’s work and the work of its employees – is a critical factor in the building and sustaining of wellbeing.

Leading across Cultures

To work effectively with difference, the starting point is to understand and be aware of oneself: behaviours, emotions, interpretations, assumptions, and the impact of assumptions. It means taking a holistic view, being curious, and holding back from making judgments of the worth of this or that person, or from jumping to conclusions. Leaders who are culturally aware create sub-cultures of greater trust, more effective communication, healthier relationships and leadership that releases infinitely more potential.

Factors in managing the executive career

Executives who have taken their careers in hand in a holistic sense, thinking ‘whole-life’ rather than simply in terms of the next apparently logical step on the ladder, are more likely to enjoy career longevity and deliver the fullest value for themselves and their organisations. The Wittenberg Career Coaching Model weaves together multiple factors within multiple perspectives to take account of this ‘whole-life’ approach.

Your personal brand: a marketable identity

Your personal brand conveys what makes you compelling, memorable and interesting, and becomes increasingly important the more senior the roles you take on. Expressing your personal brand relates to your passions and the sources of your personal fulfilment, your values and your achievement, your strengths and your reputation, your personal vision and your thought leadership.

Leadership coaching

Leaders who embrace the process of learning and raising their levels of self-awareness, self-understanding, understanding of others and understanding of the systems and contexts they operate within stand to gain the most from leadership coaching. On their coaching journeys they learn to listen to themselves and see themselves as others see them. They become more authentic, they see more clearly what kind of leaders they want to be, and they discover how to make that happen. They learn how to respond rather than react, in a fuller awareness of the choices they make.

Managing yourself to lead others

The leader who builds on, and develops, their self-awareness in such a way that they can step back emotionally from situations to put their own thinking on hold, and empathise with the players in those situations, will find that they are more connected with their people, and that higher levels of trust, performance, engagement and discretionary effort – rather than obedience or compliance (and the corresponding ‘jobsworth’ mentality) – are the order of the day.

Diversity: making more of difference

In order to work effectively with difference, the first two steps for the leader are, first, to understand and be aware of their own thinking, emotional processes and place in their systems, and, second, to adopt a stance of acceptance, humility and celebration of diversity. If the prevailing culture in their team, division or organisation doesn’t acknowledge or value diversity, then the leader needs to change their relationship to that culture (and the relationships within it) rather than try to change it from the outside.

Leadership development

Leadership development means embracing the challenges and being courageous enough to be open to learning, whether that learning is unpalatable or affirming. It means being curious, vulnerable and invested in understanding the systemic factors that shape beliefs, behaviours and relationships. It means learning that can’t simply be learnt from a textbook. It means the leader raising their self-awareness to gain insight into their drivers, strengths, and purpose – and into what inhibits them from achieving the outcomes they really want.

The global village

In contexts ranging from multinational corporations to social networking, leaders and their teams interact, communicate and influence others in multiple different cultural settings simultaneously. Culture encompasses literally anything which characterises a particular group, and the leader’s task is to release his or her workforce’s capability in this complex and dynamic environment.

We're all part of the systems

Although we’re all independent human beings, we’re also interdependent, functioning within several systems simultaneously that provide the framework for our relationships to people and organisations, decisions and achievements, beliefs and attitudes. Awareness of those systems and their impact can release blockages in teams, strategy and the implementation of change.

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