There are lots of surveys and studies that are reporting very high levels of burnout among workers and most especially among leaders. Are people really overwhelmed or are they just stressed, perhaps a bit more than normally but really just stressed?   

The brilliant Brene Brown helps us to make the distinction in a meaningful way with her insightful article based on her celebrated book “Atlas of the Heart”. Here is the article: “Stressed and overwhelmed: 10 learnings that changed how I think about emotions.”

She uses a definition of overwhelm from Jon Kabat-Zinn, an American professor emeritus of medicine and mindfulness expert:

“Overwhelm is the all-too-common feeling that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.”

We all have those struggles where our present moment is one in which we feel a bit overwhelmed. So what should we do when that happens. Here is what Brene says:

“Now, I’ve trained myself to couple the terms “overwhelm” and “do-nothing.” When I am actually feeling overwhelmed, I say, “I’m overwhelmed, and I need 10–15 minutes of non-doing.” I normally walk the parking lot at work or go outside at home.”

I have been doing that for years but never thought of it as “do-nothing time” – I go out into the garden or I go for a walk to the shops to get some groceries or I have a few swings with a golf club or I put a bit of music on and tune into it or I go and get myself a drink of water or coffee………” So, for me, “do nothing time” presents in lots of different ways.

What do you do for your “do nothing time”?

Why is it important for us to be able to name what we are feeling and take a break to rebalance?

As the article says, there is a growing body of research that tells us that, when we are overwhelmed, we don’t make good decisions. Additionally, as Renee says: “If I had the wherewithal to figure out what comes next and how we need to approach all of this, I wouldn’t be walking around in circles crying and talking to myself.”

So the next time you see one of your people appear frustrated or cross and they get up and go for a walk, maybe they are just taking necessary “do nothing time”. 

Perhaps you could share this blog (and Brene’s article) with your team and have a conversation about when people feel overwhelmed and what they do to get relief from that ie what does their “do nothing time” look like?

That will help to normalise “do nothing time” as a necessary part of managing our mental health at work.

If you would like to explore the ways that we might be able to help you to make yours a great workplace, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

Do you recall that old saying: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”? Are you having any difficulties retaining good people? Are you spending a lot of time and money on finding replacements? Perhaps you need to spend a bit more time and attention on the talent that you already have in your backyard – give them a reason to want to stay – it is much less expensive than having to replace them.

There have been 3 times in my career when, upon being advised of my resignation, my manager asked me: “Why are you leaving? We have great plans for you!”. My response in each case was: “Sorry but you forgot to tell me about them.”

I recently wrote about the SEEK’s Inaugural Australian Workplace Happiness Index Survey – see the blog here.

It found that the top three causal factors affecting Australian workers’ happiness were “purpose” and “their manager” and “day to day activities”.

New research undertaken by Gallup and Workhuman evaluated the relationship between recognition and turnover by tracking the career paths of nearly 3,500 employees from 2022 to 2024. They found that “well-recognised employees are 45% more likely to have changed organisations two years later”. Would that be true in your organisation?

The five pillars of “strategic recognition”

Through the research, Gallup and Workhuman identified 5 essential pillars of what they call “strategic recognition”. These are:

1. Fulfilling employees’ recognition expectations (the amount you receive makes sense)
2. Authentic (it isn’t just a checklist thing)
3. Personalised (one size doesn’t fit all)
4. Equitable (it’s given fairly without playing favourites)
5. Embedded in an organisation’s culture (its integrated into the day to day)

They claim that recognition practices that meet only one of these pillars delivers 2.9 times the level of employee engagement that no pillars would deliver and that, if 4 or 5 pillars are in play, the engagement level can be as high as 90%.

Inadequate reward and recognition is a prescribed psychosocial hazard

With the advent of the positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards, your reward and recognition practices are in the spotlight from compliance and risk management perspectives. That adds another layer to this question of why proper recognition of employees is important, doesn’t it?

The Model code for managing psychosocial hazards at work published by Safe Work Australia in 2022 describes “inadequate reward and recognition as:

• Jobs with low positive feedback or imbalances between effort and recognition.
• High level of unconstructive negative feedback from managers or customers.
• Low skills development opportunity or underused skills. 

The code and most of the research is focused on the feedback that people get in relation to the work that they perform and recognition of their skills and work contributions.

But is that all that there is to reward and recognition? I think it represents just the tip of the iceberg

Do you have the right approach?

When an employee comes to work with your organisation, they bring with them a lifetime of experiences, learnings and talents and their own cocktail of personal circumstances, needs and beliefs. That is simply because we are all human and all have our own individual journeys.

Most workplace’s formal reward and recognition programs don’t consider that – they just focus on technical job performance – ie the outputs. There are commonly  standard processes that people go through periodically without variation or recognition of diversity and often with subjective scoring systems that have little (if any) allowance for contextualisation to an employee’s particular circumstances.

As Gallup and Workhuman’s third essential pillar states “one size doesn’t fit all” yet most reward and recognition systems in our workplaces are “one size fits all”.

The fifth pillar is about it being integrated into the day to day. Performance reviews are just processes that happen periodically whereas the reality is that our emotional receptors are active all of the time and there are so many different ways in which we feel recognition for good or bad in our interactions with others every minute of every hour in every day.

Gallup has long advocated continuous coaching as the ideal model for employee engagement and high performance.

The “Engage for success” model of employee engagement from the UK similarly incorporates continuous coaching with weekly catchups as a key component of the “Engaging Management” pillar in that framework.

We agree and, what’s more, we think that is just the start.

My epiphany

One of the greatest learnings in my life was the incredible impact that a positive, personalised and multi-faceted approach to performance and development had on the development and wellbeing of one of my children.

The Big Picture Education program practised at Croydon Community School in Melbourne’s outer-east delivers curriculum through the lens of a child’s passions with learning aligned to the individual child’s strengths and capacities and life situation. It recognises the whole of the student – not just their ability to do the work set under the year’s curriculum. It helps children to find their true selves, get comfortable in their own skin and build confidence in using the personal assets they have ie to be themselves authentically. It should be in every Australian school.

That was one of the key inspirations for me to learn more about positive psychology and develop our whole suite of PosWork programs.

Our approach to recognition

It is embodied in our EngageMentality coaching model in a few ways.

Firstly, I identified the key components that make up an employment experience and set these as the lenses through which we address individual performance, development and recognition. These lenses are:

1. Roles  – the job that I do plus any of those other responsibilities that I might take on as a leader or an employee or safety representative or first aider, etc
2. Relationships – I rely on certain people for certain things and others rely on me for certain things
3. Values and behaviours – the behavioural attributes that we want to see practised in our organisation to make it respectful, inclusive and high performing
4. Strengths – using the VIA Character Strengths framework to use a strengths-based approach which optimises opportunities for me to use my signature strengths and to work on and be supported with my lesser strengths
5. Wellbeing – using the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey, build on my psychological safety, life balance and overall wellbeing.

We explore and address each of those items through a process of:

1. Positioning – doing a stocktake of where I sit in each of those areas
2. Planning – identifying the actions that I want to take for my performance and development, timelines for doing that and supports that I need and any people who are involved
3. Performing – implementing my plan and catching up with my manager each week for a coaching session
4. Presenting – providing me with the opportunity to showcase my achievements in performance and development and areas for further development

The coaching conversations simply involve asking and answering these 4 questions in the context of each of the 5 coaching lenses:

1. What has worked well (celebrate)?
2. What has been a struggle (recalibrate)?
3. What has changed (update)?
4. What are we going to do about all of that (activate)?

Conclusion

Recognition involves a lot more than just giving people occasional performance feedback as I have set out above.

It is essential that we recognise all of the individual and contextualise the way we do stuff to who they are.

We also need to ensure that day to day behaviours are consistent so that people feel safe to be themselves and can flourish by design.

If you would like to explore the ways that we might be able to help you to make yours a great workplace, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

Do you have a growth mindset and what difference does it make to your wellbeing and relationships if you do? Here we explore how the theory on growth and fixed mindsets, first introduced by psychologist Carol Dweck, plays out in a work setting.

A person’s mindset can significantly influence their performance, their relationships with colleagues, and their overall success. It can make a difference to how individuals approach challenges, development, and collaboration.

Understanding how growth and fixed mindsets manifest in work environments can lead to improved cultures, greater innovation, and enhanced personal satisfaction.

Growth Mindset at Work

A growth mindset is the belief that skills and intelligence can be developed through dedication, hard work, and continuous learning.

People with this mindset thrive in environments that encourage experimentation, feedback, and collaboration.

They tend to see challenges as opportunities for improvement rather than as threats and they tend to focus on what they can learn from an experience and what improvements can be made rather than allowing perceived obstacles or uncertainties get in the way of progress.

In practical terms, employees with a growth mindset:

1. Embrace challenges: They willingly take on tasks that push their limits, seeing them as opportunities to expand their capabilities. Whether it’s learning a new skill or taking on a demanding project, they approach the situation with a problem-solving attitude.

2. Persist through setbacks: Rather than seeing a mistake or failure as a reflection of their abilities, they view it as a temporary issue that can be solved with effort and adjustment. This resilience allows them to bounce back from difficulties with a focus on improvement.

3. Seek feedback: Individuals with a growth mindset actively seek feedback to learn how they can improve. They view constructive criticism as a valuable tool for self-improvement and are more likely to use it to refine their skills and performance.

4. Collaborate openly: They are willing to share knowledge and ask questions, believing that learning from others is an essential part of growth. They support the growth of their colleagues, creating a cooperative and forward-thinking work culture.

A growth mindset in the workplace leads to a higher level of innovation, as employees are more willing to take calculated risks and explore new solutions without the fear of failure. It also creates a positive environment where teams support each other and are not afraid to make mistakes in the pursuit of progress.

Fixed Mindset at Work

On the other hand, a fixed mindset is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are static traits that cannot be significantly changed eg I am who I am and you’ll just have to accept me as I am.

People with a fixed mindset often avoid situations where they may fail or appear less competent, leading to stagnation in their professional development.

In the workplace, this mindset can manifest in several detrimental ways:

1. Fear of failure: Employees with a fixed mindset tend to shy away from challenging tasks or projects that might expose their weaknesses. They prefer sticking to what they already know, which limits their opportunities for growth.

2. Avoidance of feedback: They often resist feedback, perceiving it as personal criticism rather than constructive advice. This can lead to defensiveness or complacency, hindering their ability to learn from mistakes.

3. Blame culture: People with a fixed mindset may place blame on external factors or colleagues when things go wrong, as accepting responsibility would challenge their belief in their fixed abilities. This can also be an issue when issues arise in workplaces and workplace processes are targeted on finding fault and applying consequences rather than exercising curiosity to generate consensus solutions.

4. Undermining collaboration: Because they see skills as static, they may be reluctant to collaborate openly, fearing that others will outshine them or highlight their weaknesses. This can result in a competitive, rather than cooperative, work culture.

People with a fixed mindset are more likely to be threatened by change because they want things to stay as they are rather than venture into the uncertainty of something new. This is one of the reasons why change management always comes up as a significant area for improvement in employee satisfaction surveys.

Fostering a Growth Mindset Culture

To foster a growth mindset in the workplace, leaders need to emphasise the importance of learning, effort, and improvement over natural talent or immediate success. Encouraging employees to take risks, learn from failure, and seek ongoing development is key. This can be achieved by:

1. Praising effort and learning: Managers should focus on recognizing the process employees go through to achieve results rather than just the outcomes. This reinforces the idea that effort leads to improvement.

2. Providing constructive feedback: Rather than merely pointing out mistakes, feedback should offer clear guidance on how to improve and grow. This helps employees see challenges as areas for development.

3. Encouraging collaboration: A workplace that encourages the sharing of ideas and learning from others will naturally promote a growth mindset.

What can also be helpful is aiding employees to understand their inherent strengths by using character strengths instruments like VIA Character Strengths and giving them opportunities to use their signature strengths as well as supporting them when they need to leverage their lesser strengths.

Fostering a growth mindset mentality plays an important part in developing and maintaining a psychologically safe workplace culture because it encourages people to speak up and to work together to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards and to not be bystanders.

If you would like to explore the ways that we might be able to help you to make yours a great workplace, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

To us, the findings from SEEK’s inaugural Workplace Happiness Index survey are no surprise – study after study has shown much the same findings about the factors that are most important to people feeling happy at work. Let’s have a look at them.  

According to SEEK’s Head of Customer Insights and Strategy, Aimee Hutton: “The aim of this inaugural Workplace Index is to spotlight the strongest opportunities to improve happiness at work for both employees and employers and, ultimately, drive a happier workforce in Australia”.

You might think that pay and promotional opportunities and flexible working would be among the key factors that people reported as the things that make for a happy life at work. Not according to this study which found that the top 5 factors ranked as the most important for happiness at work were:

1. Purpose
2. Their manager
3. Day to day responsibilities
4. Company culture
5. Stress levels

Salary came in at a distant #9.

So why are we not surprised?

Because we have known it for years, for example:

1. In 2009, “Engage for success”, the report on employee engagement commissioned by the UK Government and created by Robert Macleod and Nita Clarke was published. We use their 4 pillars of engagement in our Better Workplace Projects and the first of those pillars is “Strong strategic narrative”, the centrepiece of which is “Purpose”
2. Again in 2009, the famous Simon Sinek published his celebrated work “Start with Why” which is all about purpose being at the heart of successful organisations.
3. Then in 2011, Professor Martin Seligman’s masterpiece “Flourish” was published. It sets out the 5 pillars of wellbeing that are necessary for living a flourishing life – the PERMA model in which the “M” stands for “meaning”. It is on his work that the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey that we use in our Better coaching process is based.

That’s why we aren’t surprised that “purpose” has come out as the #1 factor for happiness at work. There is a huge body of evidence that has been telling us that for years.

Looking at #2, the second pillar in the Engage for Success framework is “Engaging management” which is about providing people with clarity of role and expectations, equipping them to be successful and coaching them to be the best that they can be. That is, it is about THEIR MANAGER enabling and supporting their people to be successful in managing their DAY TO DAY RESPONSIBILITIES.

Additionally, Gallup has been telling us for decades that the first line manager is the most dominant causal factor in whether an employee decides to stay or to go. They also preach a coaching model where there are regular catchups between an employee and THEIR MANAGER and they feel trusted and supported in undertaking their DAY TO DAY RESPONSIBILITIES.

So there isn’t really anything new in these latest findings from SEEK, is there?

Our “EngageMentality Coaching” model has been specifically designed to help managers to become coaches and be a reason why people want to stay because they feel trusted, supported and appreciated.

Perks are nice but…….

Over the last couple of years, we have seen new positive duties being introduced to prevent sexual harassment and gender-based behaviour and to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards. That is because, in too many workplaces, people aren’t enjoying work – the SEEK study showed that nearly half of the people surveyed said they were not happy at work.

The COVID experience has had the effect of causing people to reevaluate their priorities in life and what they want to do in a work sense, who they want to do it with and where they want to do it.

The value of the SEEK news is that it brings us back to what really matters when it comes to how we help people to enjoy work and be productive so that business and employees flourish together.

That is what PosWork is about – we have the tools and programs to help your workplace to flourish by design.

If you would like to explore the ways that we might be able to help you to make yours a great workplace, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

The wonderful team at the Michelle McQuaid Group has done an update for the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey adding a suite of questions specifically addressing the 14 psychosocial hazards in Safe Work Australia’s “Model code for the management of psychosocial hazards at work”. That means that you can address your positive duties to assess risks and consult your people while giving your business and your people a great platform for improving wellbeing at individual, team and organisational levels.

About PERMAH 

In his celebrated book “Flourish”, Professor Martin Seligman, a world leader in the field of positive psychology and wellbeing theory, set out the PERMA model for wellbeing as “a practical guide to using positive psychology to make you happier and healthier”. Other positive psychologists subsequently added an “H” for “Health” to his model with his endorsement.

The 6 pillars of wellbeing in PERMAH (as described by Dr Michelle McQuaid in the context of  workplace wellbeing) are:

POSITIVE EMOTIONS: such as joy and hope have been found to have a significant effect on our wellbeing. Researchers suggest that experiencing positive emotions broadens your outlook, helps you to build creativity and resourcefulness and to be more resilient and successful.

ENGAGEMENT: being able to use and develop your strengths at work – those things you are good at and enjoy doing – has been found to boost your confidence, engagement and energy at work.

RELATIONSHIPS: creating genuine connection with others at work can give you satisfaction and enrichment. Researchers suggest that it can also lower your levels of stress, improve your concentration and help advance your career.

MEANING: understanding how what you do at work makes a positive difference to others has been found to increase your wellbeing motivation, commitment and sense of satisfaction at work.

ACCOMPLISHMENT: cultivating grit has been found to give you the determination to pursue your goals and having a “growth mindset” can help you learn and grow from setbacks and challenges to achieve your true potential.

HEALTH: staying healthy by eating well, moving regularly and sleeping deeply has been found to build a solid foundation for your wellbeing.

Source: https://www.michellemcquaid.com/ 

PERMAH and psychosocial hazards

One of the central tenets of Professor Seligman’s work is the recognition that we all have our struggles in life but that doesn’t mean that we cannot flourish. If we work on our wellbeing with a positive mindset, we can equip ourselves to deal with our struggles more proactively and productively.

The positive duty that is being imposed through State and Territory legislation on Australian workplaces is also requiring “Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking” to be proactive in conducting risk assessments and putting in place appropriate measures to eliminate or mitigate/control any risks arising from psychosocial hazards. 

As noted in the preamble, part of the positive duty is also to consult your people about psychosocial hazards.

There are  clear links between the psychology underpinning PERMAH and the positive duty as well as between  the content of the PERMAH pillars and the prescribed psychosocial hazards.

The addition of the suite of survey questions on the psychosocial hazards just adds to the relevance and effectiveness of the PERMAH survey as a tool for measuring wellbeing and workplace risk and building cost effective risk controls based on real data provided by your own workforce.

The other bonus with the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey is that every employee who does the survey gets their own personal report on where they sit against the 6 PERMAH pillars, a template for putting together their own personal wellbeing plan and access to a stack of resources that they can use to explore and improve their personal wellbeing. 

So there are lots of reasons why we use and recommend the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey with the psychosocial panel add-on as a great place to start the process of meeting your positive duty to eliminate or control psychosocial hazards in your workplace.

PosWork Practice leader Peter Maguire is accredited to debrief on the PERMAH Workplace Wellbeing Survey with the Psychosocial Panel add-on. If you would like to learn more about how we might be able to assist you in the areas of workplace wellbeing and management of psychosocial hazards, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

Gallup has released a “2024 Employee Engagement Strategy Checklist” in which it tells us that 44% of employees worldwide say they are stressed and proposes some things that organisations can do to get people more engaged and less stressed. 

Here is Gallup’s list:

1. Check in on your managers because they are more likely to be feeling burned out and stressed and you need them to feel supported and capable of leading their people effectively.
2. Prepare managers to have meaningful conversations with employees in which they recognise strengths and achievements, set and refine goals and priorities and support then in relationships and collaboration.
3. Prioritise promoting vision and purpose, especially among remote workers for whom Gallup’s research says that only 28% feel connected to their organisation’s mission and purpose.
4. Measure engagement to show employees that you care about their feedback and want to know how they are doing.
5. Take action on survey results – nothing builds positive momentum for an engagement initiative more than asking for feedback, doing something about it and sharing and celebrating positive results.

They say that their research shows that 80% of employees who say they have received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged, regardless of how many days they worked in the office.

When it comes to having meaningful conversations with employees, Gallup said that they should include:

1. Recognition or appreciation of recent work
2. Collaboration and relationships
3. Current goals and priorities at work
4. Employee strengths and the things that they do well

How long should these conversations be? If they are done regularly (ie weekly), they should take no longer than 15 to 30 minutes.

Our EngageMentality Model

This is a continuous coaching model which incorporates all of the features that Gallup recommends plus more.

We did our own research on the things that we believe impact on an employment experience and by extension employee engagement and wellbeing – these “coaching lenses” are:

1. Roles  – the job that I do plus any of those other responsibilities that I might take on as a leader or an employee or safety representative or first aider, etc
2. Relationships – I rely on certain people for certain things and others rely on me for certain things
3. Values and behaviours – the behavioural attributes that we want to see practised in our organisation to make it respectful, inclusive and high performing
4. Strengths – using the VIA Character Strengths framework to use a strengths-based approach which optimises opportunities for me to use my signature strengths and to work on and be supported with my lesser strengths
5. Wellbeing – using the PERMAH workplace wellbeing survey, build on my psychological safety, life balance and overall wellbeing. 

We explore and address each of those items through a process of:

1. Positioning – doing a stocktake of where I sit in each of those areas
2. Planning – identifying the actions that I want to take for my performance and development, timelines for doing that and supports that I need and any people who are involved
3. Performing – implementing my plan and catching up with my manager each week for a coaching session
4. Presenting – providing me with the opportunity to showcase my achievements in performance and development and areas for further development 

The coaching conversations simply involve asking and answering these 4 questions in the context of each of the 5 coaching lenses:

1. What has worked well (celebrate)?
2. What has been a struggle (recalibrate)?
3. What has changed (update)?
4. What are we going to do about all of that (activate)?

If you would like to explore our EngageMentality process or any other of our PosWork programs for your workplace, please call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.

I recently watched a video on Linkedin which featured expert employment and WHS lawyer, Andrew Douglas, talking about psychological safety in the workplace. In that, he spoke about the role that work plays as a haven from everyday personal stresses and anxieties and that really resonated. So I thought I should explore that concept further and here are a few thoughts.

Try the survey free at https://permahsurvey.com/

iInterested in learning more about PosWork’s workplace wellbeing and psychologically safe workplace services? Call us on 0438 533 311 or email info@poswork.com.au.