Check out these articles, by various
sources, which give insights into employee engagement. The first article, from Time Business, reveals
why employees stay with a job/company. Do
you know why employees leave jobs or decide to stay in their current jobs?
In the second article – did you know
that stress can actually diminish creativity? Or even reduce that competitive
edge to help companies be innovated?
What Makes Employees Want to Stay
If you’ve gone through the effort to hire the right
people for the job, you want them to stay. So what makes employees want to
stick around?
According to a recent “Workforce Retention Survey”
by the American Psychological Association, today’s professionals seek a broad
range of positive qualities from their companies, which isn’t surprising when
you consider that they spend the majority of their waking hours at work. Women
and older workers are much more likely to cite reasons such as job satisfaction
and work-life balance for staying in a job, while men are more motivated by
money.
David Ballard, who heads the Psychologically Healthy
Workplace Program, notes that “top employers create an environment where
employees feel connected to the organization and have a positive work
experience that’s part of a rich, fulfilling life.”
Two-thirds of employees stay with a job because they
enjoy what they do, although work-life balance matters too. Good benefits and
pay help, as do positive relationships with co-workers.
The bottom line: If you want employees to stay,
create a positive, fulfilling environment for them. Money helps, but it’s not
the only thing motivating much of the workforce.
Employee Brain on Stress Can
Quash Creativity & Competitive Edge
9/05/2012 @ 11:22PM |16,397 views
, Contributor
Brain structures involved in dealing with stress and fear. (Photo credit:
Wikipedia)
Right to the
point. “Work stress is a major problem,” David Ballard PsyD, told me recently
in an e-mail exchange. He heads up the American
Psychological Association’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program.
Workplace
stress is not news. But how companies are handling the issue is worth a gander.
As I wrote in a recent Forbes
post, a recent APA study found only 58 percent of employees said they have
the resources necessary to manage stress. Furthermore, a 2012 SHRM (Society for
Human Resource Management)
survey found only 11 percent of organizations have specific stress reduction programs
in place.
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“Even those organizations that do have stress
management programs generally focus on individual-level training and resources
to help stressed-out employees,” says Ballard, “but they neglect preventive and
organizational-level approaches that may be more effective in the long run.”
Your Brain on
Stress
“As
ten-thousand studies have shown, when you are chronically stressed, you’re less
able to be at your best. Particularly when you’re talking about a knowledge
economy which really places a high premium on creativity,” Hanson told me via
Skype.
Chronic stress
degrades a long list of capabilities with regard to creativity and innovation,
notes Hanson. It’s harder to think outside of the box, nimbleness and dexterity
take a hit, and the response to sudden change is more difficult to manage.
Hanson has been examining the impact of stress on the brain and well-being,
while working in the trenches in corporate America and as the co-founder of The Wellspring Institute
for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom.
Hanson
explains, stress is like fine sand being drizzled into the brain. It might keep
working, but if you dump enough sand in there, it’ll freeze up at some point.
Beyond heading into the deep freeze, he says neuroscience is now showing us
that the cumulative consequences of stress can be a dire thorn in the side of
business innovation.
Your Brain at
Work
“Even a small
amount of stress is noisy in the brain,” says leadership consultant, David Rock, the author of
Your
Brain at Work and the co-founder of the NeuroLeadership
Institute. The organization partnered on a survey of 6000 workers, and
found that only ten percent of people do their best thinking at work. Expanded
technology, multitasking and a competitively demanding (or threatening) company
culture, can add to the noise in the brain which crushes creativity.
“Threat makes
you productive, but not necessarily effective. It can make you productive if
you don’t have to think broadly, widely or deeply,” says Rock. “A threat
response, which we might think of as stress, increases motor function, while it
decreases perception, cognition and creativity.”
Ultimately, on
the surface, stress might seem a good kick starter for productivity. But
getting the creative juices flowing has more to do with the engagement of the
employee and his or her disposition, notes Rock.
“What
neuroscience is telling us, is that creativity and engagement are essentially
about making people happier,” explains Rock who adds, “It’s what is called, a
“toward state” in the brain.” In that “state,” Rock explains, workers feel
curious, open minded, happier and interested in what they are doing.Move up http://i.forbesimg.com tMove down
In my
experience covering workplace issues for well over a decade, stress management
programs in most companies, if they exist at all, are more of an ancillary
stepchild in the wellness agenda. As David Ballard PhD told me, workplace
flexibility, mental healthcare coverage and on-site fitness offerings certainly
help to reduce stress, but it’s not enough. Perhaps a company will do more to
help employees better manage stress, if the end-game is a more creative and
engaged employee.
What do you
think? Should companies be doing more to help employees manage stress?
