Engaged Employees are Healthier

Since the beginning of 2013, I've been sharing and detailing articles that have shown you why using your strengths can be so important. Since it is the New Year and people have about 1 more week before they are completely finished with the resolutions - we have also been showcasing health and how your overall health can impact your work.  Let's take those two talking points a bit further.

As you may recall from the August 24, 2012 blog - we talked about Engaged Employees vs. Dis-Engaged (or Non-Engaged) Employees and Actively Dis-engaged Employees ~ High Performers, Mid-Performers, and Low Performers. As I mentioned in that article:  Having a clear understanding of who your top performers are will help you create a culture of high performers who actually enjoy coming into work every day. Studies have shown that when people are happy working in a group situation - they are more likely to want to repeat it (Haidt, 2006). We are actually programed to want to work together and succeed with a common goal. Maximizing your employee’s personal strengths, skills, and talents is the best way to ensure you are getting the most out of your workforce and optimizing productivity. But, it starts with senior leaders knowing who is a High, Mid, and Low performer.

Well what if I told you new research is suggesting that the more Engaged the Employee is - the healthier they are?  A new Gallup Poll is suggesting that:  Engaged employees are deeply involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Those who are not engaged may be satisfied, but are not emotionally connected to their workplaces and are less likely to put in discretionary effort. Employees who are actively disengaged are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace and jeopardize their teams' performance.

To get the full story - read on!

 

 

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January 16, 2013

In U.S., Engaged Employees Exercise More, Eat Healthier

More than half of engaged employees exercise frequently

by Daniela Yu and Jim Harter

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American workers who are engaged in their work and workplace are more likely to report a healthier lifestyle than their counterparts who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged. Engaged employees eat healthier, exercise more frequently, and consume more fruits and vegetables.

These findings are from Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted January through December 2012. Gallup's employee engagement index is based on extensive research on actionable workplace elements with proven linkages to performance outcomes, including productivity, customer service, quality, retention, safety, and profit. The 12 questions included in the survey are intended to help sort workers into one of three categories: engaged, not engaged, or actively disengaged.

Engaged employees are deeply involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Those who are not engaged may be satisfied, but are not emotionally connected to their workplaces and are less likely to put in discretionary effort. Employees who are actively disengaged are emotionally disconnected from their work and workplace and jeopardize their teams' performance.

Gallup research previously found that employee engagement is positively correlated with better health -- engaged workers are less likely to be obese and to have chronic diseases. The positive correlation between employee engagement and healthy behaviors holds true after controlling for respondents' health conditions and key demographics, such as age, gender, race, income, education, and marital status.

Implications
Gallup research shows that how leaders manage their workers can significantly influence their employees' engagement, which in turn affects a company's bottom line and workers' health and wellbeing. Separate Gallup research found that engaged employees were 21% more likely than actively disengaged employees to be involved in wellness programs offered by their company. This finding is consistent across age, BMI groups (normal, overweight, and obese), and among people with or without chronic diseases.

Taken together, the data showcase the link between being engaged at work and leading a healthy lifestyle. It is not clear though which way the relationship between engagement in the workplace and healthy behaviors goes. It is possible that workers without healthy lifestyles are more prone to illness, which then reduces their chance for being engaged at work, or that those who are actively disengaged are less likely to take part in healthy behaviors, perhaps due to time or a depressed outlook on life.
Regardless, since engaged employees are more likely to lead a healthy lifestyle, workplaces that actively improve engagement may end up seeing an added benefit of better employee health -- the potential benefits of which include reducing healthcare costs for a company in the long term and increasing energy and productivity in the near future.

Survey MethodsResults are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey January to December 2012, with a random sample of 353,563 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling. The survey includes 19,392 unemployed; 14,881 actively disengaged; 43,136 not engaged; and 24,611 engaged respondents.
Maximum expected error ranges for subgroups vary according to size, ranging from ±2.8 percentage points for the largest group to ±4.9 percentage points for the smallest group.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each daily sample includes a minimum quota of 200 cellphone respondents and 800 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, cellphone-only status, cellphone-mostly status, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2011 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit http://www.gallup.com/.

Should I use a 360 Evaluation?

The New Year is a great time to re-evaluate old goals, rethink new goals, and get an understanding of where you are now. Usually people and organizations like to use psychometric testing or 360 evaluations to kick start the change process. Well, this brings up a good point - Do 360 Evaluations work? How can you be sure which test is right for you? What exactly is the test measuring? And what can you really learn or gain from taking such a tool? Check out the article below from the Monitor Magazine (APA Magazine - http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/11/360-evaluations.aspx) and see if the information helps you to make an informed decision on who, what, when, where, and how to use 360 Evaluations.

Do 360 evaluations work?

Yes, but too often they aren't administered or followed up properly. Here's how to boost their value.

 

By Harriet Edleson
November 2012, Vol 43, No. 10
Print version: page 58

When employees suddenly begin to flee an organization, morale dips or productivity slumps, many employers launch internal investigations to pinpoint what might be behind the problem. For more than 20 years, one of the diagnostic tools employers have relied on is 360-degree feedback. These employee assessments collect data from colleagues, subordinates and clients — hence the name 360-degree appraisal — to help illuminate how well employees are performing and how individuals might need to change their behaviors to create a more productive workplace.

Just how good are 360-degree assessments? If implemented correctly, they work well, say psychologists who specialize in such assessments. Usually, the more feedback the better, says Kenneth Nowack, PhD, of Envisia Learning Inc., a behavior change company in Santa Monica, Calif. "Eight to 10 raters maximizes the reliability, based on available psychological research," says Nowack. "If you use two to three people, it's not enough to get a full perspective."
But there is a major caveat to 360-degree feedback: If it's not carefully executed — and followed up on — it can do more harm than good, says Nowack, whose latest research on the assessment is in press in the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research.

And even when that happens, companies can't expect miracles. "The magnitude of change is modest but statistically significant," says Nowack. "We have to be realistic. We can't take someone from one extreme to the other." But they can change their behavior in ways that make a difference in interactions in the work place.

How to get better results

To implement a 360-degree appraisal, a human resource manager or consulting psychologist, for example, requests a list of raters from each participant, then checks with their supervisors to develop a group of raters by mutual agreement. There is no standard way to do this, say those in the field. Rather, it depends on the purpose of the 360-degree appraisal and the organization's culture. Raters then answer questions through online links. Internet-based online survey systems such as Zoomerang or Survey Monkey are popular ways to collect self-report data, but most vendors have developed their own 360-degree feedback administration systems to streamline multi-rater data.

Once the data have been tabulated, and the individual understands and accepts it, coaching can begin. Nowack suggests a model he developed with Sandra Mashihi, PhD, called "Enlighten, Encourage, Enable," to implement behavior change. In the first step, the psychologist or coach helps the employee become aware of how he or she is perceived and determines the conditions necessary for behavior change. Then, the psychologist works with the employee to become ready to make the changes; he or she has to commit to working on change rather than just acknowledging that something is wrong.

"The employee has to be motivated to do something about it," says Nowack.
Employees also have to be prepared for the feedback. A meta-analysis by Avraham N. Kluger, PhD, Angelo S. DeNisi, PhD, and colleagues finds that while feedback interventions are usually effective, in a third of the cases, the feedback actually "lowered subsequent performance" (Psychological Bulletin, 1996). For example, if an employee's self-perception is quite different from the feedback, the employee can even become demoralized.

That means the report is not just left on a person's desk. Once an employee has his or her results, there has to be a discussion with the manager, an internal or external consultant, or a mentor in which the employee agrees to work on undesirable behaviors, Nowack says. "We create a professional development plan for them to work on something."

For example, a supervisor who has received 360-degree feedback will meet with a psychologist or an executive coach once a month to work on particular skills, tasks or style. Russell R. Day, PhD, of the executive coaching firm R.R. Day & Associates in Arlington Heights, Ill., has seen firsthand how 360-degree evaluations can lead to behavior change. "They are of great value if they are done correctly," he says.

Day offers one particularly successful example of how 360 appraisals can improve employee performance: One of his clients hired a new vice president to run the company's southwest region. The new recruit's mission was to boost profits — and he succeeded, retaining existing business, as well as adding new clients. But in the process, the vice president fired employees and changed their roles. Morale in the region sank to an all-time low. Several high performers quit, and others were looking to leave. When the human resources manager spoke to employees confidentially, all complained about the new vice president's management style: He was abrasive, condescending and overly critical, they said.

To improve the situation, the company hired Day as an executive coach, and he conducted a 360-degree appraisal that identified a problem: By focusing only on profits, the new vice president had alienated his subordinates. Several referred to him as a "dictator" or "Attila the Hun." After receiving his 360-degree appraisal results, the vice president shared them with his team, apologized publicly for his past behavior and promised to change. For a year, he worked with Day every four to six weeks on new leadership styles, specific steps to take and advice to heed. At three months, six months and eight months, Day met with the manager to discuss his progress. At the end of the year, Day conducted a second 360-degree feedback with five employees the manager supervised and five colleagues. The results showed definite improvement: The same employees who had been looking for new jobs now said that if the manager were to leave the company, they would ask to go with him.
For the regional vice president, the 360-degree assessment was a catalyst for him to change his behavior and to obtain expert advice about how to make those adjustments.
"Follow-up is everything," says Nowack.

Using Your Strengths in the New Year!!

Happy New Year!!  Now that we are into a new year and it's time to turn a new leaf, here is a great way to use your strengths to help others be successful. Check out this blog by the Center for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP).


The Capp Blog...
Nestlé HRD Matt Stripe in HR Magazine on Using Strengths to Recruit Graduate Talent

Posted: 03 Jan 2013 05:51 AM PST

Posted by: Alex Linley

I’m delighted to share with you this link to HR Magazine, featuring an article by Nestlé HR Director Matt Stripe. In the article, Matt describes how Nestlé are working with Capp in using strengths-based graduate recruitment to select and recruit the best young graduate talent.

He also makes a series of great points about how strengths-based recruitment critically improves upon competency-based recruitment for graduates, who often might not have the work experience to provide the “When did you do this…” past examples that competency-based recruitment so often depends upon.

Enjoy reading! 

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1075787/nestle-hrd-why-strengths-approach-help-recruit-talent

Nestlé HRD: Why a 'strengths-based' approach can help recruit the best young talent

Matt Stripe , 02 Jan 2013

Unemployment levels in the UK continue to be high. Like other businesses in the UK we believe there is often a mismatch between the skills learnt at school and those needed in the workplace.

As a result, in recent years we have struggled to recruit the right talent needed to help our business grow and develop.

The Government's focus on apprentice and graduate schemes and unemployment levels across the UK only highlight further how high the stakes are and how important it is to get young people into the right jobs.
As the world's largest food and drink company, we know how important it is that we attract outstanding young talent into our sector, which is now the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. Despite its size, young people don't always think about choosing a career in the food and drink industry and just 32% of employees in our sector are female.

As part of our involvement in the recent IGD Skills for Work Week, we were part of a focus group with several young unemployed people. They told us about the challenges they had faced in traditional interview situations with no practical work experience, and the resulting barriers they had come up against through lack of confidence and understanding of the interview process.

We believe there is a much fairer way to test today's graduates, who have great potential and talent but no experience to lean on in traditional interview scenarios.

That's why we've adopted a new 'strengths-based' approach to recruiting young talent. The key difference is that we are looking at strengths rather than competencies. When people are exhibiting a strength they enjoy doing it, are good at doing it and are energised by it. Research tells us if individuals are doing things they are good at and enjoy doing them there are lots of benefits to the organisation, for example, reduced stress, turnover, absenteeism and higher performance.

Reviewing strengths are different from reviewing competencies in that candidates don't know what to expect and can't give well-rehearsed or 'googled' answers. An individual may have a strength that is inherent but not yet know that it is a strength.

We have been working with an external consultancy CAPP who are experts in this area. They have spent several months reviewing internal data to come up with the Strengths key to the Nestlé Graduate programme. They have used these to develop a series of exercises suited to our requirements. This is quite a big step for us and is going against the norm of how we have traditionally recruited.

Using this method, we believe we can better match young job-seekers to the roles we have at Nestlé.
We've already seen a real improvement in the calibre of applicants. In the first three days of recruiting for 2013, 480 candidates registered their interest - and we're on track to offer more than 50 talented young people graduate roles at Nestlé next year.

We hope our new approach can help open the door to a more diverse mix of applicants and make the industry more accessible After all, attracting new talent and investing in skills for the future is vital to the continued success of Nestlé and the UK manufacturing sector as whole.

Matt Stripe (pictured) is Group HR Director at Nestlé UK & Ireland