Do you like where you live?

Check out some new studies about overall well-being and where you live. Did you know that where you live can either affect how healthy you are?  It can be the reason why you like to exercise or are packing on the pounds. Read on to learn more:

 

 

 

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

October 12, 2012

Americans Who Like Where They Live Are in Better Health

Those who feel good about, safe in their area have fewer health issues

by Lauren Besal and Kyley McGeeney

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans who are either satisfied with their community or feel that their community is becoming a better place to live have Physical Health Index scores that are roughly nine points higher than score for Americans who are not satisfied with their communities or feel that their community is becoming a worse place to live.

Specifically, those who are satisfied with the city in which they live or feel that it is becoming a better place to live are less likely to report having experienced physical pain, having health problems, being obese, having headaches, or having ever been diagnosed with asthma or high cholesterol. They are also more likely to report feeling well-rested and having enough energy.

Additionally, adults who say their city is getting better as a place to live are less likely to report having ever been diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol than those who say their city is getting worse as a place to live. However, residents who are satisfied with their city are no less likely to report these three health issues than those who are dissatisfied.

Of note, these results hold true even when controlling for income, education, and ethnicity -- revealing that individuals' perceptions of their communities are important, regardless of their demographic or socioeconomic situation.
Gallup and Healthways ask 1,000 American adults daily about their physical health and community perceptions as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The Physical Health Index includes 18 items, which measure: sick days in the past month, disease burden, health problems that get in the way of normal activities, obesity, feeling well-rested, daily energy, daily colds, daily flu, and daily headaches.
Community Safety Bolsters Physical Health
In addition, Gallup finds that Americans who feel safe while walking alone at night in the city or area where they live are in better physical health than those who do not feel safe doing so. Similarly, those who say they have easy access to a safe place to exercise in the city or area where they live are in better physical health than those who don't.

Support for an Ecological Model of Physical Health
Although income, education, and ethnicity are correlated with health outcomes, tapping into an individual's perceptions about where they live sheds light on community-level factors that may influence the physical health of Americans. While there may be other factors at play here, such as age, the data suggest that there is a relationship between community perceptions and health.
These findings provide support for the ecological model of health, which suggests that one's living conditions, community safety, community development, and civic engagement, among other factors, affect community members' health outcomes. The relationship between community-level perspectives and physical health may have significant implications for urban planning and community improvement efforts, particularly in light of the increase in cardiovascular disease and obesity over the past decade. According to a recent Gallup Business Journal article, U.S. cities with the highest rates of obesity spend approximately $50 million per 100,000 residents to cover the direct costs associated with obesity and related conditions, such as cardiovascular disease.
The American Heart Association suggests that costs to treat cardiovascular disease may triple by 2030. At the same time, the growing trend of childhood obesity will greatly increase the percentage of American adults with cardiovascular disease and related conditions in the coming decades. As policymakers consider solutions to end the epidemic of obesity and bring down its associated healthcare costs in the U.S., discussions about community infrastructure may become increasingly prevalent. Urban planners and local governments can help ensure residents in their cities are not only satisfied with their community, but also have safe places to engage in physical activities.

About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks wellbeing in the U.S., U.K., and Germany and provides best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. To learn more, please visit well-beingindex.com.

Survey MethodsResults are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index survey Jan. 2-Dec. 29, 2011, with a random sample of 353,492 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phones numbers are selected using random digit dial methods. 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, and phone status (cell phone-only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). 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/.

Do you know what your employees want?

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

By Paul Shread | September 6, 2012 | 1

 

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.

Adapted from What Workers Want to Stay at Their Job at Baseline Magazine.

Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/09/06/what-makes-employees-want-to-stay/#ixzz28jpjxzVo

 

 

Employee Brain on Stress Can Quash Creativity & Competitive Edge

ForbesWoman

9/05/2012 @ 11:22PM |16,397 views

Judy Martin, Contributor

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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

With more than forty percent of American workers reporting chronic workplace stress, the long-term impact of stress and its influence on the human creative condition and business can be detrimental, says Rick Hanson PhD, a California based neuropsychologist and author of Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time.

“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

A huge component of creating that state is to quiet the mind, and that means reducing stress. Rock discusses the neuroscience behind stress reduction here in my recent post at WorkLifeNation.com, Neuroscience Might Be New “it-strategy” to Boost Employee Creativity.

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?

 

 

How do you Manage?

Checkout this Blog by CAPP - Center for Applied Positive Psychology. Do you think you can improve your leadership skills by considering what your employees want from you? How can you incorporate positive change into your day to encourage your employees?




What Do Employees Want from Their Managers?

Posted: 08 Oct 2012 04:22 AM PDT

Posted by: Reena Jamnadas & Emma Trenier

Whatever our role or level in an organisation, we all have high expectations of our bosses. In particular, we want them to understand our strengths and preferences and tailor their approach to our needs – this came across loud and clear from the 1180 respondents in Capp’s recent Ideal Manager Survey.

We also place enormous value in this relationship working positively for us – a miserable, ineffective relationship with their line manager is the most common reason behind an employee’s decision to leave a company.

The results of Capp’s Ideal Manager Survey showed that 90% of employees disagreed that all managers should manage in the same way. This appreciation of diverse management styles was also shown in the breadth and range of strengths which employees thought were important for their managers.

Notwithstanding this, we see that employees most commonly want their managers to have the following strengths:

• Mission: Providing a sense of meaning and purpose, always working towards a longer-term goal;

• Enabler: Focused on creating the right conditions for people to grow and develop for themselves;

• Personal Responsibility: Taking ownership of their decisions and holding themselves accountable for what they do;

• Humility: Happy for others to share the credit for their team’s successes;

• Esteem Builder: Able to help people believe in themselves and see what they are capable of achieving.

Do any of these strengths surprise you? Perhaps not, as this simple profile paints a picture of a trusted individual who leads through a combination of clear vision, personal commitment and a focus on developing others.

How can you develop these characteristics within your management style? Here are our five top tips:

• Create a sense of purpose: Understand what drives each of your team members and gives them a sense of meaning in their work. As you delegate work, help individuals to see how it relates to this wider sense of meaning. In practice: this means spending time talking about context before focusing on detail.

• Role model responsibility: If you want your team to develop their personal responsibility, choose a handful of areas in which you will actively demonstrate how you do this yourself. In practice: as well as taking responsibility yourself, take responsibility for training your team to do the same.

• Share successes: Recognise the culture and climate that you want to build within your team. If it is one of shared ownership and collaboration, then seek to share team successes in ways that credentialise others. In practice: share credit with others in a range of ways including public praise, copying senior managers into positive feedback emails, and thanking individuals one to one.

• Give specific positive feedback: Think about providing positive feedback just as carefully as giving ‘constructive’ feedback. Let people know what they have done well and what you would like them to keep doing. In practice: give specific, targeted feedback, along with evidence, when you see great work.

• Set your team up to succeed: Find opportunities to stretch each person in your team and provide the autonomy for them to take full ownership. In practice: identify each person’s strengths so that you align opportunities to these strengths and can be sure the opportunity will provide a positive stretch.

By managing in this way, you’ll be taking important to steps to delivering your employees what they want, in turn helping you to deliver the performance you need.

More about women....

Are Women Happier than men?

 

Blog Post by: Positive Acorn ~ www.positiveacorn.com
Posted By: Robert Biswas-Diener
Posted on: September 11, 2012
Welcome to the Good Life!
The Latest in Positive Psychology


Are women Happier than men?

2 weeks ago a landmark study was published in which a team of researchers identified a gene associated with happiness in women. The researchers worked with 152 men and 193 women, in racial and socioeconomic proportions that resemble the overall make-up of the USA. From this group they sampled happiness and saliva (from which they were able to analyze, and double check, genetic factors).

The researchers discovered the genetic marker MAOA-L was associated with happiness in women but not in men. MAOA-L resides on the x chromosome, and because women have two x chromosomes where men have an x and a y women are able to have a double marker whereas men can have one at the most. The research team found that women with two markers for MAOA-L (about 17% of women) were significantly happier than those women who had only one who were-in turn-significantly happier than those women who did not have this gene.

This is a major breakthrough because it is a step closer to understanding happiness at the genetic level. It is also interesting because in men MAOA-L is known as the "warrior gene." That's right, in men this same gene is directly associated with impassivity, aggression and anti-social personality traits.
A best guess-based on research-- about why these sex differences emerge: This genetic marker is activated by estrogen, a female hormone and affects the way the brain uses serotonin, a neurotransmitter closely associated with pleasurable feelings. For both men and women, however, it appears that this genetic marker interacts with early life experiences such that it makes people hypersensitive, fearful and-as a result-more aggressive. This trend is particularly pronounced in men, likely because MAOA-L interacts with the male hormone testosterone.

The take home message is that in the absence of life stresses women have a genetic advantage where happiness is concerned. This pans out in other research on happiness: Although sex differences account for only about 1% of happiness, there are large sex differences in the intensity of happiness. Women report higher highs and are more likely to say that they are "very happy" (as opposed to "moderately happy") than are men. See the CBS 2 minute video here: http://tinyurl.com/9bqnd7x 

Women at Work

Check out a great Blog Post by the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology or CAPP. And if you are interested in understanding more about what is happening for individual women at the micro-level, please complete the Capp Women at Work Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WomenatWorkSurvey

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Women at Work

 

CAPP BLOG Post - http://blog.cappeu.com/2012/09/11/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-women-at-work/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCappBlog+%28The+Capp+Blog%29

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 03:12 AM PDT

Posted by: Alex Linley & Nicky Garcea

 

 

Over the last few days we have been reviewing the UN report on The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics. This report is produced every five years, following the Beijing Declaration adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women.

 

            As we’re currently running the Capp Women at Work Survey focused at the individual level (you can complete the survey here), we have also been looking at trends and statistics at the international and national policy level.

 

            Here are five things you probably didn’t know about women at work:

 

1. Women’s participation in the global labour market has been steady at about 52% from 1990 through to 2010, whereas men’s participation has declined from 81% to 77%.

 

 

2. Women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work, leaving them with total work hours that are longer than men’s in all regions of the world.

 

 

3. Relative to their overall share of total employment, you’re significantly less likely to find a woman as a legislator, senior official or manager, and much more likely to find a woman as a clerk, sales worker or service worker.

 

 

4. Following from this, more than three quarters of women’s employment in most of the developed world is in the service sector – a significantly higher proportion than men’s employment, although this is increasing for both genders.

 

 

5. And this looks unlikely to change soon: Based on participation in tertiary (university / college) education, women are predominant in the fields of education, health and welfare, social sciences, and humanities and art, but they are significantly under-represented in science and engineering.

 

 

The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics gives us a macro-level view of what is happening for women in the world of work and beyond.

 

            If you’d like to help us understand more about what is happening for individual women at the micro-level, please join us in completing the Capp Women at Work Survey. In this survey, we are interested in understanding more about why as a woman you do what you do at work, your achievements, your career progression and role models, the advice you may need, your learning and the legacy you would want to see for other women.

 

            As a thank you to all the women who complete the Women at Work Survey, we will enter you into our prize draw for an iPad 3 or three runner up prizes of a Spa Day. We will also give all our respondents a sneak preview of our findings and results before they are published more widely.

 

            We’re keen to collect responses from as diverse a working female population as possible – so we invite and encourage you to pass on this invitation to your female colleagues, friends and family as widely as possible. Thank you – we appreciate it!

Aging Too Soon

War might be making young bodies old

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

 

BOSTON – A litany of physical or emotional problems spill out as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans make their way, one by one, to the 11th floor of a VA hospital in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

 

The tragic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or battlefield concussion are all too evident. Even more alarming for researchers is emerging evidence that these newest American combat veterans — former GIs and Marines in their 20s and 30s — appear to be growing old before their time. Scientists see early signs of heart disease and diabetes, slowed metabolisms and obesity — maladies more common to middle age or later.

To read the rest of the article go here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-08-06/veterans-aging-study-trauma/57608072/1?csp=hf

How to Identify High, Mid and Low Performers

Do you know who your top performers are? And if so, do you work every day to help them succeed at their job, ensuring they stay part of your team?

 

Most organizations and senior executive leaders cannot answer these questions with a solid yes. In fact, they probably know who is not performing well and spend more time addressing these employees vs. recognizing and rewarding their top performers. Subsequently, it also takes precious time away from retaining or even recruiting new top performers for continued success.

 

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.

 
Who are your High, Mid and Low Performers?

Your High, Mid and Low performers can be determined by assessing various beliefs, attitudes, and values towards the work environment. Through behavior assessment we can see who is truly committed to excellence and shares the same mission and values of the organization. Just like we assess top performing athletes – who is mentally tough enough to compete at the Olympics? – we can assess who is mentally tough enough to consistently showcase the such attributes to lead one to successful outcomes: creativity, focus, perspective, determination and more. You can define your employees’ behaviors that are high from those that are low.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should go out and immediately start firing people left and right, just because you don’t like them. Sadly, there could actually be some Mid to Low performers who could learn how to improve, but due to lack of support from management are not able to showcase their potential and more towards a high level of performance. All to often in business we find diamonds in the rough – but that is just it – we find them. How many diamonds have you probably gotten rid of because you did not work to keep them, polish them, or even discover them in the first place?

Knowing who the top performers are is essential so they know they are a vital part of the overall operation or your organization. Typically coaches are called in when there is an issue – executive coaches spend a lot of time counseling low performers vs. encouraging high performers. Employees who feel that they are appreciated, who feel happy and satisfied with their work – will perform at a high level on the job.

 
What do I do with my performers once I’ve figured out their level?

 Low performers – low performers should be worried about losing their jobs if their behaviors do not improve with the needs of the organization. Some low performers have gotten used to showcasing low expectations and results. This is an issue with management and the executive team – allowing such behavior to go on. But, given a chance, some low performers can step-up.  However, if they cannot adapt or just refuse to change, they are hindering the welfare of the organization.

Mid performers – should be working towards high level achievement. Nobody likes to be in the middle, they are solid employees, solid performers, but can we get more out of them? Even small improvements at the mid performer level can me significant progress. Give them a chance to prove their worth. We do need solid and loyal performers for any organization to be successful.

High performers – should be rewarded for their part in helping your organization to thrive. You need to recognize who they are and work to retain or even recruit the high performers. You want them to be happy and stay with your organization – they carry the lion’s share of the workload and they are the reason why your organization is prosperous – let them know it!

 

References:

Haidt, Johnathan. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom.
For more information see www.JonathanHaidt.com