Is it Possible to Generate Productivity thorugh Corporate Wellness?

“Design economic incentives,” “provide meaningful feedback,” “show respect for employees at all levels,” “buy office plants”… Sound familiar? These are some of the standard solutions for increasing employee productivity.

What it all comes down to is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the bottom, there are the basic needs for survival. Well, showing up for work is what most people need to do to make sure they can afford the basic necessities. The second tier is safety; do people feel secure in their job? Depending on the company, safety may or may not be guaranteed, and unfortunately management can’t always control these situations. The third step is love/belonging, in the case of an office environment, making the employees feel welcomed and at home. This is probably where the office plant idea comes in. The final two steps are where making corporate wellness a priority becomes more difficult: Esteem and Self-actualization.

Providing personalized feedback and clearly exhibiting respect might be good steps towards building an employee’s self esteem, but if the work that he or she is producing doesn’t feel meaningful to them, a simple pat on the back might not cut it. Especially if employees are part of a larger network with limited contact to individual managers, this structure may not even be feasible. We can’t force people into feeling the creative flow of self-actualization, so how can we boost employee productivity?

While free coffee and words of encouragement might feel like a good place to start, perhaps the easiest way of sparking creativity is by encouraging employees not to work—or at least to pull their heads out of the problem for a moment. According to a study lead by Sophie Ellwood, there’s concrete reason to believe that creativity and bursts of insight are born out of breaks. A Harvard Business Review of the study put it simply: “Taking a break from the problem and focusing on something else entirely gives the mind some time to release its fixation on the same solutions and let the old pathways fade from memory. Then, when you return to the original problem, your mind is more open to new possibilities.”

The long-sought solution for increasing employee productivity may just come down to a basic human need. Humans aren’t wired to work continuously on a single task for a whole day—even if that’s what our work-life demands. But this begs the question, is there a right kind of break? While bursts of inspiration may come from simply breaking the thought pattern for a minute or two, happiness also has been seen to have a significant effect on how well a person can work. According to a study at the University of Warwick , people are 12% more productive when they’re happy. In other words, there may be extra benefit from giving employees a happiness-inducing break, rather than just any break. If an employee chooses to watch a heartbreaking news story in the middle of their project, while it could alter their perspective, it may bog them down emotionally, reducing their energy and drive.

So should we just stick with the safe bet of office plant installation? No, UpJoy offers a solution for providing employees with well-timed breaks that will give them a chance to change their mindset while boosting positivity. With UpJoy, management can provide their workforce with opportunities to watch happy and healthy content for the amount of time that they feel would best benefit the workers. Even better, UpJoy will send out randomized surveys so that employers can get a feel for how well the software works. Helping employees feel creative and inspired has never been so simple!

Visit today and start your UpJoy Free Trial.

 

Three Tips for Improving Employee Engagement

It’s no secret that there is an engagement epidemic facing offices across the United States. As mentioned in an earlier post, a GallupPoll conducted at the end of last year showed that only 13% of employees feel “engaged” at work. Engagement is clearly a integral component of excellence in the workplace. The same Gallup Poll showed that this low engagement is costing US organizations dearly, as productivity is 21% worse and profitability is 22% worse from the previous year. If you fear that your employees are disengaged, try to incorporate some suggestions for improving employee engagement from the list below into your office culture.

Change up the Work Environment

Many of your employees may spend more time in the office than at their own homes. A workplace plagued with repetitiveness and banality is more likely to house unmotivated, bored, and disengaged employees. Taking simple steps like rearranging seats, decorating for the holidays, and altering light fixtures can break up the monotony of the everyday grind. Incorporating an innovative corporate wellness program like UpJoy may be just the thing your office needs to improve engagement.

Avoid Technostress

Today’s employees and inundated with a never-ending stream of text messages, emails, and social media notifications. Trying to keep on top of all of these mediums can lead to “technostress.” Conversations with employees about work/life balance (see #3) and email etiquette (when to use “cc” and “reply all”) can help reduce this flux of messages. Some managers implement bans on after-hours emailing and website blockers that restrict social media distractions during work hours.

Respect the Work/Life Balance.

The American Management Association claims that productivity declines after 40 hours a week. Many of us work more than this cutoff, which makes us not only less productive and engaged, but more likely to get less sleep, exercise, and down time. Managers should reward excellent performance with vacation days, and encourage high performers to take time off. However, workers need time to unwind during the day to avoid burnout and disengagement. UpJoy, an employee engagement software, provides subscribers with limited access to handpicked images and videos specifically chosen for their uplifting qualities. Users of UpJoy report feeling less stressed and more engaged. Incorporating this system into your office may help to balance work with play.

For more information on how UpJoy can help improve employee engagement, make sure to visit www.upjoy.org for more information and a free trial. 

The Negativity Virus: Curing the Disease of Employee Disengagement

According to a Gallup Poll conducted at the end of last year, only 13% of employees feel “engaged” at work. In other words, only 1 out of every 8 employees feel that their work is valued, and that they are contributing to their workplace in a way that is meaningful to both themselves and their coworkers. Perhaps even more shockingly, the same poll found that 63% are disengaged, defined as lacking “motivation and less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes.” But the real kicker? 24% are actively disengaged. Not only are they unfocused and unmotivated, almost a quarter of employees feel so negative about work that the poll labels these folks as “liable to spread negativity to coworkers.”

To be fair, the prospects look a little better in the United States, with 29% engaged, 54% disengaged, and 18% actively disengaged. But over half of our workforce feeling disengaged and almost a fifth likely to emanate severe negativity shouldn’t make any employer or HR manager feel very warm and fuzzy. More engaged employees mean a higher retention rate, better customer relations (where applicable), and more efficient output of quality work. If less than 30% of the average company’s employees fit the bill, that doesn’t bode well for the success of many companies—or the status of the economy.

To state the obvious, if an employee doesn’t feel like their work is meaningful or valued, practically all motivation for creating high quality work is stripped away. Studies have shown that negativity spreads like a plague—but happiness can too. To describe this phenomenon, researchers have coined the phrase “emotional contagion.” This term lends itself to considering stress and pessimistic vibes less like an individual emotional state, and more like a contagious disease. Now if 18% of your workforce contracts a virus and 54% are known to be susceptible, wouldn’t this leave you wishing for some sort of vaccine?

Lucky for us, many variations of employee engagement software already exist. Several options try to “gamify” work by provoking a little friendly competition between coworkers or introducing game-like training modules. Simpler solutions simply encourage employees to help themselves to the Internet. But as we know, the Internet isn’t always exactly a breeding ground for positivity. Social networks may connect employees to their friends—but through frequent use, they’re also likely distancing themselves from the workplace and reducing the possibility of developing strong relationships with their coworkers. As a sense of belonging is key to developing employee engagement, escapism probably isn’t the best option. Another problem with these methods is that there is no easy way to know if these tactics are actually improving the employees’ feelings of workplace satisfaction. If symptomatic changes aren’t visible to management, what’s to say that the emotional contagion vaccination even worked?

UpJoy is employee engagement software that isn’t a game, a competition, or a free pass to keep a tab open for Facebook. Unlike other products, this software doesn’t just try to treat the symptoms, it goes after the root of the problem: employee stress and negativity. UpJoy provides employees with limited access to handpicked images and videos specifically chosen for their uplifting qualities, while incorporating experience sampling so management knows how well the medicine works.

We can’t afford to have 72% of our employees feeling disengaged. Can you? Visit www.upjoy.org for more information and a free trial. 

The Right Kind of Break: Corporate Wellness Made Easy

 

There are countless stories of the “horrible boss,” the “sadistic manager,” and the “incompetent CEO.” These archetypal figures are grossly overpaid and under-worked, leaving their staff feeling both undervalued and stressed. Perhaps these images weren’t simply born out of the wild imaginations of a few disgruntled employees over the years, but we know that sometimes management has no choice but to play “the bad guy.”

Being in management is difficult. A manager is responsible (at least in part) for the success of the business, and few things are more stressful than feeling culpable for the actions of other people. When something goes wrong, it falls on the shoulders of management to dole out the bad news. If the company can’t survive without downsizing, the manager has to choose who gets the boot. And even when everything is going smoothly on a corporate level, employees might still just be unhappy; and more often than not, a negative work culture probably looks like the fault of management.

Is the staff’s happiness and satisfaction at work truly under the manager’s purview? Maybe not in so many words, but their productivity and engagement might be--and unhappy people are 12% less productive than their happy counterparts (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/35451/1/522164196.pdf).  Not only is mood important for day-to-day performance, but it can reasonably be assumed that people who enjoy being at work are less likely to take sick days unnecessarily or be looking to move on to another company the second their contracts are up.

But how can a manager feasibly take on responsibility for the mental well-being of their staff members? Recent research at the University of Cincinnati suggests that it might be as simple as employers allowing their employees a few online breaks throughout the day. Breaks can refresh and rejuvenate mentally exhausted employees, helping them to keep up a positive attitude and workflow throughout the day. Giving employees even a short change of pace to focus on something fun or uplifting can make a world of difference in bringing both positivity and productivity into the workplace.

Of course, giving employees the opportunity to spend an unspecified amount of time in the limitless expanse of the Internet during the workday has the potential to have the opposite effect on productivity. Moreover, it would be hard to track how much of a positive difference these breaks were truly making on an individual employee’s sense of wellbeing.

However, using UpJoy, management has a way to limit the amount of break time, while empirically tracking the emotional impact of each employee’s break. Corporate wellness has always been positive for the employee; now it can be simple and cost effective too.