TOPICS
THE SYSTEM BENEATH THE SYMPTOMS
Burnout and related trends like quiet quitting (and its cousins, quiet firing, quiet hiring, quiet promoting, quick quitting, resenteeism, etc.) have been getting a lot of attention since the great resignation. I see these trends as symptoms of deeper issues. We’ll discuss what these trends are and what they’re saying about how we work. We will use systems thinking models to assess the causes, how they arise in your context and how you might intervene to shift them.
SURGEON GENERAL’S MODEL FOR WORKPLACE MENTAL HEALTH & WELL-BEING
The Surgeon General’s Office has shared a model for workplace mental health and well-being. The office has also issued a complementary report on the health effects of loneliness (aka, the healing effects of social connection). I can introduce your group to the concepts and help you discern how it applies to your organization.
WHY WELLNESS INITIATIVES (BY THEMSELVES) CANNOT HEAL A SYSTEM
Employee exhaustion, loneliness and burnout continue to climb while engagement levels continue to decrease. Wellness initiatives have been called upon to help reverse those trends. From what we know about how work impacts human health, wellness programs can help some individuals, but they cannot heal a sick system. We will use some frameworks to help your group think about what’s going on in your workplace and how you might choose to intervene. This might include investing in wellness programs along with structural interventions that have the potential to improve your work system’s health.
WHY EMPLOYEE BENEFITS CAN’T INCREASE ENGAGEMENT
Employee benefits have been used for decades to improve employee engagement. Unfortunately, they haven’t (and can’t). Benefits are important to employees, but they do not impact employees’ intrinsic motivation. The good news is that we know what can help employees engage – making sure people’s jobs are designed so that they have a job worth engaging. We will discuss the design of work to promote motivation, health and engagement. We’ll also clarify where benefits fit into that conversation, so your organization knows where to invest its resources.
THE FUTURE OF WORK: DESIGNING WORK FOR HUMANS
As we incorporate more technology into the workplace, it’s increasingly important that we intentionally create roles for humans to be healthy and sustainably productive. Technological advancements have the potential to improve human health, but used indiscriminately, they can also erode it quickly. We will discuss what humans offer and need in order to make their best contributions at work as well as how technology fits into a health-promoting scenario.
