Workplace Wellbeing—A Strategy for Leadership

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workplace Wellbeing|Workplace Wellbeing—A Strategy for LeadershipWorkplace wellbeing should feature prominently in any successful organization’s strategy. Creating an environment in which a well-managed and highly motivated workforce can flourish can elevate your organization to huge success. It can exceed in positive workplace outcomes such as high levels of corporate social responsibility.

In our experience, a happy and engaged workforce delivers extra-role effort by the bucket-load. But where do you start on this journey? Further, how do you orient your organization to this perspective? Well the good news is this is relatively easy to achieve and does not cost thousands of dollars. Although marketing a well thought out wellbeing plan effectively is often overlooked, we can provide insight into how to avoid this, giving valuable advice garnered from considerable knowledge in this field over many years.

The criticality of effective workforce wellbeing plans engrained in business as usual, as part of the brand, is key to business success. A focus on continuous professional development will help employees authentically link wellbeing to leadership, ethics and integrity; allowing your business to thrive, remain highly competitive and have a strong social responsibility ethic underpinning all that it does. Employees flourish in an environment that creates this. Further, and with a focus on flourishing, an emphasis on the personal resilience of employees can pay huge dividends.

There is a plethora of models to improve personal resilience and we are particularly drawn to positive psychology, utilising Martin Seligman’s PERMA model for example. What’s in it for your people in terms of what they will gain, or not lose, from a situation is critical and needs to remain at the forefront of your thoughts when promoting your wellbeing strategy. This vital component is worthy of detailed exploration, as it clearly links to how people in the workforce can make their life better, and connect to the meaning and purpose that is so important to leading a healthy and successful working life. Get these factors right with your leaders and your strategy will be on exactly the right track.


About the Authors
StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workplace Wellbeing|Workplace Wellbeing—A Strategy for LeadershipStrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workplace Wellbeing|Workplace Wellbeing—A Strategy for LeadershipIan Hesketh, PhD and Sir Cary Cooper, CBE are the authors of Wellbeing at Work: How to Design, Implement and Evaluate an Effective Strategy. Both are associated with the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work (UK). For more information visit: https://www.koganpage.com/product/wellbeing-at-work-9780749480684

How To Make Sure You Hire The Right Person For The Job

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | How To Make Sure You Hire The Right Person For The JobHiring the wrong person can be a costly mistake and leave you feeling frustrated that you have no one to complete the work that needs to be done. Therefore, it’s extremely important that if you want your organization to succeed, that you hire the right person for the job each and every time.

There are steps you can take to help ensure you achieve this goal and aren’t wasting your time or anyone else’s. Remember that it’s never a bad idea to reach out to current employees when you’re on the hunt to fill positions to see if they have any suggestions before you go out looking elsewhere.

Work with A Specialist

There are companies such as Devonshire recruitment whose job and desire it is to help you fill positions at your workplace. They have a pool of candidates who are prepared to speak with you and will be a good fit right from the start. You can make sure you hire the right person for the job by being specific and transparent with your job description, and only bringing people in for interviews who align with your objectives and specific position requirements.

Invite Candidates to Take Psychometric Tests

There are dozens of psychometric tests such as The PI Behavioral Assessment Test, which help employers to filter out the best candidates for the benefit of their business.

These kinds of tests measure a candidate’s skill level in relation to problem-solving, ability to do the work, behavioral traits, and patterns and etc.

Contact References

It’s good practice to ask for several references from candidates on your final job application. Not only should you look to see who they are, but you should also take the extra step and time to contact them. You can learn a lot about an individual by how they’ve previously performed and what their strengths and weaknesses have been in the past. Ask the right questions and encourage the other person to be as candid and open as possible in their responses.

Hold Multiple Interviews

One interview isn’t going to give you enough time to figure out if the person you’re speaking with is right for the job. Therefore, it’s important to hold multiple interviews and in many different forms before hiring someone. For instance:

  • On the phone
  • Face-to-face
  • Interviews held by different leadership members
  • Interviews held by different department heads
  • Verbal and written tests

These are a few ways for how you can mix up the interview process and evaluate a candidate on their various skills and abilities to make sure they’re a good fit at your workplace. It’ll be helpful to get feedback from other people at your company as well to hear what they have to say about a potential candidate so you can compare notes.

Take Your Time

What’s going to help you out the most in your search to find the right candidate for the job is to go slow and take your time. Rushing through the interview process and failing to write a detailed job description is only going to hurt you and your company in the long run. Instead, take advantage of these suggestions for how you can make sure you’re hiring the right person for the job, and this way, they should also be more likely to stick around for the long-term.

How Educators Can Accommodate Varied Learning Styles

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Those who are educators will know that there are varied different learning styles and that to reach the understanding of your whole group; you need to be able to tap into each style equally. Whether working as a teacher, learning assistant, tutor, or a training provider in a workplace setting, it’s vital to consider how you can accommodate different learning styles.

Auditory Based Learners

Some of those in your learning setting will be auditory based learners. For these individuals, it’s essential that you put in place plenty of instances whereby they can listen to themselves and others. Such methods could include listening to task directions instead of reading them. For educators to accommodate these learners, it’s also a good idea to implement the use of podcasts in your sessions. You can use recording devices to have learners record themselves retelling vital information and then play it back. Provide audiotapes of your classes or training sessions for the same reason. Ensure that you read your students the learning material aloud and also have them read it out loud to one another. When auditory based learners have too much to read in their heads, it’s difficult for them to take it all in.

Kinesthetic Based Learners

Those who are kinesthetic based learners will absorb information better with a hands-on approach. Kinesthetic learners prefer to hold or touch to learn new things. Kinesthetic learners enjoy the principle of jumping in and trying things first! To aid these kinds of learners, you can help them to understand an idea with the use of physical objects. You could also make use of art supplies and allow students to move around and act things out. School Furniture and its layout, can help you to accommodate these types of learners. You might be able to use your furniture in a way that creates a great environment for kinesthetic learners. For example, by positioning the chairs in a circular shape facing each other or creating an open space to stand, move or create art on the floor.

Visual Based Learners

Visual learners gain the best understanding when they can observe and see things. They will produce their best work when they can look at demonstrations, diagrams, videos or pictures. If these learners can watch someone else complete the task at hand first; they will be able to absorb the information and produce their own results quickly. To accommodate visual-based learners, it’s a good idea to use flashcards, photographs, maps, flowcharts or video content. You can ask students to act out demonstrations for each other to watch and in this way, you’ll be catering to kinesthetic learners too.

When you are providing a class or a training session, you’ll always want to incorporate methods that appeal to every different learning style. By doing so, you’ll extend your reach and allow everyone in the group to reach their full potential. When your training session or class is complete, you can always ask your students for feedback so that you can make improvements ongoing. Training and education in the workplace or classroom, is best achieved by catering to every individual personally.

Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs: The Straight Dope – Why needs are more like vitamins than pyramids

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs: The Straight Dope - Why needs are more like vitamins than pyramidsThe question of how to motivate people is a central preoccupation for most businesses: how to motivate employees to work hard; how to motivate customers to buy and recommend your company’s products; how to motivate partner organizations to work with you; how to motivate shareholders to buy your stock. For many people, the go-to theory for motivation was put forward by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ and is most commonly known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The chances are you’ve come across the five-tiered pyramid, with physiological needs such as food, sleep and sex at its base, rising up to needs around safety, then belonging, then esteem, until we reach the top of the pyramid, where needs around self-actualization reside: the fulfilment of these needs was a subject of fascination for Maslow. He admired people like Albert Einstein, who he believed to be a paragon of self-actualization. In fact, he was so enamored by the likes of Einstein and Mother Teresa and Beethoven that he based his theory of self-actualization around them. The tip of his pyramid contains a list of the qualities he most admired in his heroes: morality, creativity, problem-solving capability and absence of prejudice. The purpose of the hierarchy is to demonstrate that until lower-order needs have been met, it’s difficult for individuals to focus on and satisfy their higher-order needs. In Maslow’s words: ‘For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food.’

Where’s the science?

The popularity of Maslow’s hierarchy lies in how simple it is to grasp and how flexible it is in its application. As a universal theory of human motivation, it can be used to make the case for staff canteens, team-building days, canapés at investor presentations and CSR schemes. And because each of the five layers of needs feels intuitive to Western minds, any huckster business consultant or cod psychologist can manipulate it to suit their purposes. But few people who use the hierarchy seem to understand it is based on the biographies of 18 people. There’s no scientific method at work. No body of evidence exists to prove or disprove the veracity of the model or its assumptions. He may as well have built his model around Jane and Michael’s nanny advert from Mary Poppins: a cheery disposition… Kind… Witty…. Never cross or cruel… In fact, there are striking similarities between Mary Poppins and Maslow’s actualized self.

A more serious issue with Maslow’s model is that it reflects a Western tendency to consider the individual above the collective. This is a huge value judgment, given that self-actualization and self-esteem both sit above love and belonging. It’s not clear why needs need to exist in a hierarchy at all – particularly one that champions the self to such a degree. Van Gogh and Vermeer managed to create sublime works of art, despite spending much of their lives on the poverty line. And a 2011 analysis of Gallup data from over 60 thousand people across 123 countries revealed that we are happiest when we achieve a balanced fulfilment of needs – including a balance between basic needs, social needs and self-actualization needs. In other words, it’s wrong to think of needs belonging to a hierarchy. Needs are like vitamins – we need a healthy and varied diet of them.

Beyond making ourselves happy, this has significant implications for how we think about leadership, attracting and retaining employees, and how to make customers happy. In the case of leadership, it suggests we place too great an emphasis on individual effectiveness and not enough on understanding group dynamics. When it comes to motivating employees, we probably pay too much attention to personal development, reward and recognition, at the expense of influence and social currency. And in the case of customers, we almost certainly pay too much attention to satisfying individuals’ rational and emotional needs and too little on the social benefits that organizations deliver to their customers and the communities they are a part of. Ultimately, humans are far less selfish than Maslow’s model suggests. That’s a reason to celebrate. And to find a better model of human motivation.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Nick LiddellNick Liddell is co-author, with Richard Buchanan, of Wild Thinking: 25 Unconventional Idea to Grow Your Brand and Your Business. He is Director of Consulting at The Clearing, helping global brands grow and make a difference. For more information, please visit: https://www.koganpage.com/product/wild-thinking-9780749484507

Putting Smiles on Faces: 3 Tips for Happy Employees

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Putting Smiles on Faces: 3 Tips for Happy EmployeesOne of the most important parts of business is productivity. Companies have been trying since their inception to reach the highest productivity possible. Today, we live in an industrialized world because people wanted to create better, easier ways of doing things.

One aspect of productivity that gets overlooked a lot is the employees. The workers are what make the company run, so having happy workers can only work in your favor.

The question is, how do you achieve this? What are some things you can do to make sure you have happy employees? We’ll give you a few ideas in the paragraphs below.

1. Praise and Recognition

Sometimes, the best things you can do are also the simplest. We all need to feel needed, and letting someone know that they’re valued can do a lot towards making them feel better and work more efficiently.

Studies have shown that happy employees are much more productive. There’s plenty of cynical sayings out there about people just waiting to take advantage of your generosity and trust, but they’re often untrue.

Humans are social creatures. We’ve evolved to be social creatures, and in the course of that evolution, we have learned that groups work best when everybody does their share and gets along.

2. Be Honest and Forthright

This sounds obvious, but it goes a lot further than just telling the truth when asked. Tell people things about the company as a whole.

Keep them up-to-date on what’s going on, how it affects them, and what the future might hold. You should even ask for feedback when you can.

Businesses tend to function much better when employees feel trusted.

This goes along with instinct and group dynamic. People who consistently tell us the truth often have a stake in our well-being, or, at the very least, probably aren’t a threat to us.

Trust is one of the reasons we have paystubs. Not only do they make it easier to keep records, but it helps us to understand our pay and why we’re getting the amount we are.

You can discover more about paystubs, or even create them, by clicking the link.

3. Understand That Work Isn’t Everything

Everybody has a life outside of work, and you’ll learn more about the lives of your employees as you get to know them.

Making an employee as productive as possible means caring about their home lives as well. This means offering help and support whenever they need it. Offer them more days off, or create a daycare center in your office building.

Employee wellness plays a role. Trying to give more insurance or insurance at a lower cost mean you care not only about them, but those who depend on them.

Happy Employees Make a Happy Business

Companies benefit from happy employees. Employees who feel valued tend to care more about the company and do more to see it thrive.

The best way to get happy employees is to see people before workers. Praise them and make them feel appreciated when they do something good. Be honest with them, and understand that they have a home and a set of responsibilities outside of work.

If you want more information and advice on business, the internet, and social media, please visit our site.