Wake-up call: Business accountability for employee health

A new study showing a poor night’s sleep causes 11.3 days of lost productivity per employee per year should serve as a wake-up call to company managers and HR professionals, according to a corporate wellbeing expert.

“Businesses have rightly pointed out that an employee’s wellbeing is their individual responsibility but that doesn’t mean that business should do nothing, ” said Dr. Lanthois. “Business need to wake up. Employee low wellbeing is costing Australian business at least $100bn annually.”   Dr Lanthois suggested that companies investing in employee wellbeing and lifestyle training  can provide huge returns on investment for the companies. “It’s common sense really,” he said. “Healthier, balanced employees will create healthier balance sheets for business.” Read more at www.hcamag.com

What’s better, real people or robots?

Happy employees often means effective employees, and a lot of money is spent by brands and agencies to make their talent feel comfortable, excited by their jobs, and not want to jump ship anytime soon. I once worked at a law firm where the marketing department seemed dedicated to arranging company picnics. A social staff who are communicative and genuinely like each other is a powerful marketing tool for any business.

Sometimes some cheese and wine isn’t enough, though, and there are some deeper issues that need addressing. Rod Sherwin runs tap4health, an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practice in Melbourne and is now taking his therapy into businesses.

Rod Sherwin says the therapy can help marketers a lot with daily issues, especially dealing with disappointment.

“When you’re dealing with a client, you get a brief, you go away, and you might do some work you would consider amazing,” Sherwin explains. “You bring it back and they say ‘that’s all crap’, so there’s this frustration, you’re disheartened. That initial emotional reaction affects the ability to communicate and deal with those emotions with the client. This therapy is not about making us robots, it’s about freeing us up so we can make better decisions. Because under stress we don’t make good decisions, we’re not rational.”

Sherwin says EFT is all about getting to the underlying cause of the stress, which often isn’t work–related.

“We’re a whole person, maybe something is going on away from work, maybe you’re moving house and it’s stressful or maybe you’ve got a child who is having an operation,” Sherwin says. “All of these things affect how we turn up each day. If we can shift those emotional levels, if we can change that at a deep enough level. We get changes in thoughts and behaviours and feelings. And it’s not just about positive thinking and telling you to be grateful. You are allowed to be upset, frustrated, disheartened, angry, disappointed. Whatever the feeling is, we deal with that at an emotional level. A good company is trying to think about the whole wellbeing of their employees, and often it’s troubles at home causing them distress, and that’s not the employers fault, but if we deal with that, they’re probably going to turn up as a better employee.” Read more at www.marketingmag.com.au

Workforce health a priority

Amidst rising health care costs and a growing concern over the health of their employees, most multinationals see workforce health as a higher priority in next few years.

A Towers Watson survey found that three out of four companies said workforce health and promoting health and well-being will be more of a priority this year and next, while 87% said it will be a higher priority over the next two to four years.

When asked to rank the three most important objectives for their health strategy, more than half (54%) of all respondents said it was to demonstrate their continued interest in employee well-being, resiliency and stress management. Read more at www.hcamag.com

http://www.tap4health.com There are many ways of applying the Emotional Freedom Technique aka EFT Tapping. But when you have a limited amount of time, one of the simplest and most powerful ways is to identify a specific event and tap on it. Watch this EFT session to see the questions I ask and the approach I take to delivery a valueable shift for someone to help with weight issues after a hysterectomy operation. Read more at www.youtube.com

Teaching Empathy to the ‘Me’ Generation

A Midwestern university experiments in teaching empathy not merely through classroom curriculum, but by having students live the lives of the working poor.

“They walked a mile in someone else’s shoes. How much did they learn?”

The six participating students and their community partners are introduced in turn. Diana Crandall, a first-year psychology major in a smart black jacket and tie, talks about the children she worked with through the Children’s Hunger Alliance.

“I know that I can’t walk away from this and be the same person I was before.”

The application asked students to write about a time that they were wrong. “We anticipated that an optimum position to be more empathetic is actually to have realized that presumptions or assumptions that you made were wrong and that you made an effort to correct them,” Bowman says. Empathy, as he describes it, involves continually checking assumptions and trying to better approximate another’s perspective.

The Empathy Experiment broadens the teaching of empathy from the classroom to the real world. In Changing Lives Through Literature, an alternative sentencing program that has reduced recidivism, would-be inmates participate in directed reading groups, in part to experience other perspectives. Educator Jane Elliott’s Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise leads students in feeling discrimination. And by bringing infants and parents into the classroom for affective lessons, Roots of Empathy has lowered aggression and increased positive social behaviors in schoolchildren. The trend is gathered momentum with June’s TEDxGoldenGateED, which was entirely focused on compassion and education.

The general hope is that teaching empathy might lead to greater social harmony, altruistic action, social justice, and interpersonal and intercultural understanding.

As Bracher argues, “If we’re to reverse the increasing disregard for human suffering in this country and around the world, with the growing gap between rich and poor, empathy education — if it could be successful and massive — could make a major difference.” Read more at www.miller-mccune.com