Forbes on Right To Work

Not recognizing what's important to employees can translate into more job dissatisfaction, lower productivity, and higher volunteer turnover," says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.  "It's critical that companies regularly take the temperature of their workplace and survey employees to identify where the company excels in providing a positive employee experience as well as opportunities to improve."

What's with the sociology committing at Forbes?  Look, these employees have to quit expecting to be hand-held by bosses or unions through the work process.  They work, they get paid.  They work harder, they get paid more.  If they think their deal's not adequate it's up to them to make that case to their boss.

Employers, after all, own the means of production, like a field or a factory.  The workers are given access to the employer's resources and brand - it's up to them to produce to standard and if they bring in a bit more, well then they may get to keep some of that.

To expect an employer to wade into the emotional well-being and job-satisfaction of their employees - why, that's as unnatural and flighty as this play-based learning or innovation stuff.

Better to ignore special interest parties like Forbes and go with common sense policy, like Right To Work that has a long lineage of success.  

Right?

Don't Ask Me - You're the Boss!

Bottom line?  If you want someone's opinion (and believe me, you do), don't set yourself up as feudal lord.  If you do, you're setting up expectations for your team.

Leaders are catalysts, conduits, motivators and mentors.  It's takes more effort, greater personal engagement, but it produces results.

If results don't matter, though, carry on - after all, you're the boss.

Boss: The Worst Four-Letter Word in Business

Remember George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words comedy skit? It’s brilliant. Irreverent. It’s funny because it’s true. But it’s incomplete.

At least in a business context, there is one word that’s worse than all the rest – yes, even worse than the one you’re thinking of right now.

The first time I was CEO, I made an enormous list of mistakes, but at the time it looked like everything I touched turned to gold – so I made a big mistake when I let a friend call me Midas without calling him on it. “Boy, this guy’s so successful, and he’s calling me that? I must really be good.”

The truth is, I was more like a gambler on a roll: I was Midas until the day I wasn’t. Ouch. Looking back, I wish I’d read Tim Harford’s Adapt before I’d founded that company. Oh, well.

Midas is a bad word in business, but it isn’t the worst.

Around this same time, I also made the mistake of allowing our girls’ niñera (babysitter) to call me “Mr. Coiné.” As with Midas, my ego did not need anyone calling me “mister.” Neither does yours.

But Mister isn’t the worst thing someone can call you, either. You know what is the single worst four-letter word in business? Boss.

Oh, boy. I’ve learned from personal experience to hate that one. Here’s why:

• What the speaker means: “All I have to do is obey my boss’s marching orders, keep her happy, and I can keep my job. Someday I’ll even get promoted for my loyalty. Critical thinking? That’s above my pay grade. It’s my boss’s job.”

Is this who you want to lead? A follower?? Me, too – when I was a less confident kid. These days, I refuse to lead anyone other than other leaders. Meanwhile…

• What the listener hears: “You’re important. You’re wise. You have all the answers.”

I’ve met plenty of egomaniacs who think they have all the answers. Time typically proves them wrong. I’ve never met anyone who’s had more than a few of the answers herself. That’s why we need other leaders to help us. Build a well-rounded team, hopefully one with plenty of misfits, and typically someone in there will have the answer you need to any given problem – or they’ll know where to find it.

Please, do your whole company a favor, and ban the four-letter word “boss” from your workplace entirely. It’s a bad message sent, and a cancerous message received.

The Brainstorms Are Failing! The Brainstorms Are Failing!

I get to speak with a lot of amazing social entrepreneurs - people with amazing artistic or design talents they hope to build businesses out of or hardcore problem solvers looking for some way to fund the exploration and trial of their solutions.

I also speak with a lot of policy generators, managers, system leads, etc. looking for ways to paint themselves out of corners, best harness new opportunities or make what they are doing now work better.

From time to time, I even get to sit in on conversations/conferences where big leaders are trying to solve world problems.

You know why Canada lags so far behind when it comes to both productivity and innovation?  It's because, complacent, comfortable people that we are, we suck at both.  

There is nothing more painful than watching the "so what?" model of concept criticism discourage innovation and shoot down ideas that, with a bit of guidance, could have great potential.  To me, this is the equivalent of putting every kid in the same class with no accommodations and failing all of those who don't make the grade; it's selection of the fittest, defining "fit" with a very narrow criteria.

We can keep on expecting innovators to be communication experts and marketing gurus and financial whizzes, dismissing or ignoring those who aren't the complete package and whose ideas, while brimming with promise, need a bit of nudging.  But that's what we're doing now.

If we want to start getting ahead of the curve, we need to change our perspective.  To do that, though, we need to accept that our current one is outmoded.  Change and introspection can be scary, but such is the risk of leadership.

It's time for Canada to lead again.

3 Reasons Your Brainstorming Sessions Are Failing

You’ve heard it before, right? “Think outside the box.” “Change the paradigm.” This stuff isn’t new. But it’s been regurgitated so often that it has lost all meaning.

Project managers face an inconvenient truth: brainstorming sessions often lead to nowhere. The ideas that come out of these meetings tend to be obvious, lacking the innovation that businesses need in order to survive.

Why are your brainstorming sessions producing little of value, and what can you do about it?

1. The Fear of Creativity

We all pretend to embrace creativity, and most of us genuinely believe that we want creative ideas, but scientific experiments suggest otherwise. An experiment conducted by the University of Pennsylvania tells us that uncertainty creates fear and outright hatred for creative ideas.

In the experiment, one group of people were told that they would be paid by a random lottery, while the others were given no special instructions. They found that this random payment system made the participants feel uneasy, and uncertain about the future.

More interestingly, while the “normal” participants associated the word “creativity” with words like “sunshine” and “rainbow,” the uncertain participants associated it with words like “vomit” and “hell.”

That’s right. A sense of uncertainty literally makes creativity feel like hell.

In a second experiment, the same team found that people justified this fear of creativity by actually convincing themselves that creative ideas were somehow less creative.

Brainstorming doesn’t work unless your employees are at ease. Thankfully, the experiment also uncovered a simple way to accomplish this: by asking the participants to write an essay about how there is more than one solution to every problem. While asking your employees to write an essay is probably overboard, calling attention to this frame of mind on repeated occasion is going to do a lot for the success of your brainstorming sessions.

2. Linear Thinking

In another psychological experiment, scientists discovered that paradoxical thinking helped people come up with more creative ideas. The experiment was the result of a collaboration between Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

In the experiment, participants were asked to read a series of reviews of a hypothetical toy by expert judges. If the judges said that the toy was creative, that it was cheap, or that it was creative or cheap, their performance on a creativity test was average.

But when they read reviews that the toy was creative and cheap, they got a boost on their creativity scores.

This was the result of paradoxical thinking. We typically think of things as being either creative or cheap. Realizing that a product could be bothwas enough to boost their creative potential.

In a similar experiment by the same team, half the participants were asked to come up with at least three paradoxical statements, while the others were asked to just write three statements. Afterward, they were asked to solve a complex creative problem, called the candle problem. Those who were asked to come up with paradoxical statements were much more likely to solve the problem.

In other words, successful brainstorming requires your team to be willing to mix and match ideas that don’t seem to go together.

3. Face to Face Brainstorming Doesn’t Work

This one’s painful for a lot of project managers to hear, but it’s the truth.

Experiment after experiment demonstrates that people come up with more, higher quality ideas when they brainstorm alone.

This goes against our intuition. If creativity is about mixing and matching ideas, shouldn’t group brainstorming make this easier? One experiment at the University of Texas demonstrates that when people listen to a tape before brainstorming alone, they actually do come up with better ideas. So the perspective of others does seem to play a part, but only before brainstorming.

There is one exception to this rule, though. The same team discovered that if people shared their ideas through a computer interface, their brainstorming sessions were even more successful than when working alone.

The problem is that face-to-face brainstorming creates too many distractions, fear of judgment, and a tendency to focus on a narrow group of similar ideas. These problems are avoided with a computer interface.

This calls attention to the power of computer-based collaboration. Rather than invest in single-person interfaces like Microsoft Project, managers can turn to collaborative alternatives like WorkZone, which allow for distraction-free brainstorming.

Conclusion

Innovation is a crucial component of success in modern business, and understanding it is a necessity for modern project managers. By conquering uncertainty, embracing paradoxes, and tapping into the power of computer-mediated brainstorming, you can outperform your competitors and deliver results.

Demand More From Your Staff, But Abandon Them In Tough Times

 

Anyone remember reading about this in the Toronto Star?

 

I've written periodically on how poorly we do when it comes to hiring/training/supporting practices across the board, but especially in politics, from the politicians on down through to their staff.  I've even suggested some ways we could do better.

 

Thing is, we know, from study after study, how harmful our current approach is to both our health and our economy.  The Feds have even developed a psychological health and safety standard to address the kinds of concerns that stem from the labour relations practices favoured by the likes of Tony Clement.  When there are succeeding, best-practice models to crib from, why on earth aren't we consciously choosing to do better?  If we truly believe people matter, precarious employment leads to presenteeism and the like, why aren't we investing in the people who shape our policy?

 

Why isn't government following its own advice?

 

As the voter/ultimate shareholder, it's up to us to look in the mirror for that answer.

 

In Tough Times, Abandon Your Employees

Bruce K. Co-author of Smart Customers, Stupid Companies. Helps companies be more humane.

Henry Blodget's excellent piece on short-term greed got me thinking about a very basic question: do companies owe their employees loyalty when the economy gets tough?

 

For some time, I've been appalled that major companies are simultaneously laying off employees and reporting record profits. The picture differs depending on where you live and work, but that's a fairly common trend.

 

Contrast, for example, CNNMoney's report at the beginning of this year, Hey Wall Street, Get Ready for More Layoffs with John Cassidy's July 16 story, which starts like this:

What do these large dollar numbers have in common: $6.5 billion, $5.5 billion, $4.2 billion, and $1.9 billion? They represent the latest quarterly net profits made by too-big-to-fail banks—in order, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs.

Now imagine that your company has been growing quickly, and that the culture of the company is to expect employees to step up when challenges and opportunities emerge. If there is an important pitch coming up, you are expected to stay late or work over the weekend. If there is an important order to fill, you are expected to work until the order gets filled.

 

You work hard. You step up. You are a hard-working and loyal employee. You recruit your friends to come work at your company; you put your personal reputation on the line.

Then the economy hits a rough patch. The company lets you go; two months later, they announce record profits.

 

Is that the right way to do business?

 

I understand that companies are not charities, and that they can't exist forever paying out more in wages than they earn in revenues.

 

But it strikes me as horribly short-sighted for a company to simultaneously report record profits and fire loyal employees. But some will argue that companies are here to make money for their investors, and that such moves are entirely warranted.

 

That's why I'm calling on companies that employ this strategy to make it obvious. I suggest they band together under the banner, "Profits before People". In fact, to make this easier, I've created a few simple ads they could run to attract more investors.

 

I'm not trying to be cute or clever. If this is an intelligent and proper strategy, why shouldn't companies formally declare that they follow it?

 

Take a look at my crude examples, and create your own Profits before People art, then post links in the comments below.

 

On the other hand, if your company sticks by its employees in tough times, then PLEASE feel free to brag about that below.http://cce-wakata.blogspot.ca/2013/07/what-canadas-political-parties-can.html

Reading the Brain: FDA Approves First Scan for Diagnosing ADHD (Alice Park)

It’s the first test to diagnose the behavioral disorder using brain wave patterns, but it won’t be the last. The idea of reading the brain’s activity for clues to mental illness is gaining ground.

 

As Roxanne Khamsi reported in TIME recently, researchers are learning enough about the signature patterns of normal, and abnormal brain activity that they believe it may be possible to diagnose mental illnesses ranging from depression, schizophrenia, autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by studying readouts of brain waves, much in the way they now rely on elecrocardiograms (EKGs) to diagnose heart problems.

 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Neba Health’s device for children aged six years to 17 years. It relies on electroencephalogram (EEG) readings, which track electrical impulses released by active nerves. The test lasts 20 minutes and records the frequency of impulses emitted every second. By studying the resulting wave pattern, doctors can determine with relative confidence whether the child has ADHD, which is characterized by difficulty concentrating and paying attention.

 

As Khamsi wrote, researchers are also investigating how more sophisticated brain imaging techniques, including functional MRI (fMRI) could also improve diagnosis of ADHD:

Other researchers have found evidence that such fMRI scans might also help diagnose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia and depression. In an experiment appearing in the forthcoming July issue of Psychiatry Research, Dr. Jonathan Posner of Columbia University and his colleagues looked at 22 children with ADHD who were not yet on medication and compared them with 20 youngsters around the same age without the disorder. Compared with the healthy children, those with ADHD had, on average, less coordinated brain activity between regions such as the prefrontal cortex, an area at the front of the brain thought to be involved in decisionmaking, and the caudate, a region located toward the base of the brain involved in controlling impulses. Such patterns could one day help identify children at highest risk of developing ADHD and provide them with behavioral or educational support to address symptoms early on, when such interventions might have the biggest impact.

It’s also possible that brain waves can inform treatment of mental illnesses:

“I am most interested in us[ing] resting-state fMRI to really examine the effects of treatment,” says Posner. He also published a paper in JAMA Psychiatry last spring showing that antidepressants successfully quieted hyperconnectivity in the brains of individuals with chronic depression.

That trial compared brain scans from 32 people with depression with those from 25 healthy counterparts and confirmed that the former group had more activity in what is known as the default mode network, a collection of disparate brain regions that makes up the baseline, or default level of brain activity necessary to keep a body functioning. When a person performs a mental task, this default network is suppressed. But in the depressed patients, this network was overactive, and that was associated with increased rumination — or overfixating on a thought that could contribute to depression.

The patients with depression were then given a 10-week course of either the antidepressant Cymbalta (duloxetine) or a placebo. At the end of the trial, patients who received the drug showed similar connectivity patterns to those seen in healthy individuals, but the depressed participants who received placebo did not. (The study received some funding support from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which markets Cymbalta.)

Experts say that advanced in brain imaging technology are making it possible to discern patterns of activity that could distinguish normal cognitive development from cases of autism, ADHD or other disorders. With autism in particular, having such a non-invasive way of identifying infants who are at risk may help them to avoid some of the condition’s more severe symptoms:

With autism, for example, doctors are “really desperate for a biological marker to help with diagnosis and [measuring] treatment response,” says Daniel Smith, senior director of discovery neuroscience at Autism Speaks. Currently, most children are diagnosed around the age of 2, when the behavioral symptoms of inattention and repetitive actions tend to emerge. More studies suggest, however, that intervening with behavioral therapy in children as young as 6 months old could reduce, or even normalize, some of the aberrant brain changes responsible for the disorder, so diagnosing the condition as early as possible could become critical.

Doctors don’t expect that such tests will serve as the only diagnostic tool for detecting complex mental health conditions such as ADHD — indeed, the FDA says the device should be used in combination with medical and psychological evaluations. But they could become an important way of improving diagnosis and identifying patients at earlier phases of their disease, when treatments may be more effective.

 

The Untouchable Evolutionary Value of Depression (UPDATED)

A fifth group describes the people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not claim them. Untouchables are outcasts—people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives, particularly in the rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of India's people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, are raped, burned, lynched, and gunned down. 

A few years ago, my wife brought home a couple of red-eared slider turtles for pets.  They were about the size of a toonie each when we got them.  They would snuggle together, side-by-side or one on top of the other - very cute.

One turtle was a bit of a pig.  It would eat all the food put into the tank, leaving none for its partner who wasn't as quick off the platform when it came to eating time.  It was behaviour that continued over time; the piggy turtle grew bigger than its partner, swam more actively, was generally more mobile.  The second one, however, began to move less and less and very noticeably lagged in terms of growth.

Then, we noticed that the turtles stopped snuggling.

We tried removing turtle #2 and feeding it separately; we tried removing turtle #1 from the tank so that its weaker cousin could get some nourishment.  It got to a point, though, that turtle #2 simply seemed to decide to stop eating, like it was sick, or perhaps resigned to its fate.  At only a few months of age, turtle #2 died.

Thinking that perhaps the turtle had been weak or ill from the get-go, we got a replacement.  At the pet store, all the red-eared sliders in the tank looked so happy, snuggling up to each other; our son picked the one he liked the best. 

For a time, it looked like turtle #1 was happy to have a healthy replacement and snuggling continued.  But so did the eating dominance.  It wasn't very long before the cycle repeated itself; turtle #1, growing big and healthy, ate all the food; turtle #2 became lethargic; the two turtles stopped snuggling.  Eventually, turtle #1 was alone again.  Five years on, the piggy turtle is alive, well and massive - but also alone, the last turtle standing.

Something about this repeated behaviour triggered something in me; a memory or an instinct, I'm not sure, but the concept of animals going off to die alone kept coming back to me.  Eventually, I decided to do some research.

Animals will go off to die alone; dogs do it, cats do it, even ants do it. 

This is where depression comes in.

Here are some recognized symptoms of depression, italics mine:

Talking about killing or harming one’s self Expressing strong feelings of hopelessness or being trapped An unusual preoccupation with death or dying Acting recklessly, as if they have a death wish (e.g. speeding through red lights)

Calling or visiting people to say goodbye Getting affairs in order (giving away prized possessions, tying up loose ends) Saying things like “Everyone would be better off without me” or “I want out” A sudden switch from being extremely depressed to acting calm and happy

Not eating is pretty reckless.  Wanting to remove oneself from the crowd is pretty symptomatic of depression as well.  Could depression in humans be similar to this animal instinct of removing oneself from the crowd for their protection, a genetic predisposition that pushes us to isolate and shut down to preserve the well-being and resource access of our peers?

We do live in a dog-eat-dog world; despite what we tell ourselves, success in many careers or relationships is still largely predicated on "how tough" or "how hungry" you are - a willingness to do whatever it takes to make the sale, soothe the boss, beat the competitor.  If you can't "make the cut" - and many don't - you could find yourself bullied either actively or passively; you might also find yourself suffering from symptoms of depression.  In fact, there's a high correlation between stressful work and depression. 

The rise of precarious employment (contract labour and internships with little pay, no benefits and no stability) has exacerbated the social increase - and social cost - of mental illness in national and global economies, sparking an unheralded business crisis in Canada.  While this concept has been recognized by the key players in one of the most precarious employment structures there is - politics - it has not been internalized.  Parties have no formal exit-strategy for their employees/Members, partially due to the very real concerns of political interference and nepotism.

Of course, politics is a notoriously cut-throat industry, one of those that encourages the "hungry" employee to get ahead and serves to excluded the rest as not man enough for the game.  If you're not tough, the logic seems to go, you're untouchable.  From having lived in that world, I can tell you there are countless walking wounded informing the policy decisions that impact your lives.  On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Stephen Harper's PMO taking occupational mental health that seriously - after all, they practise survival of the fittest social selection every day.

The problem is that with a few exceptions we have decided, as a society, that we want everyone to live healthy, happy, productive lives - hence, medicine, social infrastructure and the like.  Those who in the past would have been deemed untouchable - lepers, suffers of plagues, etc, - can now be treated or at least, cared for. 

That doesn't mean that genetic predispositions developed before the advent of medicine don't still exist; social evolution has a habit of moving faster than genetic evolution does.  Despite the infrastructure we humans have developed, the medicines and prosthetics and accommodation tools for persons with visible and psychological disabilities, we still rely on cognitive hardware not that dissimilar from other animals.

If human depression is the manifestation of a genetic predisposition towards protecting the group and if the people most likely to be in positions of power are those most likely to be the overindulgent turtle, we have a bigger hurdle to leap than we've imagined.

It's good that the federal government has created a National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace; with as ingrained an issue as this one, we're going to need solid leadership that sets the example. 

This isn't an issue employers and employees are going to be able to resolve on their own; it's one we're going to have to face together.

UPDATE DECEMBER 31 2013:    "Typical Liberal; tug at our heart strings, then dig into our wallets.  Sorry, Bob, but taxpayer money doesn't solve every problem.  Besides, depression being such a debilitating disease, shouldn't people have the "right to die."

A hard-working taxpayer suggesting suicidal people should just be left to kill themselves?  Objectivist thinking, of course; individuals are separate, don't impact each other and the only thing that connects us is economic activity.  What if the depressed person is a soldier who has fought to save our country?  Too bad, sucks to be them.  

What if average citizens see stats that more soldiers commit suicide, end up in jail and otherwise have miserable lives than everyone else?  Well, then they shouldn't sign up, should they?  And if they don't, and war comes to our soil, what then?

What if the depressed person is your wife, your son or daughter?  Still think no one else should be involved?  What about you?  What if your boss won't let you take time off to be with your sick relative, and they commit suicide in your absence?  What then?

Every man for himself doesn't work; not unless we are prepared to give up all the things that come with society, like specialized labour, healthcare and quality-of life.  

There's only one path available.

Typical Liberal; tug at our heart strings, then dig into our wallets. Sorry Bob, but taxpayer money doesn’t solve every problem. Besides, depression being such a debilitating disease, shouldn’t people have the “right to die”.
Typical Liberal; tug at our heart strings, then dig into our wallets. Sorry Bob, but taxpayer money doesn’t solve every problem. Besides, depression being such a debilitating disease, shouldn’t people have the “right to die”.

Tackling Depression at Work as a Productivity Strategy (Judy Martin)

We keep talking about it... but words are not deeds.

Tackling Depression at Work as a Productivity Strategy

Depression tops the list of health-related productivity costs in the workplace. That was the finding in a medical study shortly after the economy tanked in the 2008 recession, and it’s no different now.

The annual cost of depression is estimated at $44 billion in lost productivity to American companies according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

 

The accelerated pace of work due to expanding technology can feed stress and anxiety in the workplace, but depression is a different animal. It’s a clinical diagnosis “with specific criteria, which severely impact a person’s ability to function.” It can thwart an employees’ ability to concentrate, be effective and stay healthy enough to hold down a job.

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“Some companies will only tune into the effects of these strains when they experience negative outcomes like losing a customer or losing key talent,” says Clare Miller, Director of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health, a program of the American Psychiatric Foundation.

Companies that measure engagement and morale, Miller says, will be more likely to  identify  this “pain” earlier,  and take steps to intervene. “My sense is that companies are intuitively concerned about this “new normal” and the long-term impact of unsustainable pace.”

 

In a joint project, The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and Employers Health, an Ohio-based employer coalition, are designing a new workplace human resources toolkit. It will help employees identify warning signs of depression, and help decrease the stigma associated with depression.

When Work Stress Yields Depression It's Unbearable (Judy Martin)

 

 

A friendly looking, tie-wearing, big brown bear greets you from the depths of a scenic forest on the pages of a new on-line portal aimed at raising awareness about depression in the workplace. The front page of RightDirectionforme.com reads:

 

 “When you’re depressed at work, it can feel like you’re lost in the woods alone. But there’s help, and you can find your way out.”

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Depression is a bear of a burden on its own, let alone in the workplace where the stigma attached to it is arguably just as bad as the consequences of remaining silent for the employee and the employer. That’s the message from the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health  (an arm of the American Psychiatric Foundation) which joined with Employers Health launching Right Direction to educate employers and employees about depression, reduce stigma and increase the chances of people asking for help.

 

“In my experience, depression has been on the radar, but not a topic that employers typically have wanted to address head-on,” says Marcas Miles of Employers Health who overseas programs and community outreach for the non-profit coalition of health care providers. He says while employers are aware of the problem, they don’t necessarily have a direction to start the conversation – thus the Right Direction initiative was born.

 

Data suggest a growing need to address depression at work. Mental illness short-term disability claims are growing by 10% annually and mental disorders were at the heart of more than 9% of long-term disability claims in 2012. As I mentioned in a recent Forbes.com post, Tackling Depression at Work as a Productivity Strategy, depression is a leading cause of lost productivity in the United States with an annual cost of $44 billion to employers.

 

Add work stress into the mix and things get even more complicated says Clare Miller, director of the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health. While stress is something that everyone experiences she says, not being able to manage stress in a healthy way is a concern. “Someone with clinical depression may be especially vulnerable to highly stressful situations, especially if their depression is not adequately managed,” says Miller.

 

“There has been a significant rise in disability claims in the last two years, some of them related to psychiatric problems,” says Robert Leahy Ph.D. the director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy. “I have seen a dramatic increase in generalized anxiety, marked by excessive worry, focused on the possibility of losing their job.

 

The author of Beat the Blues Before They Beat You: How to Overcome Depression, says added stressors at work might be contributing to depression and worry. “There are increasing demands for productivity to increase profits, while support staff has shrunk,” says Dr Leahy. “Moreover, people often report feeling stuck in a no-win, glass-ceiling job, but they fear being out in the market place in such difficult times. As a result they feel trapped and helpless.”

 

Other work stress culprits include employees feeling that they are suffering with burnout, being treated unfairly or not compensated properly, lack control of outcomes, and feel unappreciated. “Increased complaining may help some think that they are ventilating their entitled opinions, but this may lead to getting fired,” says Dr. Leahy. Thus, keeping their job the prime stressor that can exacerbate underlying depression.

 

The Right Direction website offers a questionnaire to explore whether one is depressed. It’s not just about sadness, hopelessness, irritability, self-criticism and feelings of indifference and withdrawal. Upon perusal, companies will see that when depressed their employees are likely to have difficulty concentrating, might be more forgetful, less productive and less present even when sitting at their desks. They are twice as likely to develop heart disease, and twice as likely to have a stroke.

 

Retaining valued employees, less turnover and a healthier more productive workforce. Perhaps that’s the argument that is best aligned with that bottom-line for the C-suite to identify early recognition of symptoms, have the difficult conversations and tackle depression head on.

 

Is employee depression on the radar of big business? Should it be?

 

Please share your thoughts. Connect with me on Twitter: @JudyMartin8 and please visit me at WorkLifeNation.com where I track work stress management initiatives, workplace well-being trends and write about transforming stress in an “always-on” world.

The PMO's revolving door: Why Harper has a staffing problem (Don Martin)

 

Stephen Harper's government has recognized the impact of occupational mental health on performance, productivity and individual well-being; they even created voluntary standards.

 

Maybe it's time they implement them internally.  Leaders practice what they preach, etc.

 

The PMO's revolving door: Why Harper has a staffing problem

Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves to people after speaking at the opening of the World French Language Forum Monday, July 2, 2012 in Quebec City. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Don Martin, Power Play Host                                      
             

Published Friday, July 19, 2013 1:59PM EDT                                     

The Prime Minister has a staffing problem: Stephen Harper has trouble keeping them.

 

The soundtrack of the PMO is the combination of boxes being packed and the whirling noise of a revolving door as barely-started staff move on, voluntarily or otherwise.

 

The latest to be reassigned from the overheated PMO kitchen is one Chris Woodcock. Never heard of him? Me neither.

 

He was head of issues management which, coupled with communications, represents PMO Control Freak Central.

 

What prompted Woodcock to be barge-poled away from the Prime Minister was allegedly being linked -- directly or indirectly -- to the Mike Duffy affair and the much-maligned senator’s monetary bailout by Harper’s top aide.

 

Thus, to illustrate the busy departure lounge in the PMO, a former issues manager joins a former legal adviser as the two departing PMO staff who knew about a cheque from a former chief of staff to a former Conservative senator to pay off improper housing claims.

This exodus is not just a recent phenomenon.

 

After seven years as Prime Minister, Harper is now on his fourth chief of staff and his sixth (and best) director of communications. (Nobody expects workaholic Andrew MacDougall will set the mouthpiece longevity record by sticking around until the 2015 election.)

 

About the only staffing constant is the long-suffering couple who have toiled as Harper’s grin-and-grip photographers for about ten years. 

 

Partially driving the turnover is the fact Harper’s not exactly an empathetic boss. He works insanely hard and expects the same from everyone inside his organizational chart. Being in the PMO is seen as sufficient compensation for all those long seven-day workweeks tethered to a Blackberry.

 

(The parting gift for a middle manager who couldn’t take the endless overtime and working weekends any longer was to have Harper breeze into her office with official photographer in tow for a pose and a handshake. Total time for the sendoff: one awkward minute).

 

But what’s worse than having little lingering political memory in the PMO is how the ones who last the longest seem to be the paranoid powertrippers who are causing so much trouble.

 

They do silly things like anonymously leak smear material on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and get carried away by advising new ministers to craft enemy lists. They are the Koolaid-drinking true believers who notoriously bully senior political and public servant staff, which has morale sliding throughout government ranks.

 

That’s the real staffing problem confronting Harper. The good ones quit.

 

Those who thrive inside the PMO bunker relish their power and see non-existent enemies lurking behind every grassy knoll on Parliament Hill.

 

Adressing the Presenteeism Issue (Esther Huberman)

Addressing the presenteeism issue

Esther Huberman | October 15, 2012

On any given day, you may look around your office and see that all your employees are at work. But present doesn’t always mean productive. Presenteeism—absenteeism’s lesser known, but still costly, cousin—occurs when employees who are physically present are, due to a physical or emotional issue, distracted to the point of reduced productivity.

 

As employers increase their sensitivity to the issues surrounding mental and physical health in the workplace, they also increase their awareness of presenteeism. “Everyone is aware of situations where employees are at work but are not productive due to emotional or physical distractions,” says Greg Van Slyke, senior director, business development, with Homewood Human Solutions. “They may call these individuals the ‘walking wounded’ or, to use a sports analogy, say they are ‘playing hurt.’”

 

But beyond this simple definition, presenteeism has several nuances. If, once or twice, an individual is distracted at work by a personal matter, that is not presenteeism or, at least, it is notconsistent presenteeism. According to Emmanuelle Gaudette, prevention and health promotion manager with Standard Life, “If the problem that creates the distraction persists and results in chronic stress with unhealthy physical or emotional manifestations (racing heart, headaches, depression), it becomes a health issue that interferes with productivity.” That’s the presenteeism employers should be concerned about.

 

Lost productivity costs

 Increasingly, plan sponsors and their consultants understand that a well-designed wellness campaign should help improve workplace health and employee productivity. And it is generally understood that the more a wellness strategy is ingrained across all levels of an organization—from procedural to social—the more positive its influence on employee health. To measure the impact of such a strategy, plan sponsors typically track criteria such as degrees of absenteeism, increases/decreases in drug claiming for chronic conditions with a lifestyle connection, short- and long-term disability claims and return-to-work successes and failures.

 

But absent from this list, due to its difficulty in quantifying, is measurement of presenteeism. To properly measure, presenteeism requires initial benchmarking followed by a form of intervention to address its causes. A follow-up remeasurement, post-intervention, then quantifies the degree of presenteeism. It sounds straightforward, but it’s not when you consider the depth to which employee actions, reactions, expectations regarding output and individual physical and emotional influences need to be identified and measured—all while using statistical protocols.

 

The labour-intensive components of this activity—and its need for a command of sophisticated measuring and statistical criteria—preclude many from doing so. Nonetheless, many sponsors continue to want, and need, to know what they can anticipate as their return on investment (ROI) before investing time in planning and delivering a possible solution.

 

Numbers game

 Unfortunately, despite the existence of various North American studies on the matter (some dating back to the mid-’70s), quantifying presenteeism in terms that relate to businesses across the board has been difficult because of issues around consistency and integrity of the studies. Fortunately, clarity is on its way in the not-too-distant future. Soon, Canadians will be able to look to a number of Canadian research projects on absenteeism, disability and presenteeism in relation to wellness investment that will provide metrics rooted in scientific, objective and reputable research mechanisms. These projects, currently under way, are the result of a partnership of insurance companies, educational institutions and others with a vested interest in quantifying the human and ROI value of wellness programs.

 

In one such effort, Standard Life has partnered with the University of Montreal in the study called Developing Better Assessment, Interventions and Policies in Occupational Mental Health: A Multi-disciplinary Approach. The objective of this five-year project is to analyze the link between personal and organizational characteristics; namely, to better understand the influence of a company’s management practices on employee mental health. Early results will be released this fall, with the remainder throughout 2013.

 

Standard Life’s objective is to help educate employers to help them visualize the human and financial cost of mental health issues in the workplace. “We want to put numbers around this issue to help our plan sponsors better understand the negative implications (including presenteeism) of having unhealthy or distracted employees—whether or not they are at work—as well as the value of investing in wellness,” says Gaudette.

 

Getting to ROI

 In an effort to generate quality, scientifically sound data on the ROI of wellness, the Sun Life Wellness Institute partnered with the Richard Ivey School of Business for the Return-on-Investment (ROI) Study of Workplace Wellness Programs, intended to increase evidence and insight into Canadian workplace wellness. Phase 1, completed earlier this year, consists of a comprehensive review of all published literature on the issue of workplace wellness programs and their outcomes. Phase 2, under way now, is a two-year field study involving a number of Canadian organizations and examines wellness strategies in relation to ROI.

 

Dr. Michael Rouse, director of the Health Sector MBA with the Ivey School of Business and head of the joint study, recently shared results of the completed Phase 1 with industry members and says the study’s rigorous review of global literature and studies on the ROI of wellness programs “reveal a savings of 1.5 to 1.7 absentee days per employee, per year when a wellness program is in place. This translates into a savings of $251 to $274 per year, per employee.”

 

Bear in mind, the above statistic is only what has been revealed by research literature to date and includes data from outside Canada. Phase 2 of the study is restricted to Canada.

 

The Burnout factor

 Further insight into the effects of presenteeism, its hidden costs and impacts within the workplace can be found in Sun Life’s recently published report The Burnout Factor. The following details from the report highlight the high toll of poor physical and mental health on workers and, by extension, their employers.

1. The group with the highest average “burnout factor” (stresses in emotional, financial, personal, professional and health areas) is that of full-time employees. They received a score of 38, which is high in relation to retired individuals (with a score of 20) and in comparison to all Canadians (with a score of 31).
2. Of the full-time employee group, it is the individuals between the ages of 35 and 44—prime productive working years—who are at a particularly high risk of stress. Their burnout factor score was, on average, 40.4, which is 30% higher than that of the average Canadian.

Why the focus on chronic stress? Because medical research indicates prolonged exposure to stress has strong links to chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, obesity and more. While other research on this matter is taking place in North America, these two studies are uniquely Canadian and, therefore, are expected to be influential in helping Canadian plan sponsors better understand and quantify expectations around investing in wellness.

 

Outside of any research taking place, the reality is that employers will always need to be sensitive to the human and financial costs of presenteeism, absenteeism and disability in the workplace and will always wish to mitigate those costs. If plan sponsors currently believe in the strong correlation between improved ROI and the time, effort and initiative involved in creating and sustaining a proactive organizational culture that is committed to mental and physical health, then following this data will be key to developing wellness programs in the future.

 

Esther Huberman is a communications consultant with Pal Benefits. ehuberman@palbenefits.com

The Vicious Cycle of Laissez-Faire Capitalism

Our economy is in crisis and people are looking for someone to blame. A large segment of society blames the government and many now express the view that everything would be fine again if the government would just stop interfering in the markets and allow laissez-faire capitalism to work its magic.

In Laissez-Faire capitalism, people pursue their own interests with a profit motive.  If they're not getting paid, what's the point? When they do have resources, those resources are there to use as folk see fit.

Including Human Resources.  Employers can hire or fire as they choose; employees can take or not take jobs as they choose.  It's through negotiating selfish interest that balance and stability gets built in to our non-system of a Randian non-society on a contract-by-contract basis.  Equal pay for work of equal value, etc.

Of course, this structure implies that the employer values individual labour and will pay appropriately for it.  A smart employer won't want to perpetually hire and fire - they'll want the best talent from the get-go and will work to keep it. 

 

But what if that isn't the case? What if employers see employees as disposable widgets and figure really anybody can do the job, so why pay big bucks for it?  After all, that's why North America lost its manufacturing industry - too many benefits for employees, too many regulations, not enough profit.   

What if employers view employees as tools, not resources?  If you smack something with a hammer hard enough, you'll break it; you can use the back of a screwdriver the same way.  It's less the tool that accomplishes the work than it is the pressure applied by the user.  That's exactly what micromanagement is.

Yes, some employers treat their employees like human beings; the laissez-faire capitalists, however, will hire and fire as they please without worrying about support, training, etc.  Why should they?  Labour doesn't make products, the employers do.   They built that.

Cheaper labour, less expensive regulation in places like Bangladesh - no need to waste money by operating in countries like Canada.  It's the international equivalent of child labour (including actual child labour).

If the quality of the labour doesn't matter, then the employees have lost their key self-interest bargaining chip.   Work becomes less about getting stuff done and more about sucking up the boss, (creating that personal value) or undermining your fellows so that if the axe falls, it'll land on them, not you.  The product suffers - but it still gets made.  Maybe it's a cheaper product, but so what - you can just push your people to up productivity and sell more for less.

Rational consumers in a laissez-faire model want lowest dollar for value - more for less.   They can compete between sellers for the best quality of product, but again - do they really need the fanciest tool to accomplish what they want? Doesn't it make sense to get the cheapest product so they have more cash to get more stuff? I can buy one dish at The Kitchen Store, three at Wal-Mart and ten at the Dollar Store.  The lowest cost wins - just as it has with the manufacturing industry.

Buying more for less, hiring more for less and ultimately, working less for whatever you get.  If the boss wants you to do more, they've gotta pay for it.  If you know you're going to be stigmatized from finding work regardless, the incentive to go through the standard job-hunt process isn't there.  Money, not legacy, not accomplishment nor even pride becomes the prime motivator.  Paying for training when nothing is guaranteed makes no laissez-faire sense; it's a waste of resources.

So what if you have a populace that isn't going to invest time in training or all the legwork it takes to get to a position where they might get hired?  What if you have people who won't even think about issues unless someone is paying them to do so?  What if every action is expected to turn around rapid results and everything is to be gotten for as little investment as possible?

It's not hard to imagine - we are surrounded by examples both domestic and international.  The best ROI comes from crime - little effort or brief effort pays handsomely; all you need to do is invest in some security and not care about what happens to people not you, laissez-faire style.  Drug lords do this.  Warlords do this.  Abusers of interns are doing the same thing.  Not hiring to save on cash is hardly a crime, but it's hardly to the benefit of society, either.  But that's what you get from focusing solely on your bottom line.

Here's the picture we have right now - employers with money want to spend as little of it on labour as possible and are skirting the rules by moving overseas or turning to contract work and intern work as methods to keep their costs down.  The marginalized demographics in our society know that the system is stacked against them; there's little motivation to invest in the time, energy and training to compete for the chance to maybe possibly get an interview for a dead-end position against a host of higher qualified or under-employed candidates.  It just makes no sense.

 

We can do as Jason Kenney has done - turn to foreign labour to fill the gap, cheaply.  The problem with this approach is that it doesn't solve the structural problem and feeds into the bias that already stigmatizes New Canadians with low or non-transferable skills.  You can't force the work that nobody wants to do without leaning towards indentured servitude 'with those desperate for work getting trapped in cycles of internships/Joad-style style Labour Migrations at best and Concentration Camps at worst.  You can try to create more stable work through government, but again, that means greater taxation which people aren't in favour of - it's that more for less thing again.

 

The analogies here are deliberate, but they aren't the only ones available.  In a social system where the few with the greatest wealth benefit and growing majorities are seen as tools in an economy rather than as human beings, something's got to give; instability festers.  Indifference leads to frustration of the kind that can kindle into crime waves, war or revolution.  In any of these scenarios, it's the people with the most who have the most to lose.

 

“We need people who are going to take a stand,” he said.

 

Which is why it makes sense for the haves to be the ones giving back.  There is precedent - every pulse in the history of labour has led to greater investment in human resources, and each has resulted in greater prosperity.  There is also precedent for what happens when employers head in the other direction - that, too, is the history of labour.

 

At the end of the day, a democratic government can't force it's people to do right by each other, to invest in society - when it starts trying to do that, it ceases to be democratic.  It is always ultimately up to the people to commit to living together.  This, too, we will continue to do - reactively, in response to a World War II or a Great Depression if not a Syria or an Egypt - until we stop turning a blind eye to the woes of others and seek to blame them for our own problems.

 

There's more to this "forward together" business than just an inclusive slogan - society is a Commons that can only be sustained on common ground. 

 

And of course, despite what the laissez-faire capitalists will tell you, altruism is really just selfishness that plans ahead.