A Focus on Mental Fitness (UPDATED)

A settlement reached Tuesday could result in significant changes to the way inmates with mental illness are treated in the province's correctional facilities.

I think it was about three years ago that I pitched to a number of GR firm the idea of starting a mental fitness advocacy practice.  There were a couple of pieces to this:

- approach multiple mental health service providers at once and pitch the idea of serving a sort of association/advocacy role for them.  Mental health has traditionally been the underfunded cousin in healthcare; a collective voice supported by top-notch GR experts could see that change for the better.

- Occupational mental health including the concept of "cognitive labour" and work/workplace design.  As we move into the Knowledge Economy, there's going to be a new industrial revolution, only this one will be based around improved support for cognitive (rather than physical) labour.  People are working longer hours at specialized knowledge work with inadequate training, support and mental fitness parameters ('cause we generally have never thought about them before).  As a result, more people were suffering from burnout, presenteeism is on the rise and both innovation and productivity are impeded.  HR firms and Insurance companies would be all over this, if traditional CEOs might lag behind.

- Justice and mental health.  This one was inevitable for all sorts of reasons, the primary one being that police/the Justice System are the de facto front line in dealing with persons publicly expressing the symptoms of mental illness.

I suggested to these folk that, while it's true mental health was a niche issue without a lot of public/private traction, factors were starting to line up that would see that trend change.  Not only was there a dire need for society to expand it's thought process around cognition, work and space design; there were significant social and economic advantages to be gained from doing this right - and therefore, money to be had. 

This pitch got me a lot of pats on the head and compliments on my passion, but no bites.  They weren't seeing what I was seeing.  I smiled back and replied, "you will - just give it a couple of years."

I wonder what they're thinking now.

UPDATE:   "Everyone is a winner if we make the right changes," the report states.  No country can now afford to have productive citizens sitting idle because of poorly designed health and social programs."

Are you listening, Prime Minister?

UPDATEDER 28/11/13: The Mowat Centre has a whole study around behavioural economics and the public sector.

This is neat.

Role of Meaning-Makers in Employee Engagement (Shawn Murphy)

 

Engaging employees, motivating innovation, addressing occupational mental illness - all part and parcel of the same move forward, when you connect the dots.  With the right kind of leadership, who knows what we could achieve...

 

 

Role of Meaning-Makers in Employee Engagement

 

 

For the past month, Ted and I hosted some extraordinary thinkers who ruminated on the value, application and future of employee engagement. First we want to thank all who participated. We learn from you and are honored to share your voice on this important topic.

 

This brings me to a question I want to explore: why does employee engagement matter?

 

Engaged employees has eluded many organizations, often becoming another management fad or meaningless surveys of which the results become shelf-ware. If it’s so important why do organizations, managers and employees fail to see the ascribed benefits of engagement efforts?

Certainly the answers are varied. Yet perhaps the most likely culprit is engagement is treated as an event. Let me explain.

 

Engaged employees, hell human beings, will put forth their best effort when they see they are appreciated

 

Each year or every other year an employee engagement survey is delivered via email to all employees. It’s arrival is trumpeted by an email from the CEO explaining the survey’s importance. This is the event. It’s followed by survey results disseminated to managers and some messaging shared with employees. End of event. Now go about your work.

 

Engagement is treated as some check-the-box-exercise on management’s long list of to-dos. It’s squeezed in between budget meetings, project status reports, committee meetings, blah blah blah.

Truth is engagement is not something planned if its done intentionally. Engagement is a leadership act. Not a management task.

 

Engaged employees has eluded many organizations, often becoming another management fad or meaningless surveys of which the results become shelf-ware

 

Engagement exists in the interactions between managers and employees. It’s where managers take on the important role of meaning-makers: managers help employees uncover and exploit meaning in their work all the while knowing that they matter. That their work matters.

 

This isn’t some group-hug moment. It’s where management, business and humanity intersect. Engaged employees, hell human beings, will put forth their best effort when they see they are appreciated. When what employees believe that what they do has significance to those whom the organization serves.

 

The role of meaning-maker is one that is woven throughout a manager’s daily actions, both planned and spontaneous

 

This does not occur when engagement is treated as event. When it’s an event it becomes unauthentic. The event is awkward at first then becomes annoying. Hopes are raised and quickly dashed when the event passes. Such an approach is void of meaning.

 

The role of meaning-maker is one that is woven throughout a manager’s daily actions, both planned and spontaneous. It’s planned when managers make time to know their employees’ hopes, dreams, plans for the future. It’s spontaneous when managers see an important teaching moment presents itself when an employee fails.

 

Employee engagement matters because it reveres the innate human desire to do work that matters, to do work that is meaningful. Without employee engagement the spawns of hierarchy, bureaucracy, command-and-control, for example, dominate and suck the humanity out of our workplaces.

Employee engagement will not thrive when its handled like an event. But when it is vigilantly cultivated and purposefully spread through the interactions between managers and employees, it becomes a way of working. It becomes part of a company’s culture.

 

Graphic by Shawn Murphy

Shawn Murphy (100 Posts)

Change Leader | Speaker | Writer Owner and principal consultant at Achieved Strategies. Co-founder of Switch and Shift. Passionately explores the space where business & humanity intersect. Promoter of workplace optimism. Believes work can be a source of joy. Top ranked on Huffington Post and HR Examiner.

Harpernian Governocracy: Do as I Say, Not Do as I Do

 

When teenagers assess role models, they have an unfailing ability to call out adults for telling them not to do something those same adults do. Why should teens believe a political leader who says it’s wrong to gang up on someone and attack him publicly for, say, inexperience, when that leader and the back-room strategists are rubbing their hands in glee over the next round of attack ads?

 

In the long run, these ads degrade the party that creates them, give credence to all-too-popular sentiment that politicians (most of whom spend long hours trying to help constituents) are a shady lot, reduce political debate to who can afford the best attack-ad agency and weaken democracy by robbing Canadians of a chance to assess up-and-coming political leaders on their merits.

 

 

Team Harper aren't the only ones who play the "do as I say, not do as I do" game.  Politicians of all stripes and at all levels will decry bullying even as they engage in the very essence of bullying behaviour, except directed at their opponents.

 

That's okay, though - you have to be tough to be in the blood sport of politics.  Right?

 

Wrong.  Bully politicians provide terrible role models - and not just for youth.  As Political Machines break rules, lie, misrepresent the facts, throw staffers under the bus and occasionally, hire them back when nobody is looking, they're setting the standard for everyone else - the private sector, students, moms and dads at home. 

 

The message is this - anything you can get away with, goes.  If you get caught misbehaving, just be extra belligerent and hit someone else to change the focus.

 

If you truly believe that the ends justify the means, then you're essentially saying poverty, war, street violence, homelessness and that $50 billion mental health crisis don't matter.  It's all just collateral damage on the way to power and the deconstruction of society.

 

That's fine, if you want to live in a Game of Thrones feudalistic society.  That, essentially, has been the internal model for Political Parties for ages - and that top-down, my-way-or-the-street approach has trickled down to politics in general.  We fundamentally don't live in a democracy any more - we live in a governocracy, where whoever is in charge feels they can shape the rules and even the laws of political nature.

 

It's all an illusion, though - the non-leaders like Harper are rubbing salt in the nation's wounds and inflaming our social problems.  They say they're doing this to strengthen the economy, but even that's not happening.  There's a reason for this - "the economy" is the political equivalent of the golden calf; you don't strengthen the financial viability of a nation by cutting off or abandoning its people.  The people are the foundation of the economy, not vice-versa.

 

The single best thing the Harper government has done so far is the creation of a Psychological Safe Workplace initiative.  Watch this video and learn - by devaluing people at the expense of the economy, by trying to bully people into behaviour Team Harper feels works best for the economy, they are fuelling the very problem they're trying to solve.  They've come to a point where the attempt to engineer a conservative society is negatively impacting the Canadian people.

 

That's not leadership.  That's a blatant disregard of responsibility for selfish gain that encourages others to do the same.

 

There's only one way to lead - and that's by example.  If that example includes casting stones, expect the people to follow.

 

Shared Solutions: Mental Health, Schools and the Workplace

Social media.  Youth.  Proactive engagement.  Safety - and mental health.  In the workplace, even.

 

Here's three projects that can only benefit through collaboration:

 

Ontario's Ministry of Labour is holding a video contest for secondary school students or youth aged 18-24. Use your creativity to develop an original video, up to two minutes long, to stress the importance of working safely on the job or about your rights to be paid fairly for the work that you do. The contest closes on April 5th. To apply, please visit www.labour.gov.on.ca.

 

Children's Mental Health Ontario is holding their annual Change the View video contest, encouraging youth to make a video demonstrating what students' schools can do to create a supportive environment for students experiencing mental health issues and addictions.

 

The Federal Ministry of Labour has created a set of voluntary standards to promote psychologically safe workplaces; a great initiative that needs to be advertised as far and wide as possible.

 

You simply can't ask for better opportunities to develop shared solutions, find efficiency of resources and get best bang for your buck.

 

This has to happen.