Many organisations are seeking help to identify employee vulnerabilities to stress, improve wellbeing and build workplace resilience. This is particularly important now as people return to the workplace post-lockdown and also contend with new external stresses including the cost of living crisis and news of the war in Ukraine. 
 
The Emotional Processing Scale - Wellbeing (EPS-W) is a newly launched assessment developed from an established clinical tool used in therapeutic settings.  It has proven to be a very powerful tool to help people understand and develop healthy approaches to managing their emotional processing. Applications to support the healthy management of change include:

• building resilience/assessing for stress
• leadership development
• managing career and role transitions
• returning to work after long term absence/parental leave
• recruitment into high stress roles
• improving problem-solving capacity 

We are delighted to be adding the EPS-W to our psychometric toolkit. We will be introducing the EPS-W as a new intervention with an assessment, feedback session and subsequent coaching session for individuals and teams. If you would like to see a sample report click here to download. 

We are qualified and accredited to use the EPS-W in an occupational setting. If you would like to discuss the tool or coaching support for you or your teams do get in touch or call 07711 503382 to arrange a chat.
 
#wellbeing

360˚ feedback exercises are a great way to enhance job performance, leadership transition, career satisfaction and well-being. Introduced into businesses in the 1950s they continue to be a valued and robust way to support professional development. 
 
360˚ feedback exercises are a specific intervention to elicit a point-in-time assessment of behaviour and performance. [See our articles on developing feedback cultures for more general BAU applications]. They provide another view of behaviour and impact beyond the individual's perspective, from juniors, peers and seniors. This provides a powerful way to raise awareness, leverage strengths and develop weaknesses.
 
The use of 360˚ assessment tools – either tailored to assess your organisation’s competencies and values or broad characteristics such as EQ, leadership and management competencies – is particularly valuable for:

• leadership team forming and development
• developing senior leaders
• supporting the transition to leadership
• investing in high potentials
• succession planning
• supporting low performers
• supporting L&D programmes
• team development and cohesion
• reinforcing strategy
• developing/reinforcing competencies and values

 
Using good 360˚ feedback tools and carried out well, benefits are numerous and include:

• raised self-awareness
• boosted performance
• enhanced learning, skills and understanding
• motivated and more confident people
• demonstration of recognition and value
• reduced staff turnover
• improved accountability and personal responsibility
• creates a culture of transparency and openness
• supports culture change
• supports continuous learning and performance improvement

Following their introduction in the 1950s, a formal study* conducted over sixty years later confirmed the "superiority of multi-rater [360] feedback to the traditional methods and the dominance of advantages over disadvantages" in assessing performance.  The study concluded "360 degree feedback implementation provides many positive outcomes in fact much more than the other traditional methods provide. Additionally, not only is multi-rater feedback a beneficial method of development, but it is also an effective tool for performance evaluation. The conclusion of this paper is that although it is not easy to implement 360 degree feedback practice, if it is utilised correctly its positive outcomes are highly satisfying. 360 degree feedback appraisal is an effective method for performance evaluation."

Many of our coaching programmes begin with a 360˚ feedback exercise as they provide helpful data for goal setting and raising self-awareness. They can also be valuable in one-off interventions, for example when followed by a one-off feedback and action planning coaching meeting. If you would like more details about our 360˚ assessments do get in touch e: enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or see here.

* Kanaslan and Iyem, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
May 2016, Vol. 6, No. 5
ISSN: 2222-6990​ 

Employee turnover continues to rise in the UK in 2021 as the post-pandemic job market becomes more competitive and wages rise. Many employers are reported to be concerned about employee retention especially for their hard to find and replace people. Should they be concerned? For companies relying mainly on pay and other ‘hygiene’ rewards, yes.

Many pundits are currently recommending that employers should now increase their pay and associated benefits packages to offset the risk of staff leaving. However, as has long been established, where pay levels are already equitable in the market, simply paying more isn’t effective in retaining people in post.

Why do people stay with their employer? In the main because they are committed to the work they are doing and to their employer – they enjoy and find meaning in the work, the culture and their sense of being valued and continually developing. Where these are missing, those staff staying simply for the money are rarely the most engaged and productive employees. Equally, for employees in this position, this rarely represents an optimal work experience. In a recent survey 21% of employees claimed that inadequate career development was their reason for leaving for another company.

​The impact of losing people can be significant. McKinsey research indicates that high performing staff are 400% more productive than average performers. In the summer, the CIPD reported that 36% of business services companies (i.e. law, consultancy, science, technology and marketing) have hard to fill vacancies. 44% plan to respond to this issue by upskilling existing staff.

In an increasingly competitive job market, efforts to retain valued people are especially important. Employees who feel they are developing, are valued by their employers and are able to flourish on a personal level are more likely to stay. It is better business sense to deepen the mutual value employers and employees invest in each other than simply to throw more money into the salaries pot. 

The CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook Summer 2021 recommends that employers should raise the quality of work they offer to attract and retain the best people. Providing development and career opportunities, upskilling managers, and boosting job quality are essential components.

What is your company’s strategy for developing and retaining high performers?
 
Managing Change provide executive and career development programmes including our highly regarded retention and development Potential! programme. Do get in touch if you'd like to know more about we can help you and your teams. Email us on enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or call 01223 655667.

Covid-19, and the lockdown which followed, has impacted working mums considerably. Closure of schools and childcare facilities has meant that parents needed to be home during the working day to look after them, and this responsibility has fallen most heavily on mums.

A survey of nearly 20,000 mothers and pregnant women carried out last year showed that 72% of working mothers have had to work fewer hours in the lockdown period because of childcare issues.

As 81% of working mums report needing childcare in order to be able to work, lack of childcare facilities and the lack of flexible working hours for many, has had a huge impact. As lockdown restrictions ease, school and childcare accessibility should improve (although this will be of limited immediate benefit to the number of mums who have been made redundant during the period).

​​It is reported that 44% of UK HR professionals admit to feeling challenged by requests for flexible working and struggle to meet them. Frequently this is because the business itself has not been persuaded of the benefits. Perhaps one positive outcome of the lockdown has been the demonstration that flexible working is viable and can be beneficial to working mums and employers alike.

​For details on our maternity coaching programmes do get in touch - email enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or call us on 01223 655667 or find further details here.

Most of the mums and dads we work with are balancing the often competing needs of work and childcare. All families have their own arrangements as to how that balance will be managed. Yet it still seems that most nurseries, day care centres and schools only call or message mum when they need to get in touch. 

Many of the mums (and many dads) we work with find this quite frustrating especially when it is an assumed and default position. One dad told us that that even though he does most of the drop off and pick up, his nursery still messages mum with information and requests for his son. For many mums, being the assumed contact point despite dad,  granny or a nanny being the principal day carer is irritating and distracting when they are called by the nursery during a busy or demanding day. 

However, assumptions run both ways. Your childcare provider may be assuming that mum is the main contact point but if this is incorrect have you clearly told them? Some of our mums have recognised that they have shied slightly away from this clarity (maybe through fear of negative judgment or because they want to stay in the loop). As in so many situations, lack of clarity paves the way for much misunderstanding. Whether you are mum or dad, be clear about what you want and clearly assert your preferred contact arrangement confidently. While this seems ridiculously simple and straightforward, many don't do it. If that includes you, rather than beat yourself up over it, ask yourself why? Unraveling the answer to that may ease many related working parent stresses.

The easing of lockdown presents the prospect of life returning to normal. For many, this will not be straightforward and some will require additional support. The mental health charity Mind has reported that 60% of adults reported a worsening of their mental health during lockdown. At the same time employees are frequently unwilling to share their concerns about their mental health with their employers. So, whether we are acting as individuals or employers, how can we enhance our resilience, coping and positivity?

A recent study describes how linking flow with goal setting can have a positive impact on the prevalence of anxiety levels at work.

Flow
In the 1970s psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the idea of ‘Flow’. During initial studies of creative people (e.g. painters and musicians) he observed that they were engaged in their activities without any focus on external rewards and seemed motivated to carry out their activity purely for the sake of it. In the process they described being so absorbed in what they were doing that they lost sense of time passing or the environment around them. This became known as ‘Flow’ as people described the experience as like “being carried along on a stream of water”. In the years since, flow has been extensively studied and experienced by people in a wide range of activities.

Flow is associated with higher job performance, greater job satisfaction, positive mood, increased coping and enhanced job engagement. It is negatively related to burnout and anxiety. For example, being in a flow state has been shown to be associated with reduced cortisol levels (a stress hormone). Facilitating states of flow therefore can be effective in boosting and maintaining resilience and positivity.

Flow occurs when the degree of challenge in a task is slightly higher than the level of skill at hand.
 
Goal setting
Adding in focused goal setting appears to help us achieve a state of flow. Goals need to be SMART (i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound) and the study's researchers place particular emphasis upon the goals needing to be both achievable and challenging. Adding in nudges throughout the day, can help us to keep focused on them.
 
Nudges
Nudges are light touch, timely prompts we can use to encourage us to make beneficial choices which we might otherwise not make. Setting our own goals (self-leadership) sees us taking an active rather than a passive stance and appears to boost our experience of flow at work. Active stances are known to be helpful in maintaining resilience and overcoming anxiety. (As the old saying goes “action is the antidote to despair”)
 
In the study, the researchers asked the participants to set three SMART goals each day with a daily text prompt each morning. They were then sent nudges by text message through the day to nudge them into setting/working on their goals. At the end of the study they found  that this group of participants was significantly more likely to experience a state of flow than those who didn’t use this technique, and that this group self-reported improvements in their daily work performance, daily stress, and work engagement.

There are limitations with this study, as with most: it was a preliminary study with a fairly small group of participants (317) who were self-reporting the results, but it nicely included three distinct areas (flow, goal setting and nudges) for which there is a fair degree of support.

So, might it be something you want to try out for yourself?

They key steps are:

1. Apply this to each workday for several weeks (but not non-working days)
2. Each morning before getting started with work, identify three SMART goals you will set yourself for that day. They must be challenging but not overwhelming such that you can accomplish each one that day. Write these out as “Today I will… “ for each goal. For example, saying “Today I will make sales calls” is not a SMART goal but “Today I will make 10 sales calls to prospects who attended last Thursday’s webinar” is.
3. Using your smart phone (or other smart device) set up 3-4 automated task reminders, to run periodically through each working day, nudging you to check (a) what you are working on now and (b) to set (or focus on) your next SMART goal.
4. At the end of the two week period check in with yourself – overall do you feel that you have been more productive, less stressed and more engaged with work?

If you do try this out for yourself or your team, we’d be interested to see how it went and how you found it. Do get in touch to share your experience and if you have found other approaches that have been helpful we’d love to hear about those too - email enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or call 01223 655667.

For the full study see Nudging flow through ‘SMART’ goal setting to decrease stress, increase engagement, and increase performance at work, by Jared Weintraub, David Cassell and Thomas P. DePatie in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Special Issue Paper, 2021 

​For months now, talk about the “new normal” of life under lockdown and, more recently, semi-lockdown, has become commonplace. Whereas back in the spring and early summer attention was focused on employee well-being and the need to build resilience for those working from home, now the focus has switched to “getting back to the office”. While this is reasonable and desirable, in the process many companies now assume that with the “new normal” everyone has settled down and adjusted to this new way of working. This is no doubt fostered by the apparent reluctance of many people to get back to the office. Based upon our experiences with clients, this assumption is wrong and may lead to problems.

​In coaching sessions with clients at all seniority levels, we see a picture of people working with greatly increased workloads (managing projects and people remotely involves more work) in sub-optimal conditions. While many of us have enjoyed the advantages of a nice home office, not having to travel, as well as nice weather, many have not. 

​These conditions may not apply to you but they may be the reality for your colleagues: Take a moment to think of those who don’t have a spare room they can convert to an office or those working at home with a partner who also needs workspace. Throw in children who have been home schooled (or if younger, needed to be cared for and occupied while you work). Think of the broadband challenges presented with a family all trying to use the internet at the same time. Think of these challenges day in and day out. For five months.

​Sharing home space with partners who are also working from home has put a number of relationships under pressure – throwing in childcare challenges, has simply exacerbated them. A rise in family breakdown and domestic violence is real.  The summer is behind us, we’re told there may be a second lockdown, and many people face the real prospect of job losses. People are now at a really low ebb. This is not normal.  

​So, what can we do to help ourselves and our teams? Firstly, as team managers or HR professionals, we should recognise that many who may be struggling in this way will not share this information or ask for help. (At the same time we should recognise that many people won’t need help). So, ensuring a response that can be targeted to those who may be in need of support or at risk, enables more agile and cost-effective action. Depending upon the structures and culture in your organisation, support needs might be identified via surveys (see the Health and Safety Executive surveys or get in touch  with us for examples) or through team managers in their one-to-one meetings with team members. It is important to be aware of overreach or intrusiveness, so keeping this in mind it can be helpful to  guide managers to seek to understand the employee’s specific situation. Where the manager has concerns, asking specific, concrete questions is most effective, for example “what are you most concerned/stressed about with work at the moment?” or “how are you coping with project x/working from home/returning to work?”. Support should be offered but not insisted upon. 

​Providing targeted support with resilience programmes is a proven, effective response. For maximum impact, programmes which have a practical approach and refer to each person’s personal experiences at work are known to be most effective. Compared with all kinds of resilience training programmes, coached programmes, which allow time to deepen and embed new learning, are found to be around 3x more effective than standard training programmes at building lasting resilience.  

Finally, building and maintaining our own resilience is important too. Whilst it is not healthy or desirable to become self-obsessed it is important that we don’t ignore our own well-being. The PERMA model, a key component of positive psychology, provides a nice framework for building optimism and resilience:
​
P – positive emotions (fostering positive emotions such as cheerfulness)
E – engagement (spending time in activities in which we ‘lose’ ourselves – a state of flow)
R – relationships (connecting with other people)
M – meaning (connecting to a purpose greater than yourself)
A – achievement (mastering a skill, accomplishing things)

What could you do to enhance or develop one or more of these PERMA items in your life? 

As the government begins to ease the lengthy lockdown restrictions we are seeing mixed responses to it. Many people have been champing at the bit to get back to work for some time, while others are still reluctant.

In our previous survey we asked about people’s experiences of working from home under lockdown. This time, we asked people to tell us what has been positive about it and how they feel about the return to work. 

Everyone in our sample was currently working at home and around 75% had no plans to return to work at this time. For half of them this had been a wholly positive experience, and for the other half, a mixed one. Everyone reported that the positive benefits included:

• an increase in their quality of life
• happiness at seeing a cleaner, greener more natural world

They also reported benefitting from more time spent with their families, more time for their own personal development and reflection, and valuing the increased neighbourliness and community feeling that had developed.
 
We asked what changes, if any, people would like to make on their return based on this experience. All of them reported that they wished to work from home more frequently. 50% mentioned a desire to reduce their commute time, prioritise leisure activities, and spend more time with their family. A quarter wished to adopt a more flexible working pattern on their return in terms of hours.

How do people feel about going back to work?

This was quite a mixed picture, with around 50% apprehensive and not sure what to expect, a quarter looking forward to it, and the remainder not looking forward to it. The principal concern (of 66% of people) was having to adjust to new working practices due to Covid-19. A third of people indicated general anxiety about contracting Covid-19 at work or on their commute and another third indicated a general reluctance to return, mentioning that they had enjoyed working from home.

In a forthcoming article we’ll look at ways people can approach their return to work, and how employers could ease their employees’ return to work in light of their likely concerns.
 
The new world of work looks set to be rather different from the pre-Covid one. As companies look again at their need for office space, gearing up to facilitate freer and more flexible working patterns, and new technology to support social connection and creativity, change is inevitable. The unwitting experiment brought on by Covid-19 has revealed that productivity and creativity can be achieved, and that well-being matters. These will be features many people will not be willing to give up.  Social connection matters too and this promises to be a major feature of innovations in working life ahead of us.
 
In the shorter term, supporting people back to work should address the concerns commonly raised around control, safety and communication. We recently received this informative guide for employers (Creating a safe workplace during Covid-19) from the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. This is freely available so please do share it.