Increasing Humanity in the Workplace

Hi,

Great shares for you this week to keep you energized and focused as you lead your team in co-creating optimal workplaces where compassion is the norm.

• The Wall Street Journal asks and answers, “Is It Ever Okay to have an 8:00 a.m. Meeting?” If you know me, you know how I feel about talking with anyone before 9:00 in the morning. And, fun fact from the article, “Last year, 43% of meetings logged by the scheduling automation company Calendly occurred between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Just 3% of meetings occurred between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m.”

• To help you and your team avoid burnout, consider the 7 recognized forms of rest. Good net/net image in the post from Victoria Repa.

• Have you read about what got Kellogg’s CEO, Gary Pilnick, in hot water with, well, almost everyone? Gary, it’s not a good thing that people have resorted to eating cereal for dinner, and trying to make that a positive by pushing sugary cereals, like Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, to piggyback on that trend is noooootttt greeeaat.

• Welcome to “The Great Exhaustion.” If we are going to survive, we need to find ways to regain control of our lives and our time as well as help others who are struggling to do the same. Emily Ballesteros, M.A. says a lot about this in her piece for Time Magazine, including, “The three factors that are commonly overlooked but that I believe are contributing the most are unsustainable lifestyles, exposure to stress outside of our control, and financial insecurity. These are facets of our lives that we have managed to normalize. But this normalization has caused us to disregard their impact on our physical and mental wellbeing.” Let’s instead hyper normalize taking care of ourselves and those around us instead of falling for hustle culture. Work is important, but it will fail—and so will we—if we keep making work our number 1 priority.

• I’m a big fan of putting a dollar value on time—all time, not just work time—to help prioritize where I invest it. And Joe Pulizzi drove it home in a recent post.

Do Good Spotlight 🌟 Kiva 🌟

I’ve been a supporter of Kiva for more years than I can remember. With over 1.7 billion people around the world unable to access the financial services they need, Kiva provides solutions to help underserved communities thrive by crowdsourcing loans.

Kiva enables students to pay for tuition, women to start businesses, farmers to invest in equipment, and families to access emergency care.

By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, you can be part of the solution and make a real difference in someone’s life. And 100% of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes to funding loans.

Noteworthy 🖋 WOMEN Unlimited, Inc.

With International Women’s Day on March 8, I wanted to share about WOMEN Unlimited, Inc. (WUI), an international organization helping large enterprises coach their high-potential women for leadership positions. Their programs and mentoring help clients to create sustainable gender parity while positively influencing their bottom line.

I’ve known and respected WUI’s CEO, Dr. Rosina Racioppi, for many years. Her knowledge, enthusiasm, and perseverance in the realm of helping women to achieve the advancements we deserve is genuine and inspiring. Learn more about WUI and its impact here: WOMEN Unlimited, Inc.

• Question: what is the common emotion in 400 years of women’s diaries? If you guessed frustration, ding, ding, ding. Here’s more from Smithsonian Magazine. What does this have to do with compassionate workplaces? Everything.

• I haven’t tried this app called Tab yet, but the concept looks good and so do the reviews, so I’m sharing. It’s for the times you go out to a restaurant or bar with a group of friends, and everyone wants to simplify paying for your own items on the bill. Everybody downloads the app, takes a photo of the receipt from the app, marks what’s theirs on the receipt–and voila! Tab calculates your total, adds tax, lets you add your tip, and then integrates with Venmo to pay your share to the friend who’s collecting the moola.

Has this been helpful? I hope so. We invest so much of ourselves into our work, let’s work together to optimize those experiences and bring more humanity into business interactions. As you wrap up this week, stay strong, stay focused, and stay compassionate. We’re all in this together! 😊

Niki

P.S. Reminder, there’s still time to sign up for my Monday morning intention pod. The first one is Monday, March 11, 9:00-9:15 a.m. ET. Join us or wait to hear how it goes and join for the next one. It’s a simple concept for starting your workweek with positive intentions for you and your colleagues.

Here’s the flow: Join the meeting right at 9:00 a.m. ET, via Zoom. Camera on or off, your choice. I’ll welcome everyone and share a thought or two, and then we privately set our own intentions to bring compassion, empathy, and confidence into our workplace. Attendees can share thoughts too, but it’s not a requirement. Then, off we go! Email me at VFielding@DigitalBrandExpressions.com to learn more and receive the Zoom link.