Rewiring Energy Consuming States to Flow & High Performance
Read Time: 3.5 Minutes
A big thanks to the People and well-being leaders in this community for their amazing focus on supporting their organizations that have brought this work to life.
It’s a collective effort to realize well-being in the workplace, promote mental and emotional health for performance, and end the culture of chronic stress and burnout. #Wellbeing is the new performance
Join us on March 15, 2023 at 12PM PT / 3PM ET for our next Workplace Wellbeing, Performance, and Recovery Support for People Leaders on LinkedIn.
Key Highlights:
The theme for this week’s community support is Functional Recovery and Flow States.
Four-Day Work Week
After a 6-month trial of the four-day work week in the UK, led by researchers from Cambridge, Oxford, and Boston College in response to the ‘Great Resignation’ phenomena with the non-profit groups 4 Day Week Global and 4 Day Week U.K. Campaign just finished.
The experiment involved 61 companies, with nearly 3000 employees. Same pay for employees, fewer hours.
One of the baseline business metrics revealed that by moving from a 5-day to a 4-day work week, revenue stayed the same with some cases growing on average by 1.4%
Other promising statistics and reports include:
While it might not be easy to adopt for many organizations, as burnout continues to hover at 41% based on the latest study from the Future Forum Survey, the four-day workweek would be a simple and effective recovery strategy to reduce workplace burnout as an initial selection process.
State of Mid-Late Stage Burnout is a growing concern
Deloitte Insights has finished a study on burnout for executive leaders and non-executive leaders and has revealed some startling insights.
They ranked some indicators around burnout and the results that scored a state of “always” or “often” included:
And only a few points higher as a difference compared with non-executive roles.
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Big Picture - this means over a third of the workforce is likely operating at the point of no return, which not just have potential compounded negative ripple effects, such as more costly mistakes, decreased engagement and productivity, increased flight risk, and preventable turnover, it is an environment ripe for workplace trauma.
Currently, PTSD for US veterans returning from the military stands at 10% for men and 19% for women based on the National Centre of PTSD in the United States.
If we do not quickly change the nature of chronic stress at work and how we recover, the workplace can become as psychologically unsafe as war and battle which will have a devastating impact on business, as well as our economic and social outcomes.
Rewiring Energy Consuming States to Flow States
Given our current state of mental health, I can’t stress the importance of being emotionally aware as both an individual and organizational competency.
Realistically, we can’t guess how a person is feeling other than observing unhealthy behaviors.
Many of us are educated and conditioned to suppress our stress-related emotions, the five primary ones being:
And worse, distract ourselves from processing them from our neurology, which over the long term causes many of our chronic stress-related physical diseases.
The solution may not be easy, but it is simple.
Learn to be sensitive when these stress-related emotions show up, what they might mean in the moment, and shift it towards a flow state for optimal performance.
No different than driving with a flat tire, it’s recognizing a stress state, stopping, fixing the issue, and going on as usual.
Stress-related performance, especially anxiety, is unsustainable in the workplace.
How we can go about this is covered in Part 3 of the Burnout Recovery VIP Experience Playbook utilizing stimulus-conditioned responses.
From an HR lens, this also means being intentional about designing flow states for your employees across the employee experience; from performance management, change management, and L&D to your wellness-related benefits for preventative care.
Just like we have physical education in our early days at school, you’ll need to have psychological education to develop workplace athletics in our modern knowledge-oriented workplace.
Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1. If you're looking for personal recovery and support for your well-being, I'd recommend starting with this affordable course that's helped hundreds of people and their organizations, here.
2. If you’re struggling with a crisis of burnout and looking for an effective way to recover quickly, consider a life-transforming Burnout Retreat for your next vacation, here.
3. Build out Workplace Burnout Responsiveness and Recovery in your organization by booking a strategy call with me, here.