Wellbeing at Work

Sharing my learnings from the book, Wellbeing at Work by Jim Clifton & Jim Harter

Wellbeing at Work by Jim Clifton & Jim Harter

Coauthored by Gallup’s CEO and its Chief Workplace Scientist, Wellbeing at Work explores the five key elements of wellbeing — career, social, financial, physical and community — and how organizations can help employees and teams thrive in those elements. The book also gives leaders ideas and action items to help employees use their innate talents and strengths to thrive in each of the wellbeing elements. And Wellbeing at Work introduces a metric to report a person’s best possible life: Gallup Net Thriving, which will become the “other stock price” for organizations.

In a world where work and life are more blended than ever, maximizing employee wellbeing takes on greater urgency.

• This is a beginner’s guide to building an organizational culture of total well-being. 
• the researchers discovered that work can actually protect our well-being. But not just any work – it has to be satisfying work. There are huge benefits to our well-being when we enjoy our work. Not only can it improve our daily lives, but, as this research shows, it could also have a big impact on how long we live.
• People who don’t like their work are much more likely to experience boredom and anger on a daily basis. The less engaged an employee is, the worse their job performance is. 
• Employees who believe that their well-being is important to their managers consistently outperform employees who think that their managers don’t care about their well-being. With this in mind, organizations can give their employees’ career well-being a boost by training their managers to behave like coaches rather than bosses.
• coaching managers proactively set their employees’ goals and check in with them during weekly feedback sessions. Coaching managers also ensure that well-being is part of the conversation.
• our work lives and our personal lives have a reciprocal influence on each other: we inevitably bring our feelings about work home, and we bring our personal lives into the office. With that in mind, employers must support well-being in every aspect of an employee’s life.
• Having a best friend in the office doesn’t only mean you have a positive source of energy around you every day. Research shows that employees increase their performance and deliver better results if they work alongside someone they consider a close friend.
• Ensure that you include socializing with your employee onboarding program.
• For employees, low financial well-being is the biggest contributor to feeling stressed and worried on a daily basis. Financial well-being doesn’t mean having a high level of income; it means having a high level of financial security.
• organizations Can help employees manage their financial lives so that they don’t live beyond their means and accumulate debt. Employers could, for instance, provide financial planning and savings tools – or bring in financial advisors to offer advice. 
• Your employees probably already recognize the importance of getting a good night’s sleep, but leaders can help enforce this practice by communicating the latest sleep research to their workforce. Talking about sleep should be an explicit expectation for your organization’s managers. 
• leadership teams should be aware of the contagion effect, which explains how behaviors can be contagious. With this in mind, leaders should model healthy habits themselves.
• Organizations can attract the best talent and boost profits by helping their local community. The most visible way for businesses to give back is to develop corporate social responsibility, or CSR, programs.
• how can organizations integrate community well-being into their business practices? 
  • leaders should start taking notice of the community challenges that matter most to their employees. The best way to achieve this is simply to ask employees where their interests lie.
  • managers should also look for ways to harness their people’s unique talents. Whatever the community challenge might be, make sure that the expertise of your people is being put to good use.
  • Doing good makes us feel good, and companies can magnify their employees’ feelings of community well-being by encouraging them to share news of their good deeds with their coworkers.
• Senior leaders can accelerate a culture of well-being
  • organization’s rules: Do your company policies encourage or discourage different aspects of well-being?
  • communication: These messages need to be consistent with a culture of well-being. 
  • incentives: Do you have an incentive system that inspires employees to take part in well-being initiatives
  • recognition: do you recognize and celebrate the employees who get involved?
  • use your employee development schemes as an accelerator for well-being culture.
• one big obstacle to building a culture of well-being: incompetent managers.
• employees need four things from their managers – and whether or not they receive them can strongly impact their sense of well-being.
  • employees look to their leaders for a sense of hope. They want to know whether there’s a plan for the future to ensure things will get better.
  • They also want a sense of stability from their leaders; they need to know that they will be provided with the right resources to carry on with their jobs. 
  • Employees also need to be able to trust their managers. They need to feel they’re getting relevant information at the right time – even if that information is negative.
  • when their well-being is threatened, employees need compassion from their leaders.