The single greatest underutilized resource you have in optimizing the efficiency and productivity of your organization is the untapped potential of the very ambassadors of your brand: your employees.
Unlocking that unused potential isn’t about leadership development, synergy workshops, acronyms, or assessment tools. It’s about empowering people to contribute in a creative, curious, and genuine way. As revealed by the research of Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmondson, in her book, The Fearless Organization, it’s all about psychological safety – an environment conducive to take calculated risks, make mistakes, and learn.
And while much of the coaching profession is focused on C-suite-level executives and high potentials – who are, by the way, vital to the organization and worth investing in – the majority of the employees receive a minority of the time, money, attention, and resources spent in development and growth.
You cannot raise the ceiling without strengthening the foundation. To elaborate, I’ll double-down on a tiresome analogy. Leadership development without people development means your shiny castle is built on sand. How will it fare during an unexpected tremor – like an economic crisis or pandemic – or when the inevitable tide comes in – like competition or newer technology? Will the foundation hold, contributing to a whole greater than the parts…or will each individual grain waver beneath the weight built on top of it and shift to areas of less pressure? It’s basic physics and we all know the answer.
A Mind Matters’ study, published in May of 2021, conservatively estimated that the total cost of poor mental health to employers across Europe to be between €378-€469 billion each year. This cost is due to absenteeism, presenteeism (i.e., working while sick), and staff turnover. In 2019, 45% of adults in the United States reported a mental health condition, increasing at an annual rate of 6% since 2013, respectively. And poor mental health impacts productivity at work in many ways. For instance, employees who experience poor mental health find it difficult to concentrate (70%), struggle with juggling several tasks (52%), and frequently put off challenging work (46%). About one in four employees find it challenging to learn new tasks, and one in five experiences more conflict at work and are less patient with customers and clients.
However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. An analysis of workplace mental health programs showed average returns of €5.20 for every €1 invested. Johnson & Johnson’s health and wellness program saved an annual $565 in healthcare costs per U.S.-based employee over a 7-year period. And noting that resilience is a neuro-psychobiological concept that can positively shift the stress performance curve, Mind Matters conducted a nine-week resilience training targeted at researchers from three prominent research institutions who scored in the bottom quartile of their Personal Resilience Indicator. After the training, the participants increased their Personal Resilience Indicator score from an average of 18% to 61%. Absenteeism dropped by 73% and presenteeism-related productivity losses by 24%.
The whole point here can be best summed up in an analogy offered by Bob Kelly of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in the book Patients Come Second by Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett: “Focusing on employee engagement is akin to being on an airplane and putting your oxygen mask on first, before attending to your kids. How can our people help their patients when they, too, are suffering?”
The takeaway here should be obvious by now. Invest in your people and the return will be great. The days of following the script, putting in your thirty years, and retiring with a gold watch and a pension are long gone. Most millennials don’t even wear a watch. As Linda Rottenberg writes in her book, Crazy is a Compliment, “The biggest single change in the workforce of the entrepreneurial age is the list of priorities workers bring to the job. Paycheck is on the list, but it’s increasingly crowded out by a host of new considerations: impact, freedom, quality of life.” And this doesn’t simply apply to those at the top of the pyramid. We have to rethink the way we operate an organization, re-evaluate what we value, and reallocate our efforts to ensure we aren’t leaving mounds of hidden potential on the table. Remember, your employees don’t work for the company; they are the company!
Unlocking that unused potential isn’t about leadership development, synergy workshops, acronyms, or assessment tools. It’s about empowering people to contribute in a creative, curious, and genuine way. As revealed by the research of Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmondson, in her book, The Fearless Organization, it’s all about psychological safety – an environment conducive to take calculated risks, make mistakes, and learn.
And while much of the coaching profession is focused on C-suite-level executives and high potentials – who are, by the way, vital to the organization and worth investing in – the majority of the employees receive a minority of the time, money, attention, and resources spent in development and growth.
You cannot raise the ceiling without strengthening the foundation. To elaborate, I’ll double-down on a tiresome analogy. Leadership development without people development means your shiny castle is built on sand. How will it fare during an unexpected tremor – like an economic crisis or pandemic – or when the inevitable tide comes in – like competition or newer technology? Will the foundation hold, contributing to a whole greater than the parts…or will each individual grain waver beneath the weight built on top of it and shift to areas of less pressure? It’s basic physics and we all know the answer.
A Mind Matters’ study, published in May of 2021, conservatively estimated that the total cost of poor mental health to employers across Europe to be between €378-€469 billion each year. This cost is due to absenteeism, presenteeism (i.e., working while sick), and staff turnover. In 2019, 45% of adults in the United States reported a mental health condition, increasing at an annual rate of 6% since 2013, respectively. And poor mental health impacts productivity at work in many ways. For instance, employees who experience poor mental health find it difficult to concentrate (70%), struggle with juggling several tasks (52%), and frequently put off challenging work (46%). About one in four employees find it challenging to learn new tasks, and one in five experiences more conflict at work and are less patient with customers and clients.
However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. An analysis of workplace mental health programs showed average returns of €5.20 for every €1 invested. Johnson & Johnson’s health and wellness program saved an annual $565 in healthcare costs per U.S.-based employee over a 7-year period. And noting that resilience is a neuro-psychobiological concept that can positively shift the stress performance curve, Mind Matters conducted a nine-week resilience training targeted at researchers from three prominent research institutions who scored in the bottom quartile of their Personal Resilience Indicator. After the training, the participants increased their Personal Resilience Indicator score from an average of 18% to 61%. Absenteeism dropped by 73% and presenteeism-related productivity losses by 24%.
The whole point here can be best summed up in an analogy offered by Bob Kelly of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in the book Patients Come Second by Paul Spiegelman and Britt Berrett: “Focusing on employee engagement is akin to being on an airplane and putting your oxygen mask on first, before attending to your kids. How can our people help their patients when they, too, are suffering?”
The takeaway here should be obvious by now. Invest in your people and the return will be great. The days of following the script, putting in your thirty years, and retiring with a gold watch and a pension are long gone. Most millennials don’t even wear a watch. As Linda Rottenberg writes in her book, Crazy is a Compliment, “The biggest single change in the workforce of the entrepreneurial age is the list of priorities workers bring to the job. Paycheck is on the list, but it’s increasingly crowded out by a host of new considerations: impact, freedom, quality of life.” And this doesn’t simply apply to those at the top of the pyramid. We have to rethink the way we operate an organization, re-evaluate what we value, and reallocate our efforts to ensure we aren’t leaving mounds of hidden potential on the table. Remember, your employees don’t work for the company; they are the company!