Stay Fit and Focused in 2015

May is National Employee Health and Fitness Month! It is time to shift our focus from adapting to new healthcare regulation to evaluating the actual health and well being of our companies and their workforces.  Healthy people will not thrive in an organization that doesn’t have a wellness mindset. Responsibility for a company’s health and wellness is equally up to the employer and employee. In 2015, the key to employee engagement is corporate health and wellness. In preparation for National Employee Health and Fitness Month, individuals and companies need to create a plan to look inward at their own health and the health of their organizations.

The environment you enter into when you go to work is essential to your motivation and work output. Creating a culture where people can flourish is key to their feeling nurtured, valued and respected.  This is the foundation needed in order for them to prosper and fully engage in their work.

There are three key areas to survey when looking at employee engagement: retention, absenteeism and presenteeism. The biggest threat to employers in the short-term is turnover, presenteeism and attitude. You want those who are showing up to be fully attentive and present while they are in the office, not playing on their phone, escaping mindlessly into social media or becoming negative or ambivalent in their attitude towards their work. Companies that have to recruit, rehire, retrain and refit will see costs rise six times on average.  However, this is proven to be less harmful than the damage that is done with disengaged employees.

Some examples of healthy companies I like are The Container Store, Google, Liquid Paper and Kaiser Permanente.  The Container Store is a perennial ‘Best Companies to Work For' recipient. They provide financial incentives for their employees who are investing in their own health and wellness. Google incorporates activities to make a longer workday possible and enhances their employees’ experience by providing onsite workout centers and cafés as well as creativity lounges. Dallas entrepreneur and philanthropist Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented Liquid Paper in the 50s, was a trailblazer. She started a private elementary school with daycare until six in the evening for single and working parents. She also built a prayer and meditation room in her factory where workers would have 20 minutes per day to take a break and read or worship or just enjoy the quiet beauty of the sculpture and circular cushioned bench seating in the room.  Kaiser Permanente incorporates 10-minute physical fitness breaks during the workday.

I recently worked with a mid-size banking institute and they appropriated part of a room at the back part of their kitchen where employees could relax and study in a modern setting. You can create a healthy environment on any budget.

What can we do? Try the following:

For Individuals

• Meditate: Engage in a good solid 20 minutes twice a day
• Practice mindfulness: Concentrate on specific things – laser focus – there are practitioners available in most communities who can teach this skill.
• Exercise: Go for a walk or jog during lunch or before or after work. Research what public spaces are near your office.
• Concentrate on being present for things in your life: Deep-breathing exercises at your desk can help with this.
• Invest in a business or health coach:  This person can help the individual identify their trap doors and show them what stress does to them and where it’s showing up in their career and job. 

For Employers

• Incorporate an on-site fitness center or provide employees gym memberships coupons, design the workday with breaks and workout time.
• Focus on organic nutrients: There are e-commerce companies who bring fruit to workplaces. For example, the company Fruit Share brings fresh fruit biweekly to offices and offers an employee wellness program. Create a café with healthy snacks at the office.
• Do some culture work: Shift the environment so it appreciates the talent it has which may entail tweaking some activities during the day. It really is about if you are living what you say.  Go over, establish or reinforce the company’s Core Values or create new ones that can drive your organizational goals.  You want to have the leaders actually act and react to support those values in place.  For your senior management ask, “Is our leadership in line with our values and what we want our culture to reflect?” “Are their actions, reactions and behaviors in congruence with these values?” “Does our organizational culture support the accomplishment of our yearly strategic goals so that our leaders and our organization can be successful?”
• Take an online quiz as individuals and as an organization: Lumina Life is an organizational health and wellness assessment from Lumina Learning. Each employee completes the assessment, which addresses their personal, mental, emotional and physical factors including how they handle stress and pressure.  In the second half of the assessment, the employee addresses similar factors regarding their organization.  Certified Lumina Learning Practitioners work externally with organizations to deliver and analyze the results, so all responses are kept confidential.  The executive team is then presented with an executive overview of the analysis providing them with valuable information on how their employees view the culture and wellness of the overall organization.

Lumina Spark – Improving Sales Through “Speed Reading”

In my last blog I talked about personality assessment tools and how one in particular – Lumina Spark – is taking a much more innovative and comprehensive approach by focusing on traits, not types.

Lumina looks at each individual as a unique combination of 24 qualities, some of which may be in direct opposition to one another. We are, after all, complex characters. But what does all of this mean, and how can you use this information to improve the effectiveness of individuals, teams, organizations?  This is the first in a series of blogs where I’ll talk about some examples of how Lumina has helped individuals, teams and organizations improve their communication, their leadership effectiveness, their sales and, by extension, their overall business results. 

Bringing new managers up to speed quickly can be a challenge in and of itself, but when you are one of the world’s largest global franchisors it can be especially daunting. Conveying policies, procedures and brand across a variety of owner/manager cultures is one thing. Add to that creating an environment for success – both with internal colleagues and external customers – and it becomes much more complex. 

When Lumina Spark was added to the company’s 3-day orientation program, the job got easier. Starting with a foundation of self-awareness, participants learned how to “speed read” others and adjust their interactions to more quickly build rapport and make a connection. They role played typical retail scenarios looking for clues such as body language, tone, and content of conversation to guide them in the appropriate approach to the other person to achieve a positive outcome. Speed reading helped them communicate more effectively, accelerate rapport and increase their ability to meet the customer’s needs. It set the stage for their sales success. 

If you’d like to learn more about how Lumina can help your organization, please contact me for your local Lumina Learning Affiliate.  You can reach me at RebeccaBales@luminalearning.com.

Lead on,

Rebecca

Developing Global Leadership Capabilities

More and more companies are moving from being merely “international” to being truly “global” – in their investments, in their footprint, in their organizations.  To support this, it’s essential that companies develop leaders who can manage the complexities of thinking, operating and competing in a global marketplace.

Valuing diversity is a good start. But as we look at the four dimensions of leadership – Leading through People, Leading with Vision, Leading to Deliver and Leading with Drive – there are key
capabilities within each that are required for effective global leadership.

Leading through People

• Clearly understanding the nuances of culture and language.  Realizing that to communicate effectively with those who have a different background and frame of reference you have to adapt your communication style - and content- to them. 
• The ability to build strong interpersonal relationships regardless of location, culture or age differences.
• Recognizing and leveraging the unique value that each team member contributes.
• Fostering a global mindset among all team members through continuous learning and enabling the development of skills required to compete in a global environment.

Leading with Vision

• Understanding how to do business with people in different parts of the world and realizing that their goals may be different from ours. Being able to adapt and work together toward a common future.
• Thinking strategically and having the ability to communicate the vision to global teams.
• The ability to revise the strategy based on what’s happening in the global environment.

Leading to Deliver 

• The ability to deal with the complexity of growth on a global basis.
• Understanding the needs of the customer – wherever they are.
• Developing strong, collaborative global networks.
• Operating effectively under highly challenging circumstances.

Leading with Drive

• Not just making things happen, but delivering results through effective, repeatable processes that increase efficiencies and performance.
• Establishing best practices and implementing them across cultures.
• Seeing the broader picture of both local and global issues and devising solutions accordingly.

Investing in leadership development that builds these capabilities to create effective global leaders is more than just good business sense, it’s a key competitive advantage.

Lead on,

Rebecca

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Building a Culture That Engages Employees

A recent study by Towers Watson shows that just over a third (35%) of the 32,000 full time employees who participated in the study are “highly engaged.” Of the remaining participants, 39% are “unsupported” or “detached” and fully 26% are actively disengaged. The impact of disengaged employees is startling. In fact, Gallup estimates that the lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the US economy at least $370 billion annually.

Keeping employees engaged is essential to organizational success.

A key driver of employee engagement is effective leadership. While HR programs and perks may increase employee satisfaction, the number one contributor to whether an employee feels valued, connected and challenged is the employee’s immediate leader. 
In our increasingly global environment, we need leaders who can engage the workforce, motivate virtual teams, communicate effectively across borders and attract and retain diverse talent.  

But how do we develop and support those leaders?

By providing leadership development that helps leaders understand their preferences in the four dimensions of leadership – Leading through People, Leading with Vision, Leading to Deliver and Leading with Drive – and how they can adapt to a given situation or person to produce maximum results.

A culture of engagement includes two-way communication and feedback, trust in leadership, opportunities for development, employees who clearly understand how they contribute to organizational success, and shared decision-making.  Leaders contribute to this culture by recognizing the unique value that each member of the team brings to the organization, and by adapting to different communication styles, motivation triggers, and work style preferences.

The proof is in the numbers.

According to Towers Watson, those companies with a highly engaged workforce improved operating income by 19.2% over a period of 12 months. Companies with low engagement scores saw operating income decline by 32.7% over the same period. 

What are you doing to create a culture that promotes employee engagement? 

"Occupy" is About Inclusion

On a recent business trip to New York City, I stayed in a hotel in the financial district facing Ground Zero and looking out over the Occupy Wall Street protestors. We have not seen this type of demonstration in the United States since the 1960's. As I watched from my room, I reflected on the events that brought about such a wide-spread demonstration. Beginning in September in New York City, by October 9th similar demonstrations had been held in over 70 major cities and 600 communities across the United States. The reach of this has extended internationally now to over 900 cities worldwide.

In my opinion the economic problems being highlighted by the demonstrators are the symptoms, not the problem. The problem is Inclusion, or the lack of it. These demonstrations are representative of people from diverse backgrounds, from grandmothers to business leaders, right-wing and left-wing, students and retirees. This broad base gives value to their message and power to their voices. People want to be heard, to be considered and to speak their truth. Inclusion, being heard and fairness are the driving forces behind these wide spread demonstrations. People are tried of not being considered and not being heard in regards to big business, financial institutions, healthcare and economic regulations.

Business's and leaders need to create organizational cultures of inclusion. The buzz words of today are reflective of emotionally shut down employees who do not feel ownership in their jobs or valued of their contribution. These buzz words in today's big business are 'engagement, retention and talent management'. We wouldn't have those issues if we had businesses that reflected inclusion and openness and transparency. Create a place where people can speak their truth and be heard.

Who are the voices at your table? What kind of atmosphere are you creating?