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The Chief Psychology Officer
Exploring the topics of workplace psychology and conscious leadership. Amanda is an award-winning Chartered Psychologist, with vast amounts of experience in talent strategy, resilience, facilitation, development and executive coaching. A Fellow of the Association for Business Psychology and an Associate Fellow of the Division of Occupational Psychology within the British Psychological Society (BPS), Amanda is also a Chartered Scientist. Amanda is a founder CEO of Zircon and is an expert in leadership in crisis, resilience and has led a number of research papers on the subject; most recently Psychological Safety in 2022 and Resilience and Decision-making in 2020. With over 20 years’ experience on aligning businesses’ talent strategy with their organizational strategy and objectives, Amanda has had a significant impact on the talent and HR strategies of many global organizations, and on the lives of many significant and prominent leaders in industry. Dr Amanda Potter can be contacted on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon www.theCPO.co.uk
The Chief Psychology Officer
Ep58 The Changing Shape of Work - Part 1
What lies ahead in our working life, what challenges can we expect to face in 2024. The Zircon Psychologists conducted some research to understand the forces that will impact the future of work. This podcast summarises the first 4 of 8 forces that will particularly impact employees and teams, and will start to look at the steps they can take to make the best of the situation and thrive in 2024 and beyond.
Unlock the secrets to a thriving workplace with Dr. Amanda Potter, CEO of Zircon, as she brings her expertise as a Chartered Psychologist to illuminate the complex forces at play in employee engagement. Be prepared to redefine your understanding of the psychological contract and discover the eight key factors that are reshaping how we think about work, from the quest for work-life harmony to the imperative of digital savvy. This eye-opening conversation is a gold mine for leaders, HR aficionados, and employees committed to nurturing an environment where talent doesn't just grow—it flourishes.
Join us on a journey through the evolving landscape of the modern workplace, where Dr. Potter and Angela Malik share personal stories and practical strategies to foster a culture of well-being and resilience. We delve into the importance of mental health, especially in the age of remote work, and discuss why diversity isn't just a buzzword but a catalyst for innovation and competitive edge. Tune in for an engaging dialogue filled with actionable insights on building a resilient, inclusive, and forward-thinking organization ready to face the future with confidence.
Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/
To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php
For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform as mentioned in this podcast please contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk.
Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/
To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php
For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk
Employee engagement is a priority for any organization that is serious about attracting and retaining high quality talent and remaining competitive in an increasingly challenging business landscape. True engagement requires a level of understanding about what shapes employees' experiences and how this impacts the way they show up at work. This is the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr Amanda Potter. Chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon, I'm Angela Malik, and today we're talking about the main forces that impact how employees engage and operate at work, amanda.
Speaker 1:this is such a wide-ranging topic that we've actually had to split it into two parts, and this is part one. How did we end up with so much to say?
Speaker 3:Are you surprised, angela? We've always got a lot to say, but this time in particular, I think it's been a great topic to research and it was as a result of a presentation that Robert Half asked us to present for their senior level and C-suite customers, all looking at the forces that are impacting employees and the choices that they're making, the decisions they're making, and thinking about that future landscape for those potential candidates that are selecting future organizations. So delighted to be chatting today. So what was the purpose of the research.
Speaker 3:So the brief from Phil Bowden, who's the market director at Robert Half, from the financial services and technology division. He contacted us to ask us to conduct some research looking at the challenges and changes impacting teams and employees over the next few years. So that was very much the starting point, I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in that.
Speaker 1:What did you find?
Speaker 3:We found that there were eight main forces that impact how employees engage, how they think about organizations and how they operate at work. And why this is interesting for us as psychologists is because of the psychological contract and how they feel about the organization and their level of commitment and engagement to that organization.
Speaker 1:So what do you mean about psychological contract?
Speaker 3:So psychological contract is very much about the agreement, the sometimes unconscious agreement, between the employee and the organization. It's the deal, if you like. It's the expectation that the employee has of the employer and it's the expectation of the employer of the employee. And so we consciously sometimes, and subconsciously more of the time, make decisions about the organization on the basis of whether we feel that they are an ethical or trustworthy organization and how we feel we're going to be treated by that organization. And companies are becoming much more sophisticated in the way in which they market themselves and they interact with candidates so that they can create a more attractive proposition. But actually the buying power of candidates is changing, what they're interested in is changing, and so looking at these forces has been really interesting because it's very much influencing the way organizations need to think to attract, retain, develop their high performing candidates of the future.
Speaker 1:That must have such an impact on the way we lead and how employers interact with their employees.
Speaker 3:I know that's so true because one of the big challenges that we've seen from organizations is that when they're successful, they often get very inward looking. They focus on what they're doing well and what they're not doing so well, but what they fail to do is look at the external landscape. They don't necessarily think about the external forces that are going to impact their organization in the future. They become very siloed as an organization and all of their thinking and all of their creativity happens within the organization without thinking about the external changes that are afoot.
Speaker 3:I think it's absolutely critical that leaders have much more of a macro lens than they have ever done and that we remove that tendency to be very much focusing on what's happening right in front of us, right in front of our noses, and that's again due to our brains and the ways the brains function.
Speaker 3:Our brains look for predictability, cause and effect. It looks for familiar patterns. So what's happening within the organization is all of those things, whereas things that are happening outside of the organization could be more daunting. But the risk is, of course, functional stupidity, which is a term we've talked about many times. If we don't have that external macro landscape, we are at risk of being functionally stupid because we replicate the same mistakes, and so understanding these eight forces are really quite important because it helps us to recognize the need to think externally about the changes that are happening in society and in the economy at a very individual and people level, but also a macro economic level that will change the way people think about the organization and their future employer and whether they want to either be recruited or even stay in that organization.
Speaker 1:Let's dive into these eight forces impacting employee engagement. What are?
Speaker 3:They are, just to list them out. They are the place of work. I mean, we've all seen this. This is front of mind for many people; when do I work and how efficient am I as a result of it?
Speaker 3:The second one, which is related, is work-life balance. Again, a topic that we've been talking about for quite a long time, but a real impact on people's choices about their organisation. Diversity, inclusion, and particularly cognitive diversity - not just demographic and inclusion - is really important giving people time to think, truly listening and including people in conversations at all levels. The next one, is mental health. So really considering the mental health of all employees and their physical health to fairness and accountability, treating people with true fairness. Sustainability of the organization are they with true fairness? Sustainability of the organization Are they an ethical organization in terms of the way they operate, or are they having a negative impact on society and the environment, or are they a sustainable business? And the last two are debt. So that's about personal debt and organizational debt and what they're doing with their funds. And digitalization, which is always going to be and will continue to be an external force, particularly with the rise of AI, definitely.
Speaker 1:I would argue with early talent that this is not even unconscious. A lot of candidates are actually really consciously seeking out those elements and making decisions based on those elements. So really important to discuss.
Speaker 3:But it's a lot, isn't it? It is a lot; I think we've decided we're going to do in two parts, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So why don't we just focus on the first four and then we can really dive in, and part two then will be the last four. That would be then place of work, work-life balance, diversity and inclusion and mental health. So place of work let's just dive in.
Speaker 3:So, place of work. It massively changed for everybody in the COVID-19 world, of course, and the remote working environment was a temporary necessity and it was very much a defining characteristic for everyone who was continuing to work during that period. But there is a massive contradiction between what the business wants and what the employee wants. What data do you have?
Speaker 1:from your research.
Speaker 3:So if a candidate is thinking about a new role, the research has shown that 71% of respondents are saying that being able to work flexibly or from home is critical for them, and 69% have said actually working completely remotely is important. So over two thirds of candidates want some sort of flexibility or ability to work remotely and in fact, some candidates are even saying that they will change their job if the workplace options are not suitable for them, or they will even leave the workplace or profession altogether if the organization isn't flexible.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting, though, because I know there was a KPMG survey that came out in 2023, october, and I think they found that 63% of leaders were predicting a full return to in-office working by 2026.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the on the ground conversations I'm having with clients is that they're very much expecting the same trajectory of let's bring people back into the office because it increases creativity and innovation, the conversation and we know from our research, Angela, don't we? That actually being in person is great for personal connection and creating that sense of trust, Absolutely. So you can see why there's a drive for those organizations to get people back into the office.
Speaker 1:Well, but we've done research on, in particular, psychological safety and different places of work. So what did our research say about that?
Speaker 3:So we've recently published this in the BPS ADM journal. What we did is we had three groups of employees who were hybrid, remote and in office and we looked at the level of psychological safety using our questionnaire on the 10 scales and ultimately what we found is that hybrid employees have the lowest level of psychological safety and people who are in office have the highest People who are remote. It was in the middle Interesting and it really made me think. Candice - our colleague - articulated this beautifully when we were talking about the research, because she said I love hybrid working, but I also love cake. But perhaps in having our cake and eating it too, we're creating a problem for ourselves that will be more difficult to shift as the years go by and as you know, Angela, I love cake a lot and it's not good for me because it does mean that it takes years to shift.
Speaker 3:And the thing is I actually love hybrid working as well, but I do get it that it's not always good for us, because the anecdotal feedback working with clients is that when you're neither in one place nor the other, you always feel like you're missing out and you never feel like you're truly part of the team or the conversation.
Speaker 3:You're always on the fringe. If you're in the room there's some people are missing, or if you're out of the room, you're the one trying to get included in the conversation. That's such an important point that, in summary, with the place of work, that contradiction between the employee and the organization and what the employee wants isn't necessarily good for them. What the organization wants is good for the organization. But there is an added complication, which is resilience. When we did the resilience study, we found that employees are the most resilient and the least likely to burn out when they work from home, not hybrid, but completely remote, and so it feels to me like it's a bit more black and white, that maybe it should be remote or in office, but the truth and the reality is it's not like that. So we've got to find other ways in this hybrid world of creating an environment of psychological safety and resilience.
Speaker 1:So then, what's the solution then, if an organization needs to offer a hybrid model in order to attract the right candidates?
Speaker 3:The truth is, I think they do. I think that's a really good point you've made, angela. The truth is, I think they do. I think that's a really good point you've made, angela. They need a hybrid model to attract the right candidates, because otherwise candidates are voting with their feet and they're just walking away from potentially good roles because it doesn't give them the lifestyle of psychological safety and a risk of resilience, because hybrid's not great for resilience either.
Speaker 3:They need to be more invested in both of those things. So they need to actively with psych safety, they need to actively bring whole teams together more often on key days and they need to actively have activities or events or coffee mornings or coffee chats. We had Fizzy Fridays, didn't we for a long time, which were great, and we do have our coffee chats. They need to put things in place to increase psych safety. They also need to check in read the mental health and resilience and well-being of their employees more regularly If they want hybrid and they want to stick with hybrid. They just got to make more of an effort on those two things.
Speaker 1:What's interesting about that is, as you know, amanda, I'm the early careers practice lead for Zircon, and one of the themes that's coming up in that area of work is that emerging talent don't want to be in person, as we've talked about. They prefer a hybrid model or remote model. But that even affects whether they want to show up for fun stuff, social events or some of these psychological safety initiatives that an organization might be introducing just to increase collaboration and trust amongst teams. So really interesting conundrum.
Speaker 3:It really is. I'm surprised because I always believed the early careers population were much more focused on wanting to have fun and get together and so would be more likely to want to go in. I'm really surprised about that data that you're collecting, Angela. I thought it would be the opposite.
Speaker 1:I think it might come up again when we talk about mental health in this episode, but a lot of it seems to stem from higher levels of social anxiety, higher levels of stress around interacting with people in person as opposed to remotely, where a lot of the individuals who are entering the workforce now will have sort of done the last few years of their schooling and some of their university, or completely remotely because of COVID, so good point.
Speaker 3:That's a brilliant segue, isn't it, into number two. Thank you, angela.
Speaker 1:You're right, that's a great segue. So work-life balance was the next thing on our list and, of course, all of these things are fairly linked. Anyway, what was your research on work-life balance?
Speaker 3:This has been a topic that's been around for a while. It's not a new force, a new theme, whereas the place of work, of course, is one that's really emerged over the last few years. Work-life balance is an area that we need to continue focusing on because over 50% of the working professionals at some point will experience burnout and once we burn out, it's much more difficult to then build our resilience back because of the brain chemistry and the brain function and the fight or flight response and the role of the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. So, because of that risk of burnout and because the fact that over 70% of the population experience the feelings of imposter syndrome, it means that unless we have a good, healthy work-life balance and we have good, healthy habits, we're not taking enough care of ourselves.
Speaker 3:We have a responsibility as individuals, we have a responsibility as managers, or of ourselves. We have a responsibility as individuals. We have a responsibility as managers or leaders, and organizations have a responsibility for encouraging people not to work relentlessly, which is, of course, one of the risks of psychological safety, and to take breaks, not to be on back-to-back screen time, because it has a significant negative impact on the brain and increases the production of cortisol Just five minutes away from the screen as a time to think can help with memory and retention, for example. So we need to put more breaks in the day, we need greater work-life balance and we need greater segregation between home and work life, particularly for people who are hybrid or remote.
Speaker 1:After a pandemic, it's no wonder that this has come up higher on the priority list for a lot of people. I think many are now saying life is about more than just career and work.
Speaker 3:Isn't that brilliant though? I definitely have seen that, and I personally feel that too. For years, I would get up at 6am on a Saturday and work till midday because I was building B Talent. 6am on a Saturday and work till midday because I was building Be Talent. I was trying to create the content behind it and I was one of the lead designers, and I felt a real responsibility and also high level of drive to do that. I was used to that, though, because of doing a PhD part-time for eight years. I did that in my spare time because I was running a business at the same time.
Speaker 1:And being a parent, you did it all, amanda, I know.
Speaker 3:It's just crazy. My son used to go out for the morning with his dad. You know we just organized our life around my relentless work ethic. I don't work all weekends now I have a better work-life balance, but I didn't see that there was anything wrong with that, and I see a lot of my friends and colleagues changing. The good news is, organisations are investing a lot in wellbeing and the mental health and mental fitness of their employees. For example, a CIPD report said that actually, the proportion of leaders who have wellbeing on their agenda is increasing, and the investment in wellbeing is increasing as well. So that's really good news is increasing as well. So that's really good news. Please excuse this brief interruption. While we share some exciting news with you, we have a brief message from one of the team from Zircon.
Speaker 2:Calling all chief psychology officer listeners. Will you be heading to the CIPD Festival of Work at London's Excel Centre this summer? We'd love to meet you in person. Join us for an enlightening session on the EDI Stage the 13th of June 2024 at 10.45am. All about Harnessing Diversity to Achieve Psychological Safety. With your host, dr Amanda Potter. Discover how demographic and cognitive diversity can drive team success, how to foster greater inclusivity and psychological safety within teams, and action planning to banish biased thinking. A great opportunity to gain invaluable insights and practical tools to understand more about what goes into creating a more psychologically safe culture at work. Be sure to visit Stand A74 on June 12th and 13th to continue the conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.
Speaker 3:And now back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:That's great. It sounds like leadership really is taking note.
Speaker 3:I think it is. But interestingly I've got someone who's close to me who works for a major organization in the city and I won't mention who they are or who he is but he was saying on the ground he works in a very high pressured, I would say very toxic, environment, very demanding and totally relentless, and at that coalface it doesn't feel like mental health. Mental fitness is high on the agenda. They have lots of programs and events and they talk about it but they're so busy they wouldn't have time to go in on a workshop or to meditate or to go for a walk because they're being bombarded constantly with demands. The reality is very hard to put in some of these healthy activities into some of the different type of organizations that have created a way of working that almost becomes necessary for success.
Speaker 1:It's that old adage talking the talk but also walking the walk. Yeah, absolutely. So then what's the solution? Just ease up on demands and give employees more breaks, or try different working models. What is the solution then? To actually walk the walk.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it comes at a number of different levels, like we've said already, actually walk the walk.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it comes at a number of different levels.
Speaker 3:Like we've said already, it's very much about giving individuals employees the tools and the techniques to increase their resilience levels, to understand their brain chemistry and to make better choices, so understanding our physiological, physical and emotional responses to stress and the extent to which we need to have healthy routines and habits in our day in order to manage those stress levels and avoid burnout.
Speaker 3:Because we have to remember that burnout starts very often with a really good, positive intention to work hard, to deliver, to contribute and to be someone who is seen as worthy in a team or organization, which is all great, but actually what happens is people end up working too hard. So it starts with us working on resilience levels and understanding brain chemistry, from my mind, but it also has to work from the organizational level too, which is to dissuade people from being on screen all day, not booking back-to-back meetings, encouraging people not to be a passenger in meetings, for example, only to attend meetings if they've got something to contribute. There's so many great habits that you can have that mean you're not just spending the whole day on the screen mindlessly.
Speaker 1:I know recently we've actually had to remind our own employees to step away.
Speaker 3:Don't join meetings if you're just going to listen in, if it's not a times a week, and I asked everybody to review meetings they're in, time they're spending and the value that they're bringing to those meetings, and to be more discerning and make a decision about whether they should or should not join those meetings. And I was so impressed and touched by the actions and the communications that followed that communication from Sarah and I, from all of the team actively stepping out or stepping down from certain meetings or stepping up in other meetings, and so we're much leaner as a result. It's really working.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing a much greater level of efficiency and I hope people are, as a result, not feeling as drained from being in those back-to-back meetings because we, of course, are a completely completely remote business so it sounds like the real work of addressing this work-life balance issue is to embed resilience practice into workplace ethos, embed it into the culture and, speaking of culture, that brings us to another of the eight forces impacting engagement, which is diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 3:Indeed, but before we go there, we mustn't forget because we started this whole thing looking at Robert Half from recruitment. Actually, if we want to embed resilience, we need to also assess for it positive or negative affect and therefore how they might interact with their colleagues and the sort of language they would use as a result of experiencing those feelings, whether they're positive or negative. But you're right, let's go on to the next one, which is diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 1:So this episode is about the changing face of work. Amanda and I kind of feel like diversity and inclusion is not groundbreaking news. It's been a topic of employee engagement for a long time.
Speaker 3:Thank goodness I agree. So this wasn't about the new or burgeoning. It was about the things that are the most important, and this is one of the things that is still the most important. So diversity inclusion is fundamental for two reasons One, because it's the right thing to do to make sure we hire a diverse workforce in terms of demographic diversity and to give all candidates the opportunity. But secondly, the real reason from a psychological perspective is that the more diverse an organization is, the more likely they are to be cognitively diverse, and this is a massive source of competitive advantage for an organization, because it helps with problem solving, it helps with decision making, innovation and so many things. If we hire very similar people, we are going to be at risk of groupthink, consensus-driven culture and functional stupidity. So for those two fundamental reasons cognitive diversity and fairness we need to have a really diverse workforce in an organization.
Speaker 1:Well, and cognitive diversity is one of our guiding principles at Zircon, isn't it, Amanda it?
Speaker 3:is. I love the whole topic and, of course, because we have the strengths tool, which is all about the essence of cognitive diversity. It's all about understanding each individual strengths and why they're different to each other, but also why certain strengths play well with one another and other strengths might knock up against each other and may frustrate one another.
Speaker 1:I think cognitive diversity brings more benefits than problems, even though it can sometimes be really frustrating when team members challenge your ideas or hold you accountable, for example, but it really is great to be held accountable and ultimately be better.
Speaker 3:That's the point I was trying to make just now and I didn't make it very well which is you're completely right Certain strengths. If you were, for example, compassionate and I was competitive, you might find me quite frustrating to work with. Or if I was meticulous and you were forward thinking, again I might find you frustrating to work with because we're thinking very differently. But actually that's a good thing, because we're more likely to disagree, we're more likely to slow down the process of problem solving and we are more likely then to reduce any risks, improve our innovation, improve our problem solving. And what's interesting is that decision making is more likely to be effective, and we know from the Harvard research that decisiveness in leaders, particularly C-suite, is the most important characteristic. And group thinking, consensus driven approaches, is one of the biggest problems, and so cognitive diversity is a real contributor to success for teams to success for teams.
Speaker 1:I know there was some PwC research that said that diversity and inclusion is stated as a value priority area for 85% of organizations, and I guess with good reason too, because they've found that organizations in the top quartile for ethnic diversity, for example, are 36% more likely to perform better financially.
Speaker 3:Well, that is amazing, and if you combine that with the decisiveness research from Harvard that leaders who are decisive are 12 times more productive or create more productive organizations and have a greater impact on share price, we need decisive, diverse teams, and so really, what we're pointing to here is that, whilst this force isn't a new one, it is really critical for success because it helps with cognitive diversity, it helps with innovation, decision-making, problem-solving and everything, and it's just the right thing to do to have an organization that represents the society in which it's offering its services.
Speaker 1:So that leads us to the last one for today's episode, amanda, which is mental health. Yes, just to recap, we've done place of work, we've done work-life balance, we've talked about diversity and inclusion, and now we are on to mental health, which, of course, is not surprisingly a major priority, especially after COVID.
Speaker 3:It just seems to be a conversation we're having so much more readily now than we have ever ever had. Deloitte Research has said that more than 50% of CEOs plan to spend more on mental wellbeing of employees than ever before, and that's a really good thing, because actually, absences are still increasing. Sick days are at their highest level in 10 years, and short-term absences, mainly due to minor illnesses or poor mental health or actually muscular skeletal injuries because they're not sitting appropriately, probably remotely, at their desks, means that people are taking more days off than ever before. But the one that's really critical because we're talking about the mind quite a lot with this episode is that people who are using their computers have increased levels of anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1:I've just found myself adjusting my own posture after that comment about not sitting well, I know I'm sitting up alert and straight, not slouching in my chair.
Speaker 3:I wonder if people can hear a difference in our tone if we sit up straight.
Speaker 3:That last point you mentioned about computers links in nicely with what we were saying before about remote work and about work-life balance, having breaks, stepping away from the screen.
Speaker 3:And actually there's some really interesting research that was done by Microsoft in 2021. And they found that back to back video meetings are incredibly stressful for our brains. So jumping from one meeting to another can cause spikes in stress. And they had some brain scans and what they've shown is that if you have more than two back to back meetings, it creates a real stress response in the brain and it creates a real elevation spike of adrenaline and cortisol and we can eventually start to lose our concentration. And so we need to take even a five minute break between meetings and get away from the screen, have a tiny walk around, whether it's the house or garden, take in the panorama, do some decent breathing. And there was another piece of research I was listening to on a different podcast Actually, it was a BBC Sounds podcast and I can't remember the details of the research other than the output, which was that if we are to take a break between meetings, our long-term memory of that meeting is much better than if we go back to back from one to another meeting.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yes, there's so many reasons, especially because I'm in my 50s. My memory is not always fabulous, so I need more breaks. Please, angela, I'm going to be kind to myself.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think we should all be kind to ourselves. So it sounds like one solution then is to build in buffers around meetings so that they're not just back to back to back and you've got a chance to step away, take a breath, have so that they're not just back to back to back and you've got a chance to step away, take a breath, have a cup of tea.
Speaker 3:Totally. I can't count how many times I send an email at the beginning of a meeting saying I'll be five minutes. I'm just making a cup of tea, because if I don't have a cup of tea with me, I'm not perfect. Well, I'm not perfect anyway.
Speaker 1:But I'm particularly not perfect if I haven't got a cup of tea. Organ organizations are investing a lot into mental health and well-being these days, beyond just encouraging employees to take more breaks and doing a bit of meditation at your desk, right, amanda oh, completely.
Speaker 3:I mean much, much more. And we have, of course, we're invested an employee assistance program which has got counseling, it has got meditation apps, it's got all sorts of different things on there. So I think this is a real high agenda for many organisations and there is so much resource now available to people, much more than we've ever had before. I mean, we're an organisation of approximately 20 people and we've someone feels their mental health has a significant and profound impact on an individual, but also the team too. We just we have to look after people.
Speaker 1:It's true. So, amanda, thinking about place of work, work-life balance, diversity, inclusion and then mental health, what's the main takeaway for managers when it comes to these four things?
Speaker 3:I think for me, we need to think about the relentless nature of work. We need to focus on the neurodiversity of the people who are in our team and on cognitive diversity of that team. We need to consider their physical and mental health, so we take more breaks and we encourage them to use the employee assistance programs or the counselling or whatever is available to them. And we have to remember that we can't have our cake and eat it too. That even though as employees we might want to work in a hybrid way, it's not always the best thing for us. So if we do want to work hybrid, we need to make more of an effort to treat people in a way that they feel that they're part of something important, they understand the purpose and they feel truly included. So I think there's a number of implications actually for the individual to make decisions and for the organization to look after their employees.
Speaker 1:So if someone's not doing this already, why would that be? What would prevent someone from investing time and energy into this?
Speaker 3:Well, from an organization's perspective, they get quite established in their routines and their patterns and it takes often someone from outside the organization to come in and to ask questions, to challenge and to make suggestions, which is great.
Speaker 3:But from an individual's perspective, the reason why we might relentlessly be on team calls, for example, is that we have this high need to please, which is the first step of burnout. We have this high need to deliver and we don't feel like we can challenge. But also, the truth is, if we are faced with change, there's that concept of cognitive dissonance. When we have two competing thoughts of do I continue or do I change, the brain will tell you always to continue, to stick with the safest option. And that's because our brains like predictability, they like simplicity. So rather than challenging our line manager and saying, could we operate in a different way, what happens is people just keep working, keep plugging at it and eventually will feel more and more depleted. And so we need to face up to those moments where we realize we're in the position of having cognitive dissonance and those two competing thoughts and face up to them and challenge ourselves to actually make a better decision about what's right for us and for the organization in the long run.
Speaker 1:So, amanda, do you have any specific tips, then, about how to nurture employee engagement in these areas that we've been talking about today?
Speaker 3:Well, the first thing will be to encourage people to embrace that change, given the point around cognitive dissonance and our brains being wired to seek certainty and predictability and simplicity rather than viewing change as disruption. Helping people to realize that change is part of life and the opportunity to grow and to learn, and embracing change can really lead to improved adaptability and a more resilient mindset. So the first one is changing the language around change in the organization and creating more of an excitement, energy for change, rather than it's oh, we're going through another change thing. This is being done to me.
Speaker 3:The second one is to build resilience. We know that already and it's really to help people understand their brain chemistry and how some simple habits can have a profound impact on how their brains release certain hormones and transmitters and the impact on how they feel and the internal dialogue that they have as a result. And finally, it's that facing up to bias and cognitive dissonance, when we have those competing thoughts not going for the safest option, not necessarily just always avoiding risks and uncertainty, but actually to take more calculated risks and to try things different. Hybrid, I think, has become that competing thoughts is do I stick with what I know now, which is hybrid, or do I go for something different and go work in office? People are sticking with the hybrid because that's now what they know. That's become the norm.
Speaker 1:Really interesting. So embrace change, build resilience and face up to that cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3:Indeed take more risks calculated risks, not just risks.
Speaker 1:So I think that draws us to the end of that for part one. Amanda, thank you so much for discussing that. We've talked about place of work, we've talked about work-life balance, diversity and inclusion, and then, of course, mental health, and we've got four more factors that impact employee engagement to discuss in part two.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we'll continue thinking about the impact on how employees vote with their feet and their perception of the psychological contract, because all of these have a real impact on how individuals view organizations and they make decisions about their future or current employer. So it's been cool. I've enjoyed the debate. Thank you, angela.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for our listeners, for spending time with us today, and if you thought this was interesting, please do share the episode with someone you think would take value from it as well. That would be great.
Speaker 3:And I'd like to say thank you very much everyone who's subscribed to this podcast. I hope you have a wonderful and successful day. See you in part two.
