How would you rate your relationship with your work?
This question may sound a little peculiar. But let’s reflect on it for a sec, so what’s the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the relationship you have with your job? Let’s say you have the choice of going back to the very start of it, would you swipe your job to the left or to the right?
Match or Mismatch
Christina Maslach, a UC Berkeley psychology professor, and Michael P. Leiter, an organizational psychologist, understand why the quality of this relationship matters so much. The two share a lifetime of research together and are widely recognized as authorities on assessing and promoting mental health in the workplace. Their recent publication revealed an increasing mismatch between workers and workplaces, which is not an individual problem, but one that comes down to the relationship between an individual and their place of work.
Among the most significant on-the-job hazards employees face today is the risk of burnout. It’s also among the most misunderstood. Some psychologists deny its existence altogether, while others characterize it as a personal issue — a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs.
Areas of Worklife
In 2019, the World Health Organization defined burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical one. Maslach and Leiter share the conviction that burnout is (at least in part) an occupational problem based on a mismatch between the workplace and the worker. Combining their fieldwork with literature studies, the two pioneering researchers identified key causes of workplace burnout and revealed what managers can do to promote increased productivity and health. They laid out how organizations can ensure an ideal job-person match, based on 6 areas of worklife:
A sustainable workload;
Autonomy and control;
Recognition and rewards;
Supportive work community;
Norms of fairness, respect, and social justice;
And well-aligned values and meaningful work.
When developing our tool ‘Noon’, we researched how startups and scaleups go about the wellbeing of their employees. It became evident to us that the 6 areas of worklife are a solid basis to assess the relationships employees have with their work. We learned that, by regularly reflecting on their energy levels in relation to areas of worklife, both individuals and teams are empowered to learn about what suits them and how to level up, both in terms of productivity and health. Managing stress is part of this game, and actually a useful resource, when approached consciously, measured meticulously, and managed effectively.
Here are other best practices we discovered from the conversations we had:
Engage & Assess:
Make assessments part of the everyday work life, for people present in the office and especially for teams working hybrid or fully remotely. Integrate with organizational tools teams already communicate and collaborate in, for instance Slack or Teams. This way employees can do routine check-ins and reflect on their work without being interrupted by lengthy surveys. It increases scores in the areas ‘Community’ and ‘Control’.
Provide a safe space:
One important factor to get the ball rolling on monitoring & improving wellbeing is promoting a culture of safety and transparency. The most convincing case we came across was senior management leading by example. This can be done in very practical ways: CEO’s sharing their struggles and encouraging people to do the same. Leadership sharing their agendas and encouraging people to claim a spot for a walk around the block to share suggestions for improvement. If people feel encouraged to share their opinion, and at the same time, feel assured it doesn’t negatively reflect on their personal performance, it has a big impact on almost every area of worklife, and especially ‘Fairness’ and ‘Values’.
Improve:
A lot of successful improvements, building towards a healthy workplace, are surprisingly small and easy to implement. When teams focussed on limiting the amount of meetings for example, it yielded big results in the areas ‘Control’ and ‘Workload’. We learned that one of the most important parts of successfully integrating improvements is to be able to track the impact overtime. It allows you to do a cost benefit analysis. Based on our observations we suggest: don’t start by announcing the big culture change led by an external consultancy firm. Rather, replace a small nuisance like a chair or a desk. We suggest this because it changes the way people feel about sharing feedback and your employees will to trust leadership to act on wellbeing problems promptly.
Want to learn more about how to maintain a healthy workspace? Please reach out to me.
Resources to do some digging yourself:
Forbes: Reduce Burnout Risk: Fix The Workplace ‘Mismatches’
HBR: Dear Manager, You’re Holding Too Many Meetings
