Exchanging ideas to create the well-being advantage

Lancaster University’s Centre for Organizational Health and Well Being recently commissioned a YouGov Survey to ask a national sample of 2250 employed people in a range of jobs about ‘presenteeism’ – the habit of staying at work unproductively so that it looks like you are working hard. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results showed that British workers are spending more time at work in attempts to safeguard their jobs during this recession. 

More specifically, 66% said that over the past few months they were coming in earlier and staying later at work; 45% said that they were ‘playing it safe at work and keeping their head down’ and 41% were reporting a more negative atmosphere in the workplace. These figures suggest that the ‘recession workplace’ has become more self-protective – with less team building, longer working hours to show commitment and people going to unnecessary meetings to put in ‘face time’.  This presenteeism and self-protective behaviour is the last thing that most workplaces need at the moment, but it is understandable when you consider the amount of pressure on job security.

It is important for managers and business leaders to understand this dynamic – and most importantly, to address it directly. The best managers recognise unproductive presenteeism in their team members when they see it and then have the ‘difficult conversation’ to find appropriate interventions. The intervention could take many forms – but at its heart has to be an open and honest discussion based on behavioural evidence. It should acknowledge what the manager has observed and gives the employee the chance to explain it. In this context, the manager will inevitably have an opportunity to re-state expectations about time spent in the office and re-emphasise the importance of deliverables and of quality versus quantity of work. After the conversation the employee feels ‘reset’ and supported, safe in the knowledge that it will not be a lack of hours worked that will cause his/her job to become insecure.

These one-to-one conversations need to be supported by better communication from on-high, designed to make people feel more secure and acknowledge that a long hours culture is counterproductive to the health and wellbeing of the individual and to the company’s performance.

The good news from the Centre’s report is that 54% of the sample said that their relationships were unaffected by the economic downturn, possibly because during a recession most people realize how important the family and personal relationships are and want to protect them at all costs. However, this is in direct contrast to recent statistics from Relate – the relationship counselling service – that reported an increase in relationship problems. So this is not an area we should take for granted. If this recession has done nothing else, it provides the opportunity for us to re-consider our value systems – what work should be about; the importance of relationships versus materialism; how we can be successful in business without being greedy and the importance of living a balanced life.