Balancing your busy home life with your fast-paced career can be a challenge. But, if you want to avoid burnout and set yourself up for long-term happiness, learning how to achieve a livable and fulfilling work-life balance is essential. Source When you’re looking for advice on how to manage your obligations both in the office and at home with your partner or family, turning to an expert can help. Reading a book about work-life balance will help you see your situation more clearly and offer you tools and tactics for how to design a more seamless—and less stressful—work-life balance. Whether achieving this level of zen is one of your 2020 resolutions or […]
You feel the need to commit that 2020 is the year you stress less about work? That the demanding deadlines, long hours, and email notifications will not get you down? It’s a great goal, and one you likely have in common with a lot of people; a survey by the American Psychological Association revealed that 61 percent of respondents found work to be a source of stress. Source But resolutions are best kept with a plan of action in your inbox, so we reached out to experts for tips on tackling work-related tension this year. A) Use Breaks Strategically If stress is getting the best of you during your daily 09:00 to 17:00, Kaplan suggested […]
Organisations are beginning to understand the direct connection between employee health and wellness and business performance. But the definition of employee wellness, or wellbeing, has evolved dramatically over the past few years, and corporate wellness programs must adapt to changes in society. Source Here are 5 new trends in employee wellbeing and corporate wellness programs: 1) Employee wellness programs are about more than just physical health. What began as a focus on counting steps, tracking sleep, and logging water intake has expanded to include social and emotional—or mental—health. This means taking a more holistic view of employee wellbeing. Rather than just considering physical fitness, best-in-class corporate wellbeing programs now prioritise […]
Employee wellness programs seem to offer obvious benefits. There’s general well-being of course, plus health, happiness…and the pursuit of more happiness? In other words, it can be surprisingly hard to articulate any concrete benefits of employee wellness programs, especially from a business standpoint. However, that’s exactly what you need to do if you want to make a solid case for a program you’ve been thinking about implementing. Source Fail to make a solid argument as an HR Professional, and your proposal to key decision makers could merit responses like these: “Sure, wellness programs for employees looks fun and sounds like a good idea, but do they really offer any benefits?” “Wellness programs don’t […]
If there’s one wellness trend that stands out from the last couple of years, it’s mindfulness. Not only is it wildly popular, with a legion of dedicated fans across the globe, but it has also become a billion-pound business. Source: Independent So can taking time out of your day to concentrate on yourself really help to increase your health and happiness? The NHS says yes. According to its website: “Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can not only help improve mental wellbeing … but can help help you enjoy life and understand yourself better.” Thanks to the boom, there […]
Meditation is a form of mental exercise that has become a popular US health practice. Regular practice of meditation is reported to produce changes in mental state and resting electroencephalogram patterns that persist beyond the time-period of active practice. Source: Business Insider Neuroscientist Sara Lazar found that people who practiced meditation had more gray matter in the part of the brain linked to decision-making and working memory: the frontal cortex. While most people see their cortexes shrink as they age, 50-year-old meditators in the study had the same amount of gray matter as those half their age. Participants in the study averaged about 27 minutes of the habit a […]
It’s normal to feel stressed at work from time to time. But for some people, the stress becomes all-consuming, leading to exhaustion, cynicism and hatred towards your job. This is known as burnout. Burnout used to be classified as a problem related to life management, but last week the World Health Organisation re-labelled the syndrome as an “occupational phenomenon” to better reflect that burnout is a work-based syndrome caused by chronic stress. Source: World Economic Forum The newly listed dimensions of burnout are: Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job Reduced professional efficacy (work performance). In the era […]
How toxic is the workplace-maybe even yours? In Dying for a Paycheck, Stanford professor of organizational behaviour Jeffrey Pfeffer documents loads of evidence suggesting that the workplace is literally killing people. Sixty one % of employees said that workplace stress had made them sick and 7% said they had actually been hospitalized. Job stress, according to Pfeffer, may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year. Source: Inc. I’ve documented toxicity in the workplace as well, with head-shaking statistics. To raise awareness of the profundity of the problem in hopes of safeguarding our children’s future when they enter the workplace, I offer you six commonly found toxic behaviours. 1. Passive aggressiveness. Research has discovered that most toxic […]
The current debate about workplace wellness has called into question virtually every aspect of wellness programs. Commentators have railed against them, with some asserting that they are not only worthless but are also a morale disaster and a stealthy way to shift more coverage costs onto employees. Source: Harvard Business Review Despite all this, most corporate leaders continue to fund such programs. Collectively, employers spend upward of $8 billion a year on wellness programs — yet the programs underperform by most measures, and barely 25% of employers even try to understand how well their programs do. This disconnect between the near unanimous adoption of workplace wellness programs and their demonstrably apathetic results leads to some fundamental questions. Is the workplace […]
Because nothing beats sitting down to a gorgeous plate of fruit every morning! Fruit truly is the perfect food. It’s the easiest for our bodies to digest, and our system has to do almost nothing to break it down. All fruit is good for you, but we should eat it when it’s ripe to properly digest it and use it for energy. Source Think of all the colours, shapes, and textures of fruit as different antioxidants and phytonutrients to load up on. And then include a variety of fruits in your diet to take advantage of all the benefits they have to offer — from fighting colds and warding off inflammation […]