Book Buzz on Mental Health in the Workplace - "Wellbeing at Work"

We get it. You do not have time to read all the books you need to. That is why we are here to break this important one down in the area of "mental health at work." 

Picture this scenario: I take 10 of your employees to lunch without you there (where they felt safe to respond honestly) and ask them this question: “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your wellbeing at work?”

What do you think they would say? 

In a Gallup poll in 2022:

• Only 33% of Americans said they were thriving in their wellbeing

• 41% said they experienced sadness every day

• 50% said they experienced daily stress

• Only 20% of employees like what they do everyday

If I were a betting person, I would bet that for the next 5 years, the largest topic related to your employees will be this – Employee Wellbeing. Your employees can only be productive when they have wellbeing. Since people spend so many hours a day at their job, what they do at your company has a profound impact on their personal wellbeing. As CEOs, we really are not trained or equipped to handle that type of responsibility. 

“Wellbeing at Work'' helps you learn more about this as an owner, manager, or any type of leader. It helps you understand the things that you can do to make people have better wellbeing as it relates to their work day. It also helps you understand the factors to someone’s wellbeing that you have NO control over.

Wellbeing has several key elements:

• Career wellbeing

• Social wellbeing

• Financial wellbeing

• Physical wellbeing

• Community wellbeing 

Some of my favorite takeaways from the book in the career wellbeing section are:

- This book encourages you to learn how to have “wellbeing” conversations between employees and their managers. It doesn’t spell out exactly what these should look like but they might involve asking the employee if they love what they do every day and talk about career development as well as how they are doing in their personal life.  

- It also talks about making your managers move from bosses to coaches. This is a trend we are seeing with our clients as well. The reason for quitting or staying is really how great their manager is at coaching them.  

- Other items to help with career wellbeing that are discussed:

• Setting clear goals with your people

• Providing adequate resources

• Lead goal setting sessions

• Set clear expectations

The one thing I don’t like about this book:

- The back half of the book is really a regurgitation of Strengths Finder profiles. I do love Strengths Finder, but I do not believe it was necessary to print it again at the back half of this book.

Overall, I recommend the first half of the book for CEOs and owners who are struggling with retention, hiring, or truly wanting to know how to make their workplaces great places to work for their people.

I’m convinced that if a CEO spent just 2 hours a month on the strategy and execution of employee “health”, that organization would have a better workplace and many less HR issues on the back end!

Please forward this to someone you know who would benefit from it. Thank you!

Resources: "Wellbeing at Work" by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

Sales Pitch of the Day:

The HR Audit is a tool designed for small businesses in any industry to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their HR function. We evaluate the 14 areas of HR from compliance to retention. We develop an HR strategy to make your employees proud of where they work. Watch the video to the right for more information or visit our HR Audit Page on our website.

Looking for a good business book?

Need a recommendation for your next great read?  Cindi Filer, CEO of Innovative Outsourcing, offers her thoughts on what she and her staff have been reading lately.  She calls this her "Book Buzz," and she would like to offer you this reference of what's on the IO shelf right now.  Click on any book shown below to read the review and learn how this book may benefit your business.  Then please provide your comments in the section below so we can get the conversation started!

A Billionaire wants to mentor YOU!

Imagine this! You just received an invitation to meet weekly for coffee with one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, a billionaire investor and philanthropist. He is taking a special interest in you, and he wants you to fully grasp all the important things he has learned in his 68 years of life and work.  He will mentor you by tracing his footsteps and missteps, his successes and his failures.  When your mentoring sessions are completed, you will be equipped to carry that spark as a blazing torch, enlightening your personal life and your business.

While it may not be an actual “talk-over-coffee,” Ray Dalio’s #1 New York Times bestseller Principles: Life & Work is the ONE must-read book this year, both for your business and your personal growth. Even if you are not a “book” person, there is just too much great stuff here to let this one slip by another day.

RAY DALIO is the founder and co-chairman of the best performing hedge fund in the world.  He’s made the list of the most influential people in the world by Time and Bloomberg Markets. Even if you have not a stiff of interest in hedge funds or investing, the stories he tells and the life principles he shares will keep you hanging on his every word.   

There are two overarching themes that ooze through the richness of Dalio’s wisdom.  

• Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of work and life, so identify and use your principles as a measuring stick for all you do.
• In applying these principles, be radically open-minded and radically transparent.  This will assure that you learn quickly, and that you don’t get hung up on what things “should” be like, but what is reality.

It is impossible to highlight the favorite parts of this book, but from a staffing perspective, let me jump right to Part III where Dalio hits the very heart of building a business based upon solid work principles.  Because there is just so much rich information, Dalio does us a tremendous service, and begins this section with a summary and table of these principles, indexed to the pages where each topic is covered in more depth.  He begins by saying, “An organization is a machine consisting of two major parts:  culture and people.” Then he proceeds to itemize how to get the culture right, and how to get the people right.  These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas, but instead he outlines specific steps.  For example, to support his principle that you need to create a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes, but unacceptable not to learn from them, Dalio provides five specific steps any business leader can follow to assure this happens. 

After learning how to get the culture right, my favorite section explains how to get the people right:

• Remember that the WHO is more important than the WHAT
• Hire RIGHT, because the penalties for hiring wrong are huge (then he adds eight steps to assure you succeed in this)
• Constantly train, test, evaluate, and sort people (and he gives you very specific strategies to accomplish this)

As a reader and a business leader, you are challenged to manage your business like someone operating a machine to achieve a goal. Just as a machine operator knows the components that produce the product, “…know what your people are like and what makes them tick, because your people are your most important resource.”

Ray Dalio admits that he is no different from you. "Whatever success I’ve had in life hasn’t been because of anything unique about me—it’s because of principles that I believe anyone can adopt."

So grab a cup of coffee, open the book, either hardcopy or audio, and enjoy a few moments each week as Ray Dalio fills you with the inspiration and wisdom that may make you think differently about your life and work.  Oh, and Part III of Dalio’s book — that’s our sweet spot, so Innovative Outsourcing would be honored to come along side you to put these principles in motion as you build your team at your company.

Listen to Ray Dalio’s Ted Talk 
Watch the Animated Series (30 minutes divided into 8 short episodes) 
Book Summary Outline