Author: Graham Lowe

The Wellness Dividend: How Healthy Organizations Maximize Employee Health, Safety and Performance

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Keynote talk by Graham Lowe at the Occupational Health & Safety Group(OHSIG)national conference, Auckland, New Zealand. September 11, 2014. For information: www.ohsig.org.nz/programme/ohsig-conference-2014
Talk description: Employers in New Zealand and many other countries face mounting pressures to find better ways to reduce employee health and safety risks. These challenges are best addressed by viewing employee wellbeing as a strategic human capital advantage. This positive approach to risk reduction is guided by a healthy organization vision. A healthy organization forges strong links between health, safety and wellness initiatives and core human resource goals. Wellbeing is viewed as a leading indicator of employees’ capabilities – and future business performance. Evidence-based insights from current research support this approach and provide principles that can help employers reap a significant ‘wellness dividend’.

Bridging the Generations: Redesigning Workplaces to Prosper From an Aging Workforce

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The Graham Lowe Group and EKOS Research Associates are pleased to announce the release of Bridging the Generations: Redesigning Workplaces to Prosper from an Aging Workforce. Written by Graham Lowe, the report breaks new ground by using multi-year national survey data to provide insights about major workplace transformations.
Useful for employers, HR professionals and policy specialists alike, this report mines more than a decade of public opinion research into workers’ attitudes towards jobs, the workplace, retirement, career planning and Canadians’ future prospects.
The report reflects on changes in the Canadian labour market, workplaces and work experiences. Anchoring the report are national surveys of Canadian workers, conducted in 2004 and 2012 as part of the EKOS ‘Rethinking Series’ as well as EKOS time-series data on public attitudes to economic change.

Bridging the Generations highlights how employers and policy-makers can take steps to ensure that older workers, facing delayed retirement, don’t reduce the career opportunities for younger workers who are entering a difficult job market. The report provides solutions for managing a smooth generational transition in the workplace in ways that enable workers of all ages to share their experiences and to fully contribute.
Some Key Findings:
– Most Canadians are worried that the next generation will be worse off than today. These worries spill over into workers’ perceptions of the future of the labour market, their retirement plans and a host of other workplace concerns.
– Redesigning workplaces to bridge the growing divide between younger and older Canadians will help to secure economic prosperity and make public healthcare and pensions more sustainable.
– HR practices can help older workers remain in the labour force and help younger workers fulfill their own career plans. Innovative solutions include making workplaces more inclusive, work more flexible and jobs more challenging and meaningful.
– Work-retirement transitions can be updated to enable baby boomers’ continued contributions to the workforce, while ensuring that younger workers’ skills and energy can be more fully harnessed. The result will be a more agile and productive workforce.
Bridging the Generations report PDF

The Wellness Dividend: How Employers Can Improve Employee Health and Productivity

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The Wellness Dividend, a new report by workplace expert Graham Lowe, provides employers and benefits consultants with a state-of-the-art, evidence-based overview of why investing in employee wellness makes sense. Also provided are practical insights about how to do this. The Wellness Dividend examines the following topics:
– The strategic value of wellness
– Understanding absenteeism and presenteeism
– Ingredients of effective wellness programs
– Addressing mental health in the workplace
– Measuring impact and progress
– Building healthier organizations
The latest evidence shows that by focusing on three goals – an integrated approach to employee health promotion, a work environment that enhances health and safety, and a culture that values wellness – employers not only reduce employee costs but also improve business performance. We know enough about successful workplace wellness initiatives to identify the steps employer can take to achieve these goals.
For those employers who already have workplace wellness initiatives, the next step involves expanding their reach to get at the full range of workplace determinants of health and engagement. And for employers considering the introduction of a wellness program, addressing both the individual and organizational dimensions of wellness will bring quicker results. Overall, the big wellness dividend is a healthier and higher-performing organization.
WellnessDividend-PDF

Making Your Workplace Psychologically Healthy and Safe

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BC Human Resources Management Association Breakfast Roundtable, Kelowna
February 19th, 2014. To register: https://eweb.bchrma.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=EventInfo&RegPath=EventRegFees&REg_evt_key=69b029d2-8ede-4ff1-bbef-7f759fa0302e&Evt_guest_limit=0
Workplace expert Graham Lowe will review the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, introduced this year by the Canadian Standards Association and the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Graham will outline how the Standard can be a useful tool for BC employers, especially given the new WorkSafeBC policies aimed at preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace. The presentation will cover the following issues:
– The benefits of psychologically healthy and safe workplaces.
– The research and legal background for developing the Standard.
– The practical implications of adopting or not adopting the Standard.
– Key elements of the Standard.
– Assessing your policies, programs and practices for alignment with the Standard.
– The role of managers, employees and unions in implementing and monitoring the Standard.
Presentation visuals

Making Your Workplace Psychologically Healthy and Safe

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Graham Lowe’s presentation at the BCHRMA Breakfast Roundtable, Kelowna
February 19th, 2014
Workplace expert Graham Lowe will review the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, introduced in 2013 by the Canadian Standards Association and the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Graham will outline how the Standard can be a useful tool for BC employers, especially given the new WorkSafeBC policies aimed at preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace. The presentation will cover the following issues:
1. The benefits of psychologically healthy and safe workplaces.
2. The research and legal background for developing the Standard.
3. The practical implications of adopting or not adopting the Standard.
4. Key elements of the Standard.
5. Assessing your policies, programs and practices for alignment with the Standard.
6. The role of managers, employees and unions in implementing and monitoring the Standard.
Presentation visuals

Bulling and Mobbing at Work: Looking at the Facts

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On November 1st, 2013, WorkSafeBC implemented new policies aimed at preventing bullying and harassment in the workplace. Under BC’s Workers Compensation Act, employers must take reasonable steps to address the hazards posed by bulling and harassment.

I recently participated in a panel discussion on this topic at the 2013 Calgary Labour Arbitration & Policy Conference. I prepared a FACT SHEET on bully and mobbing in the workplace that may be helpful to HR, health and safety, learning and development, and wellness professionals in BC and other provinces as they develop policies and programs to address this destructive behaviours.

Bullying is generalized psychological harassment, which means that it is broader in scope and impact than gender or ethnic/racially-based harassment. It is an extreme form of disrespectful behaviour. Bullying presents a serious workplace health and safety risk and therefore is a liability for employers. Consequently, there is now recognition that employers have a duty to maintain not only a physically safe workplace, but also a psychologically safe work environment. The term “mobbing” refers to psychological aggression or harassment by a group rather than a single person.

Experts agree that organizations must not protect bullies who otherwise perform their job. Some would argue that the only effective solution to systematic bullying is to rid the workplace of the bully.

Workplace bullying can be costly for employers, including costs associated with increased prescription drugs and medical services, lost productivity due to absenteeism and presenteeism, long-term disability, and replacing workers who quit. Victims and observers of bullying also can experience reduced job satisfaction, work energy and engagement, which undermines their job performance.

Increased public awareness about the harmful effects bullying means we are seeing more of it. While Canada lacks reliable national data on the incidence of workplace bullying or mobbing, several large surveys suggest that in any given year, upwards of 1 in 4 employees may be victims of bullying.

Civility and respect are essential for employee mental wellbeing in the workplace. The Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) defines a psychologically safe workplace as “One that allows no significant injury to employee mental health in negligent, reckless or intentional ways…and in which every reasonable effort is made to protect the mental health of employees.” Useful practical tools for creating a psychologically healthy and safe work environment are provided by the new voluntary  National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace.

To download my Bullying and Mobbing at Work – FACT SHEET click on the title or go to: 

http://www.grahamlowe.ca/documents/284/

 

 

Finding Wellness Dividends at the Better Workplace Conference

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I had the pleasure of speaking last week at the Better Workplace Conference, held this year in Halifax. I entitled my talk “The Wellness Dividend: How employers Can Improve Employee Health and Productivity.” The talk was sponsored by Merck, who also has commissioned me to write a report on this topic (watch for a free copy of the report on my website, coming soon).

One of my key points is that employers can gain much greater payoffs from wellness initiatives if these are more directly linked to the organization’s employee engagement strategy. Engagement is a strategic goal for most larger organizations. Wellness may be, but usually is not. Yet the same workplace factors and management practices promote wellness, engagement and job performance. Furthermore, research shows that work motivation influences employees’ participation in wellness programs — no doubt one reason most wellness programs have low participation rates in the range of 1/3rd of those eligible.

The message for employers, then, is to step back from your health, wellness and engagement initiatives and look for potential synergies. Maybe its time to integrate all these goals under a single human capital umbrella.