Blog

Marissa Mayer’s appointment last week as the new CEO of Yahoo! is a sign of progress for women in high-tech. A trail-blazer as the first female engineer hired by Google, Mayer now becomes one of Silicon Valley’s corporate leaders. At a time when just 10% to 20% of upper management and corporate board positions in […]

Two recent studies shed new light on how sleep and work are linked, with major consequences for worker well-being. Interestingly, these studies take very different perspectives: one is by medical researchers, the other by management researchers. But they agree on one thing: if you don’t get enough quality sleep, your health and possibly that of […]

Earlier this fall I presented at the Innovative Employer Roundtable hosted by University of Kentucky’s Institute for Workplace Innovation (IWIN). IWIN is a unique university-employer think tank. Its new report on healthy organizations offers insights for Canadian employers on how organizational culture can help improve employee health. Employers today face a host of challenges in human […]

In a society that is rapidly aging, the ideal future workplace would be designed to meet the physical and psychological needs of an older workforce. Yet this remains an ideal, with few organizations actively going down this path. Nonetheless, there are prominent examples of what an older-worker friendly workplace would look like. Perhaps the best-documented […]

Wellness is in the executive spotlight. The Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently featured an article on the return on investment from employee wellness programs. While wellness ROI has been well-documented, this evidence has been confined mainly to the health promotion and occupational epidemiology literature. What’s new in the HBR article is less the case that’s […]

Organizations need to renew the capabilities of their workforce and they need to renew their relationships with clients and communities. Sustainable success means balancing customer, employee and community needs over the long-term.

Telework isn’t just another job perk. Companies need to position telework within their workforce engagement strategy, because it has good potential to improve both performance and wellbeing by giving employees greater job control.

There’s a big difference between a culture of health and a healthy culture. The more powerful approach is to foster a healthy culture, which goes beyond employee wellness programs by putting in place organizational supports needed for employees to thrive in their jobs.

Becoming a healthier requires careful attention to how you go about change. You can make the change process a healthy experience and achieve intended change goals by understanding your organization’s change readiness, aligning structural and cultural changes, linking people initiatives to business goals, being collaborative, and making time to learn and innovate.

There are many healthy organization change agents scattered throughout organizations. But they lack viable networks that offer support, encouragement, learning opportunities and problem-solving. Given the value of such networks, what is the best way to launch one and what form should it take? I welcome your input.