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Over-Productivity is Hurting your Bottom Line

17/1/2020

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While some employers believe stress to be a “necessary evil” to remain productive and profitable in today’s global economy, research indicates otherwise (1).  In the United States, 26-40% of employees report being extremely stressed or burned out (1), in the European Union, 28% of employees reported feeling stressed at work, and in Japan, 63% of employees reported serious work anxiety or stress (2).  
Stress is associated with increased absenteeism, tardiness, and intentions to quit, and decreased motivation, productivity, and health—all of which impact the corporate bottom line (1; 3).  These impacts are estimated to cost $50-$100 billion a year in the United States alone (4; 5; 6) while costing $6 billion in Canada (7).  Worldwide these costs could total up to $187 billion, with 70%-90% of those relating to productivity costs (8).
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Ongoing stress can also contribute to longer-term issues and it's even been found that stress could contribute up to 90% of health symptoms and disorders (5).  Long-term stress can manifest as psychological disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder), emotional disturbances (e.g., dissatisfaction, fatigue, tension), maladaptive behaviours (e.g., aggression, substance abuse, accidents, injury, suicide), physical illnesses (e.g., cardiovascular disease; cancer; ulcers, decreased immune system, neuroendocrine disorders, autonomous nervous systems, blood pressure, blood lipids, uric acid), and cognitive impairments (e.g., sleep disorders; 1; 2; 4; 6; 9; 10; 11). 
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These long-term consequences have incremental impacts on corporate profitability.  For example, increased use of short- and long-term sick leave and temporary or permanent replacement and retraining of skilled employees costs Canada $3.5 billion annually (12) and mental-illness, overall, costs $14 billion (13).  In the United States, depression alone costs $30-$44 billion due to absenteeism, loss of productivity, and other workplace behaviours (14; 15), and €118 billion in total costs for the European Union (16), annually.
​It's time to re-think overworking yourself or your employees to get greater productivity and realize that in the long-run it will lead to lower productivity as well as many other consequences including hurting profitability. Now it's time to re-focus on engagement, motivation, and purpose. 

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Recovering from Work

16/3/2018

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​After investing into my consulting business full-time, I am fortunate to have flexibility, autonomy, and days where I stay at home working in my housecoat. However, it wasn’t very long ago I was working 11-hours days, answering emails on vacation, and taking my dual monitor home on long weekends.
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Working is no longer clocking in at 9:00 am and clocking out at 5:00 pm. Work is now physically or virtually arriving between 7:00am and 10:00am and leaving between 3:00pm and 6:00pm, all while juggling personal phone calls, work e-mails, doctor’s appointments, social media, conference calls, news reports, in-person meetings, the list goes on. Once home, the work phone still buzzes from colleagues around the world or from people burning the midnight oil. There is no longer a concept of ‘work-life balance’ but now a concept of ‘work-life integration’. We now have more tasks to squeeze into a day, without scheduled ‘on’ and ‘off’ times for each task. 

​This integration is particularly problematic when new research has now shown that we need fully detach in order to recover. 

​{ A meta-analysis is where a researcher examines all the available studies on a topic and statistically combines them to see overall what effect they have }
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​Researcher Bakker and his colleagues recently published a meta-analysis to help us understand what helps us recover from all the hard work we expend during the day. So what did they find? Some findings seem to be common sense. For example, all demands will make us more fatigued. Demands such as job ambiguity, conflict with others, overload etc. will make us feel fatigued. However, some demands will also invigorate us like solving complex problems or achieving results under a tight deadline.  The less 'common sense' results were how to recover from these demands. ​
There are four typical ways people recover from work:
  1. Control (e.g., schedule their evening or next day to reduce chaos)
  2. Relaxation (e.g., nap, be a couch potato)
  3. Mastery (e.g., take a night class, learn a musical instrument)
  4. Detachment (e.g., mentally check out, completely submerge into another task)

​Okay, so what did the research say was the best technique? Of course, the answer is “it depends”!

If you experiencing fatiguing demands during your day, the best thing you can so is to detach to rejuvenate. Some examples of how to detach include turning off your work email/phone, engaging in group activities, or reading. Detaching will allow you to complete your home tasks without distraction allowing you to focus solely on work the next day. It will also allow you to sleep better at night by stopping any ruminations over tomorrow’s work day.

If you facing invigorating demands, the best thing you can do is control. Scheduling your work and non-work tasks will allow you to keep control of your demands, ensuring they remain a source of energy rather than become a source of fatigue. Other suggestions on how to control your demands is to make to-do list’s and set daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Having greater control will increase your self-efficacy and allow you to feel that you accomplished more.

Even though the research found these are the best techniques, it doesn’t mean ignore the other techniques. If you can, combine them! For instance, meditation will allow you to detach and relax. Using multiple techniques will have an incremental effect to reduce you fatigue. 

Overall, although work-life integration can increase flexibility and autonomy, we run the risk of not recovering from our demands. Ensure you schedule time to detach to avoid burnout and to remain energized at work.  
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