Have US insurance companies found the key to a more engaged workforce?

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My husband works for an American finance company that is based in two locations across the US - Greenwich CT and Austin TX - and here in London. The company is run by Americans and has, what I term, a very American feel. 

"I often here about little quirks that we don't adopt here in the UK, like Assistants Day where executive assistants (or PA's as we call them) get given flowers and gifts to celebrate their good work. A great way to engage!"

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The latest quirk

Everyone, in the 100 strong company, recently had the opportunity to take part in a fitness scheme, much like 'The Biggest Loser', to lose a defined amount of weight and get healthier.  

Of course, many companies adopt strategies like competitions and schemes to encourage their employees to be healthier, and ultimately to increase engagement at work, but this fitness scheme is a little different. 

Different how?

In the US, health insurance costs are through the roof, and in private companies, it is often the company that foots the bill. In an attempt to lower costs many companies are given money by their insurers to encourage their employees to live healthier lives and thereby reduce premiums. 

"My husbands company was given $50,000 by their insurer to invest in staff health and wellbeing."

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How did they invest the funds?

They chose to invest part of the funds in Fitbits for everyone who wanted to take part in the scheme. Out of the 100 people who could take part in the competition, 30 people took on the challenge. Each person had a maximum of 12 weeks to lose the weight they had agreed to lose, and they could track their progress using their Fitbit.  

Who benefits?

Everyone does. It's win-win all round.

• Companies who take part have an incentive to save on their insurance premium costs
• Employees benefit because they are encouraged to be healthy
• The health insurer may lose funds in premiums, but less insurance claims means more money in the bank. 

"Insurance claims for obesity in the US cost anywhere between an estimated $147 - $210 billion per year."

"The real question for us in the engagement field is, does it help to engage people at work?"

This scheme also has inadvertent benefits for both employer and employee. It means companies: 

• Take a bigger interest in their employees lives leading to increased understanding of their needs at work and how to meet them
• Facilitate stronger working relationships between employer and employee, and employee to employee
• Are encouraged to give their employees free time to exercise leading to more alert employees when at work and employees feeling fitter and healthier.

Since the Fitbit challenge, my husband has been eager to beat his number of steps per day and that of his colleagues. He's felt fitter, healthier and more motivated at work. He says his colleagues have had similar experiences. 

The right employee wellness programme can certainly help to get people more engaged at work, and have positive effects for health insurers, organisations, employees and society as a whole. 

Why start with Why?

I recently re-watched Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, ‘Start With Why?’. Simon's talk is one of the most popular Ted Talks of all time, according to Wikipedia it ranks 3rd in the list. This got me thinking; why is 'Start with Why' so popular? 

The Content

The talk is based on a theory Simon calls the 'golden circle'. The idea is that people are more likely to purchase your products if they are given the opportunity to understand why you do what you do, not only what you can sell them. People need to know the how you will provide something for them and what you will provide, but first they need to understand why you want to do so. 

Let's consider a hugely successful charitable event, Red Nose Day. The reason this charitable drive is so successful is that, from the outset, we are informed and given the information to help us to understand what a huge difference our donations will make. The 'why' we need to give to the charity is at the forefront. The what we need to give and how to give it is secondary. In addition, the presenters, usually comedians or popular TV hosts, are people who we already follow because they inspire us or make us laugh, so when they drive a cause we believe in that too. As Simon frequently says throughout his talk: 

"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."  

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Effectively, what Simon is telling us, is the need for people to consider the importance of a sense of purpose; the why they do what they do. 

The same is true for employees in an organisation. To inspire people to act for the good of your organisation you need to help them to understand why it's important to you, to them, and to the wider world. 

The Delivery

So, Simon has a great message which people can relate to, but that's not all he has. He is also a great presenter, and this helps to keep his audience engaged throughout his talk. 

His speaker style is slow and considered, apart from when he is saying the phrase above when it feels as though he is repeating a mantra. By the end of the talk, it’s difficult to forget his message. He also provides lots of relevant and popular examples as evidence that his theory works. 

So why is 'Start with Why' so popular?

Simon brings an important topic to life in a memorable and exciting talk. He shows us through both content and delivery that engagement is not just a one trick pony. Engaging the people around you takes considered effort, with a drive to create a buzz about what you do and the added need to communicate it in a way that inspires and excites your audience.  

How to Unleash Your Creative Dragon

Yesterday I was chatting with a colleague about the conditions we need for our creativity to flow. In a time when I feel under constant pressure to achieve in life, this enlightened me and challenged me to shift focus.

Back in my undergraduate years I studied the concept of psychological flow theory. Flow theory states that to experience flow its vital to have, and believe in one's, ability to achieve, but also to feel challenged enough by a task that it stretches you. Even now, ten years later, I remember the conditions required to feel the desirable state, and I often notice myself falling into a flow state as I work. The problem is, as soon as I notice I am 'flowing' I lose the flow and revert to normal functioning.

When I am in a flow is when I feel I am being my best creative self. Over the years, I've learned that for flow to occur within me I need uninterrupted space, without external noise, self-acceptance and confidence in my abilities (or a lack of internal noise).

I was saying to my colleague that the time I often feel most creative is when I am laying in bed at night just before I go to sleep. This is the time when my mind is most quiet. I spend a lot of my waking day surrounded by external noise from everyday life. This includes the internet, email, social media, phone calls, people talking, all of which in turn creates noise in my head, or my internal voices so to speak. These are the voices of self-doubt, criticism and fear that often make me question my abilities. The noise is what disrupts my flow.

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So how can we ensure we leave space for creativity. Well, the other thing we discussed is that making a specific space to allow yourself to be creative can be disruptive to creativity because it forces the mind to do something it is potentially not ready to do.

What we need to do is give ourselves the freedom to think and be ourselves as we work. As soon as we forgive ourselves for being less than perfect and for not always meeting expectations placed on us by others or ourselves, suddenly the creativity flows. It may take time and hard to accept that a structured plan of 'must achieve' is not always the most productive way to create output. But if we do what we feel, and what we believe in, the rest will come. For creativity to flow we need to hush not only the external noise but the internal noise too.

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"When we stop thinking about what we should be doing and start doing what feels right, suddenly we find ourselves in the place we always wanted to be."

My friend used a great analogy, which may seem somewhat crude but is a very useful thing to consider when we look at the conditions required to be creative.

Do you ever make yourself need the toilet? If you say to yourself, right, I haven't been to the toilet today I must go, can you go? No! Of course not, your body will tell you when it's time to go. It's much to the same with what we create. Making the body do something does not mean it will oblige. Sometimes we just have to let nature take its course.

Listen to Your People and Save Your Business

This morning, to get a little light relief from ironing out the finer details of wedding planning, I decided to watch one of my favourite work-related shows, Undercover Boss. 

I've watched this show many times and each time I am amazed at how surprised the big boss is by their findings. So much so that it reminds me of why I started out in business on my own in the first place; my goal has always been and always will be:

'Give everyone in your organisation a voice. Only then will you get the best from your people.'

This week the focus of the show was Tower Hamlets Council and it saw the Chief Executive (CE) going undercover to work as one of the frontline workers. As the CE quoted: 

"Working undercover on the frontline you see it as it is rather than how they want you to see it. People put on a show when they know you are a more senior person."

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Council workers perform many essential services for the residents in a borough; from pest control and waste management to child protection services, from libraries and doctors surgeries to meals on wheels. However, many of these services have suffered in recent years due to budget cuts and massive strains on resources. 

Budget cuts are no new thing to local councils in the UK, and they are always fraught with dispute and despair whenever they arise. Unfortunately, they are often necessary; the real problems arise when the wrong cuts are made. 

One of the stops for the CE this week was accompanying a female care worker who'd been delivering meals on wheels to elderly patients for 33 years. She was an inspiration, showing the utmost care, respect and genuine concern for each and every patient she visited. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the time she spent with her elderly clients was cut dramatically to meet demand for services. 

The CE recognised that the situation visibly pained the long-standing worker, and he noted that she did her best to arrange her deliveries to spend the longest time possible with the people who needed her most. His revelation was: 

“’Meals on Wheels’ is more than just delivering a meal and walking away.” 

To address the issue, the CE asked the care worker to join a new committee he had designed to ensure the care of clients was of top priority. He told the care worker that her insight was vital to making the project a success. 

We always need budget cuts; change occurs in organisations and money is frequently required elsewhere to meet the current internal or external needs of the company - it's a fact of life. However, by making blind choices about changes required in organisations without speaking to the frontline workers first, senior leaders are bound to make incorrect decisions. 

The most important thing to recognise in any organisation is the need to understand the consequences of our actions. Yes, we are running businesses, but in many cases, we are also providing services to those who need it most. 

There are too many companies that operate without talking to the people on the shop floor. In some ways, this is helpful because it takes the emotion out of business and allows us to make strong financial decisions, but is that what business should really be about? Are we saying, as a race, we value financial gain more than the needs of our own? 

Business is more than making money; business is about people. 

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Managers, are you really getting the most from your people?

As a manager, it is very tempting to ignore requests for change from employees; these requests often mean spending large chunks of money on a new process or system, or a request for a salary increase. What we often fail to see, is that even just by listening to someone and showing your empathy and understanding, but often doing little to change the situation, can help. 

Listen to your people

Ultimately, it is likely that your teams know more about their working challenges than you do, due to the simple fact that they work with the challenges on a daily basis. Listening to your people is vital. Sadly, this is often ignored, especially when it comes to large scale change across organisations. 

There is a well known psychological study which led to what we know today as the Hawthorne Effect. This phenomenon occurs when people improve their behaviour or productivity output due to the simple fact there has been a change in their working environment, whether or not the change results in an improvement to their working conditions. 

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This change can be as minor as being observed for a short period. Of course, we can't observe everyone all of the time, and we wouldn't want to because the effect would wear off, but by showing people you care, they will respond accordingly. The key is sincerity. 

Granted, this is a temporary measure, but it shows the potential positive impact of creating an environment of listening, sharing and displaying genuine concern for one another in the workplace. It also provides you with vital insight into the workings of you teams; you never know when this information might be useful. 

The crux of this is that people want to feel like they matter. Employees want to feel they are part of something important and without them the end goal wouldn't be as possible. But in order to bring people with you on your journey, you need to understand their motivations for work. 

Understanding your people

Knowing your people is the key to a happy workforce. In our modern world of non-traditional male and female roles, and the widespread introduction of flexible working, you are very behind the times if you are not sensitive to the work / life balance needs of your people. 

I recently spoke to a friend of mine and she relayed to me the challenges she could see across her national team, and that she knew she could help to make changes to ensure the team operated more efficiently. However, she is also the mother of a young child and was concerned to speak up at the fear that she may have to travel extensively and work long hours to achieve her goal. 

This fear factor is exactly what we should be trying to eliminate if we want a successful business. The environment we should be creating is an open forum for ideas and discussion and the opportunity for people to take calculated risks. 

The lack of this in the workplace, again comes back to our fear of spending; if people are allowed to have ideas, it often means spending and change. But, by talking together about reaching a larger purpose or goal, the smaller things become easier to achieve because they are in service of a bigger purpose. You become more creative, more resourceful as a team and can get things moving in the right direction - together.  

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It is sad that people have less passion for their work because they don't want to travel or leave work late instead opting to be at home with their child; but why wouldn't they?? It's normal to want a work / life balance. But whilst at work, we are not getting the best from our teams because they don't want to rock the boat and put themselves in a difficult position. We need to get the best from our people to get the best out of our business. 

There is another common principle used in psychology called the psychological contract. This is an unwritten contract between you and your people; an expectation of how you will both behave during your contract together. By being mindful of what your employees want, expect and need from you, you will get more back from them.

Here are some tips to help you do that:

1. Talk to people - find out their honest career goals - what do they really want out of their career and what work / life balance do they want. Give a little back to your employees, and they will give you more. 

2. Be flexible with hours. If someone needs to leave at 4.30pm to collect their child from school - let them do it. You've likely lost their engagement for the last hour of that day anyway because they are thinking about where they would rather be and should be - with their family. Even if they are only there for six hours a day, but they are happier and more motivated, you will get more from them than you would in their normal eight hours.

3. Provide people with the best resources to get the job done. Don't just say - it's too expensive to send you to X so you can't visit that team or take that course. Ensure you talk freely with them to come up with an affordable but effective option for making the job possible. You will get more from people if you work WITH them, not against them.

Being a manager is a tough job, but it can be made much easier if you have happy and effective employees. Take some of these tips on board, and you will be surprised at what can be achieved.