When asked to identify the greatest performance obstacle for 2010–11, nearly 75% of the sampled executives cited the ever-increasing demands of the workplace as their top nemesis.
With three quarters of the workforce feeling the demand on their energy this year will exceed what they have to give, analysts wonder how this plays against the trend of company leaders, keen to emerge from the Great Recession, relying on the discretionary effort of their workers to push through a company’s challenges.The latest data suggests that well has run dry. Employees are well aware that their energy is a limited resource and when the funds in their energy accounts become depleted, their ability to rally their talent and skill gets compromised. sadly, the fallout from this type of energy crisis extends far beyond physical performance levels. The Human Performance Institute, inc. (HPI ) has more than 30 years experience consulting tens of thousands of business leaders. In 2010, HPI initiated a new study of business executives to understand the extent of damage done to workplace resiliency in recent years. The study uncovered some sobering statistics.
More than 62% of respondents report a rise in emotional or physical burnout in 2009 compared to the previous 12 months. Fifty-seven percent report a significant drop in morale and 38% report greater disengagement. When asked specifically about the impact of increased job demands, 63% of respondents reported that they are more irritated and stressed and 56% are exercising less, opening the door to increases in sedentary activity, obesity and related illnesses. 69% percent report a serious erosion of their work/life balance. most critically, 78% fear they personally lack the capacity to take on any new challenge. While leaders anticipate overcoming current conditions and prevailing over economic woes, nearly 80% of their workers expect to fail before they begin! The current stress load on employees is enough to make them sick, literally.
The American Psychological Association’s Stress in America poll confirms the HPI findings, showing that three out of four adults report experiencing moderate to high stress with almost half saying it increased in the last year. These numbers take on added significance when you consider that outside the United States, only 39% of workers cite increased stress as a significant problem, according to the third annual Robert Half international Global Financial Employment Monitor of 4,800 managers across 21 countries.
It’s a crisis – A human energy crisis – of massive dimensions. The economic consequences are alarming.
A 2007 Milken institute study4 estimates that lost workdays and lower productivity from chronic diseases costs businesses more than $1.3 trillion annually. Of this amount, lost productivity totals $1.1 trillion per year, while another $277 billion is spent annually on treatment. with exercise declining and poor eating habits rising as people imbibe a cocktail of fast food, caffeine, fad diets and energy drinks, chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, obesity and cardiovascular disease represent risk for businesses everywhere. Three of every four dollars spent on healthcare in the U.S. today goes to manage chronic illness. Medical experts freely admit that 70% of this cost is entirely preventable with only small changes to workplace behavior and programs. The Milken institute study explored this further and concluded that just modest improvements in preventing and treating the causes of disease could not only reduce costs but also increase the nation’s gross domestic product by $905 billion due to direct productivity gains. Lowering the obesity rate alone could mean a productivity surge of $254 billion. They have discovered the inextricable links between each person’s body, mind and spirit that suggest corporate performance relies more on the health of a company’s workers than previously thought.
Some employees rise to the challenge and make lemonade from even the sourest of lemons. But significant numbers of people seemingly collapse. The difference between these two responses is the level of resilience the individual brings to the workplace. Resilience is a person’s capacity to respond to chaotic disruption and unforeseen change, by bouncing back with speed and grace. The principle for how you build and strengthen muscles in the body, resilience is an acquired ability to skillfully oscillate between cycles of stress and recovery. Stress is energy-out and recovery is energy-in. Both are essential ingredients in the formula of resiliency. Managing stress means ushering the restorative forces of healing and renewal thereby rebuilding energy reserves. One of the best measures of resilience is speed of recovery. Stress is one of the most demonized and misunderstood concepts in the world. However, stress is essential and vital to growth. All too often the culprit of our ills is not excessive stress but rather insufficient recovery. When we drain our mental, emotional, and physical reserves and don’t honor the need for recovery, the results can be catastrophic.every bio-potential in the human physiology is oscillatory; ecgorekgin the heart, electromyographic activity in the muscles, etc.
The human system works best when it is in wave form, meaning fully on and fully off. Stress is the stimulus for growth, and growth and resiliency actually occur during episodes of recovery. When individuals do not properly honor the recovery process, the demands they inevitably face daily become insurmountable. inadequate emotional recovery breeds negativity, mood swings and irritability. Inadequate mental recovery breeds poor concentration, sloppy thinking and mental mistakes. Spiritual fatigue not balanced by recovery can open the door to a host of character lapses which conflict with your core values. Napoleon was quoted as saying that “the first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue”. Physical fatigue in combat stress erodes mental, emotional, and spiritual strength and is, therefore, the arch enemy of high performance. Much of how the military trains its warriors to improve resilience transfers to the corporate world. in WWI, swank and march and found that after 60 days of consecutive combat, 98% of infantry soldiers were likely to become a psychiatric casualty of one form or another. More recently, repeated deployments into Iraq and Afghanistan have also underscored the importance of resiliency as a protection against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). What the military has learned is that a key element in successful redeployment’s is carefully administered doses of strategic recovery following the stress cycles. The more traumatic the stress cycle, the more critical are the episodes of balancing recovery or rest. The recovery phase is where growth occurs and where resiliency is created. When there is prolonged energy expenditure without breaks, the body ultimately responds with a backlash of forced recovery. Referred to as the parasympathetic backlash, this typically takes the form of overwhelming weariness, exhaustion, sleepiness and disengagement.
Most organizations hire people for the “software” in their minds, all that intelligence, wisdom and genius that resides between their ears. however, that software will simply lie dormant unless it’s properly powered up. Figuratively, the body is the operating system and power supply. and some progressive organizations are beginning to understand that the concept of the whole person is critical. You can’t divide a person up and say, “I just want everything from the shoulders up”. Organizations are buying the whole package and that package has feelings, emotions and the need for oscillation to unleash the full potential of the individual. The HPI study shed further light on this. Ninety-eight percent of workers surveyed feel their company bears a responsibility for instituting programs to improve staff resiliency. Eighty-seven percent feel senior leaders should play a more active role fostering new programs for staff resilience. Indeed, 78% of leaders claim concern for their people’s capacity to manage work demands in the year ahead, and 71% of people believe employee energy reserves are critical to achieving high performance. Yet at the time of publication, only 55% of companies surveyed are doing anything at all about it, and even within these communities, 62% of employees still feel burned out, suggesting not all resilience and energy programs are created equal. Powering up the genius end word our conclusion is that Americas employees are not equipped to deliver employer’s goals for growth in 2010 and beyond. Almost 80% of workers surveyed don’t believe they can meet the demands placed on them. Chronic illness, depression,work-induced stress and an eroding work/life balance are continually cited as chief causes. Building individual and organizational resilience represents a significant competitive edge for businesses. Perhaps most importantly, organizations that implement human resiliency programs send a powerful message to their employees that the leadership cares about them as individuals – that the leadership wants to provide stakeholders with tools to help them successfully navigate both their professional and personal storms.
Jack Groppel is the Vice President of Applied Science & Performance Training, Wellness & Prevention, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute®. He is an internationally recognized authority and pioneer in the science of human performance, and an expert in fitness and nutrition.