Why sane working environments are critical to the welfare of a workforce and the productivity of an organization.
By Pete Mercer
In an era of widespread resignations and “quiet quitting,” what is the most valuable thing that business leaders can take away from all the shifts in the workplace dynamic? If nothing else, it seems that everyone has decided that sanity is a necessity. Creating sane working environments is critical to the welfare of your workforce and the productivity of your organization.
Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with sales expert, keynote speaker and author Tim Richardson to discuss the importance of maintaining a sane and productive workplace. Richardson has worked for IBM and a Five Diamond resort property, and he’s worked as a professional speaker for almost 35 years.
Why is the workplace so stressful?
For Richardson, the reasons why the office is so stressful for so many people revolve around four primary expectations:
- Individual performance expectations
- Organizational performance expectations
- End-user/customer expectations
- Workforce expectations
“I think work expectations and anticipated outcomes are at an all-time high. Also, customer expectations are higher than ever and it’s critically important to get them right. If we fall short of our customer expectations, everyone has a megaphone in their pocket and can communicate mistakes with hundreds, even thousands, of people in an instant.”
Expectations are now more complex. For instance, on the one hand you have the always high organizational performance expectations of the shareholders and stockholders of the organization, while you also must contend with the dynamic expectations of a diverse workforce. “If you just break the diverse workforce down by generational preferences, that is complex enough,” Richardson said. “Just think about being in a leadership position and having to cater to people with very different work styles and needs.”
Since 2020, working in an office has become more complex. COVID-19 created so much chaos and disruption for the workplace, sending many “nonessential workers” to be furloughed or work from home. While working from home has become widely accepted, it took some significant adjusting for a lot of people to settle into what was, for many, a new way of working.
“Workplace comradery was severely lacking for quite a long period of time creating loneliness, anxiety, and family challenges as parents had to rearrange their work lives while their kids were at home,” Richardson said. “Not only did you have to manage your own feelings around mental health, but you were responsible for gauging the mental health of people around you.”
In fact, COVID is the reason that Richardson spends so much time speaking about mental health and creating a sane workplace. “I had a long pause where I didn’t do any of the things that not only provide an income for me, but also provide me with a sense of purpose. Ultimately, my speaking focus came as a result of what I call the pandemic pause.”
Establishing sanity in the workplace
For business leaders looking to take the reins and bring sanity back into their workspace, it’s important to set reasonable expectations for the office. Expectations are, of course, a part of the system, but there’s a significant difference between reasonable expectations and the kind of expectations that can kill morale.
“An overworked person is more likely to suffer from negative mental health concerns that are more common now than ever. If workloads are so high that there is no time for breaks, then workers aren’t going to be on their A-game and they certainly aren’t going to have time for new thinking and innovation,” Richardson said.
When employees feel that they need to be available 24/7, they sacrifice personal time with their families, or they can’t completely log off when they are “on vacation,” which creates a culture where they don’t feel that they can draw the line between their work life and personal life.
Richardson said, “We need time to recoup, we need time to rest, we need time to renew and restore. We need very clearly defined expectations. I think if a leader is intentional and has well established priorities, they’re going to create those clear expectations for people that include time to pause.”
The first step to establishing sanity is allowing people to truly clock out at the end of the day and take time for themselves. Workaholics have a hard time with a work-life balance, but it’s critical to the mental and physical health of your employees, as well as their productivity when they are on the clock. “Many professionals wear busy like it’s a badge of honor, when it should be more rewarding to be totally in control. We need to honor that people need renewal time and give people down time to refuel.”
How leadership can help to foster sanity
When the work-life balance is achieved, it gives people the time to recharge and come back to the office prepared to meet the goals the organization has set and bring new ideas to the table. It’s even more effective when business leaders are modeling that behavior for their teams, giving them a picture of what that balance looks like in practice.
In order to be truly effective in this arena, leadership needs to be intentional with how people look at their workload. For Richardson, many business leaders will need a sort of “altar call” to let them know that they’ve been taking the wrong approach.
When he worked for IBM, the last day of each month had everyone on the sales teams trying to earn their commission by pushing their prospects to make the final purchase. At the time, Richardson processed orders for PCs and mainframe computers that were being sold. His manager would come by and check on his team’s workflow.
If they were overloaded with orders, he would redistribute work. Because of his manager’s intentionality and intervention, it created sanity in a moment of chaos. Richardson said, “Leaders need to be visible, they need to be observing, they need to be understanding, and they need to have respect for employees and their personal lives. As simple and as basic as it sounds, all these things would improve workplace conditions, employee morale, employee retention, and even profitability.”