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In 2023 AXA Reported that Burnout was costing the UK economy Ā£28bn a year.
Harvard Business Review reported that in the US, the cost of Burnout was more than $500bn a year.
WHOOP Unite reported that the costs to the global economy are more than $1 trillion a year.
WHOOP also estimated that the cost of turnover for each person is 1.5 to 2 times their salary in both loss of knowledge and skills, and the cost to hire someone new.
And it doesnāt stop there.
Varying reports and surveys from Gallup, Workhuman, Deloitte and Harvard Business Review over the years have stated that between 62% and 70% of Executives are or have considered leaving their jobs for workplaces that care more about wellbeing, and in the same studies, 50% to 60% of people outside of management roles want to quit for similar reasons.
Yet still, so many Exec teams refuse to admit that Burnout is a thing thatās worth focusing on or talking about.
Studies show that 65% of leaders have experienced ...
Shall we play a game of true or false?Ā Come on, itāll be fun!
Ok, here goes.
I ran a 5k once so now I can just put on my running shoes and run a marathon ā true or false?
I did some reps with my 15 kg dumbbells so now Iām ready to win the Olympic weightlifting team ā true or false?
Ok, how about this one ā¦
I went to bed really early last night as Iāve been feeling a bit run down over the last few weeks, and I can now limit my sleep for the rest of the year and stay healthy ā true or false?
In case you need me to tell you the answers, they are false, false, and false, but you know that already.
So why when it comes to wellbeing in the workplace do you think that one event a year is going to make the difference for you and your people?
When I started my career in HR back in 1998, I wanted to stop the Monday-to-Friday dying syndrome that I saw so many of my friends and family experiencing on a daily basis.Ā
I genuinely wanted to change the world of work for the better.Ā To creat...
What do you use your weekends for?
Rest, recharge, or recovery?
In the months and years leading up to my Burnout, weekends were about recovering from the work week that had been, and then just like a wind-up toy, Iād pop back into action, back into robot mode for the next week.
And like clockwork, I could tell you when Iād crash during my Christmas break, once Iād been the hostess with the mostess for family and friends for three days.
And not forgetting my summer holidays where Iād ended up with āfluā aching and unable to move, but I forced myself to have fun with my family so that I didnāt disappoint them.
During the lead-up to Burnout, the stress is what keeps you going.Ā
The good old primitive brain and the fight/flight response keep you moving to try and keep you safe.
In the days of hunter-gatherers, you wouldnāt sit down and have a break and a picnic with your friends whilst surrounded by wild animals, youād be eaten alive, and this same survival response is what is keeping you going.Ā ...
One of the biggest frustrations I hear from my HR clients is that they donāt feel heard.Ā At Board meetings, they feel that whenever they speak, their colleagues turn into nodding dogs, agreeing that things need to change, but not actually taking any steps outside of the Boardroom to action or implement anything differently.
HR feel that they are banging their heads against a brick wall trying to get their Exec colleagues to pay attention to any of the People stuff, whilst everyone else remains so fixated on the money and the numbers.
A question I find myself asking often is āHave you explained your frustration?ā and the answer is usually no.Ā The reasoning behind this is that they think it will be a waste of time, particularly given that their colleagues have made comments before about:
Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā You do the people stuff
Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Tell us what you want us to do and weāll just do it
Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā I donāt really care about the people stuff, thatās your domain
Ā·Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Iām not comfortable with the peopl...
Your voice matters.Ā
In this post Iāll be talking to you about why our voices matter, whatās in our voice, what people hear when we talk and a learning experience following a podcast interview.
I have been on a self-development, self-discovery, self-learning and self-unlearning journey for years, decades even. Sometimes it can be exhausting and I have moments where I think it would be so much easier to live in complete ignorance and pretend that everything and life is ok.Ā
When we start on this deep dive self-discovery path it is endless and constant and every time you think that youāve got something nailed and everything will become easier for you, itās like youāve just peeled back another layer of the onion and thereās something new to come to terms with.Ā
I find that the more I uncover and discover about myself and recognise I still have many repeating patterns of self-sabotage, something else comes up to bite me.Ā
But Iām always learning something, whether Iām reading, on a co...
How can we raise our awareness of what's happening to us when we self-sabotage and are there any repeating patterns we can look out for?
Iām not perfect and I still have these old patterns and old behaviours of self-sabotage that can still come up to the forefront, either when Iām not in my best place or if Iāve been letting go of my non-negotiables.
What happens to our brains, to our thoughts when we end up in this fight, flight, freeze mode? What can happen when our stress levels increase and when weāre not putting our wellbeing first and doing what is best for us?
Itās in this state that we can fall into our old patterns and even though we know that weāre doing things that arenāt good for us, there is that part of our brain that just tells us to keep going.
I invite you to give the self-sabotaging part of you a name. Iāve got 3 parts that I recognise within myself. Twins called Edna and Edith and The Warrior within.Ā
If you recognise the self-sabotaging part of you, the part th...
In a world full of polarities where one side of the fence is telling you to do more, hustle harder and push yourself to the limit, the other side is telling you to do less, focus on less, and be surrounded by less if you really want to succeed.
If Iām honest, Iāve mostly lived on the hustle-harder side of the fence.Ā A fierce overachieving, high-performing, recovering perfectionist who struggles with āslow and steadyā, with one pace, fast. If you want sh!t doing, Iām your woman.Ā I gave up on āto-doā lists years ago, instead having a āget doneā list, where if itās down it's done, and Iāve always stuck with that.
In my corporate career, I was the innovator, the rebel, the first one to try things differently, always striving for more, always working harder, always coming up with new ideas and new ways to do things, and itās been pretty much the same in my own businesses since I left the corporate world in 2014.
And yet, throughout 2022, I found myself wanting less.
Not wanting to achie...
When we hear about the Great Resignation and Quietly Quitting, we seem to think of our people as disengaged, unhappy or no longer committed to their roles, but, what if this is exactly the balance that weāve been needing to create in the workplace for a long time?
When I first started my career, I worked my contracted hours.Ā I worked in retail and I was either working when the store was open, or my contracted hours.Ā I didnāt have a laptop or mobile phone to allow me to work from home, I worked at work.Ā And when I wasnāt at work, I wasnāt working.
As my career developed I started to work additional (unpaid) hours, staying for longer in the workplace, but even then, when I left the workplace, I was no longer working.
I changed sector, worked in growing organisations and only in 2011 was I issued a work laptop and phone.Ā Between 2006 and 2011, although Iād asked for the tech to allow me to work from anywhere at anytime, it wasnāt granted.Ā The CEO was set on the fact that you worked whi...
āLazy bastards donāt burn outā
I was part of a panel discussion last week talking about burnout andĀ Lucyna MilanowskaĀ made this comment, ālazy bastards donāt burn outā and sheās right. I wrote an article years ago about who is looking after your top performers and said a similar thing, because itās true.Ā The ones who do the minimum, will not reach burnout.
A month or so ago I interviewedĀ Denise Duffield-ThomasĀ for my podcast and sheās a self-confessed lazy perfectionist, prone to burnout.Ā When she talks about being lazy, she wants to make the biggest impact with the least amount of effort, and so sheās always looking for the quickest and easiest way to get her to her goal.Ā We talked about the importance of boundaries, and when she pushes to hard and becomes exhausted, sheās prone to burnout, and this is a multi-millionaire with a lot of help and support, who also likes to do a number of things herself and if she overthinks and overstretches, burnout creeps back in.
In business, and ...
Itās Friday night, Iām sat at a rooftop bar in London and the building opposite hasĀ ProgressĀ engraved in it, and I begin to question the word.Ā The building had no name or number that I could see, I have no idea what it stood for, but itās left me thinking about progress.Ā At the time that the building was built, was progress a mission, did they feel that enough was being made fast enough, was it a stamp in time in memory of progress that had been made ā I have no idea.
This same weekend has seen the Queen celebrate 70 years on the throne. Family commitments, work and travel meant that Iāve not watched or participated as much as I might have done in previous years in Jubilee celebrations, and for the first time, Iāve really questioned whether a promise that was made 70 years to āreign until the day I dieā really demonstrates progress.
Until this year Iād always thought of it as honourable, this time round I question whether someone who is unable to fulfil all commitments and still hold...
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