How bad does it have to get before workplace wellness programs get taken seriously? There is much public debate in France about unhappiness in the workplace, much of it centered on the dramatic rise in workplace suicides.  According to a recent Economist article, at France Telecom 24 people have killed themselves since 2008. One man stabbed himself in the middle of a meeting. A woman jumped out of an office window after emailing her father saying that she can’t take the reorganization and she has decided to kill herself.

These troubles are not confined to the French. Here in the USA, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics saw a 27 percent increase in work-related suicides between 2007 and 2008. Unhappiness at work is now of epidemic proportions. The U.S. consultancy, Center for Work –Life Policy found that people who professed themselves loyal to their organizations has dropped from 95 percent to just 39 percent between mid-2007 and the end of 2008.

Clearly, many people are under extreme stress. It is particularly difficult for people who have wrapped their personal identity closely to that of what they do for a living.  Sixty-six percent of France Telecom’s workers responded to a survey saying that they were stressed out, with16 percent reporting they were in distress.

The economy is one factor. More likely these problems stem from unrealistic demands that employers make on their employees.  Over the long-term something has to give. As the Economist says, “Companies need to do more than pay lip service to the human side of management.”  Workplace wellness needs to address more than programs “stuck’ on top of existing management expectations of employees. People are not machines, although many companies treat people as such.  Sadly, Taylorism is making a come back. In Japan, some companies even monitor the number of times their employees smile at customers.

According to another survey by DDI, more than half the respondents felt they were in a rut and going nowhere. Half of these expected to leave their employers as soon as the economy turns around.

Of course, workplace wellness programs need to address issues of ergonomics, diet, rest, and exercise. These are the easy things. In order to remain competitive, companies must include work design and creating an environment of respect and renewal for their employees. Today it may be an employers market. However, things change fast.

Many of us have lofty goals, not just for us, but for our employees. We will eat less. We will exercise more. We start out with great enthusiasm. We imagine our future selves as energetic, alert, and able to cope with the everyday stresses the workplace brings.

We have little trouble knowing what to do. It’s the actual doing it that makes things tricky. Workplace wellness programs offer rewards for good behavior. Nutritional and exercise information is important. But long-term habits don’t change overnight by simply having information presented to us.  Don’t you agree?

Workplace environment

I’m sure we can agree that a healthier workplace environment makes sense.

At one time the publishing industry was said to run on alcohol. Of course, three-martini lunches and smoking are long gone from the workplace. But at the time, few saw smoking at work as worth complaining about. It was normal, just like sitting in a chair all day at meetings, or in front of a computer.

Can you imagine a caffeine-free workplace? Yes, it’s hard to imagine. Yet caffeine is a powerful stimulant, along with its inevitable let down. If caffeine addiction wasn’t so widespread it wouldn’t be seen as normal. I want to point out here that your writer doesn’t abstain but is a moderate user.

Employers welcomed such a stimulant. It gave the illusion of promoting productivity, and in a sense it did ─ compared to how things used to be. In the days of the Industrial Revolution, the drink of choice at work was beer. Imagine! The point is that workplace orthodoxy changes over time.

Even small changes can lead in the right direction. How easy would it be for the office canteen to  cook with less salt? Can that vending machine sell healthy snacks?

Peer pressure

Our biology was not designed for us to sit at computers all day. We need to move about. Does the workplace environment encourage movement, or look at it as an aberration? Is there space to stretch? Is there any way of allowing employees some physical vigor during the work day? If no one previously exercised at work, then those that do will seem eccentric. Workplace wellness professionals must advocate for physical movement because peer pressure matters.

Fortunately, there are exercises designed for computer users. The University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and the University of Oklahoma (OU) have licensed Easy Desktop Yoga, a workplace-wellness product, allowing employees to workout at their desks. OU ran a pilot  before expanding the program.

Exercise is gaining acceptance in the workplace. It hasn’t replaced caffeine yet, but this, like all changes, will happen gradually. The advantage to Easy Desktop Yoga is that it is easy. Making a small change is far more likely to lead to long-term habit change than grandiose plans.
Let’s make it easy.

Should employers cut workplace-wellness programs during the current economic downturn?

Clearly some employers are axing programs, according to Laura Pickering, executive director of the New York Business Group on Health.

Under stress most organisms revert to type. In business, this means short-term thinking. The hunkered-down defensive position is about survival. Anything that looks like a cost and can be cut, will be cut.

The downturn won’t last forever

However, enlightened management will have made provision for naturally occurring economic cycles. It’s at times like these that organizations demonstrate their commitment to employee well-being. The value in almost all companies today is the people who work there. The downturn won’t last forever. Sooner or later employees will have greater choices of where they want to work.

The living organization

We think of employees as being healthy or not, but the organization itself is a living entity. It has a predictable growth and decay pattern. New growth is more likely to happen when the organization is agile, flexible, and open to change.

Employee health is a long-term project. If workplace-wellness professionals can’t convince management that sick, poorly nourished, exhausted employees are not only unproductive, but are more likely to be a financial burden on the company, then it’s not the program that is at fault.

Consequences

What are the consequences of eliminating programs? Is this elimination permanent or temporary? Is the program costly in terms of money or time? This is an important distinction. When bosses want to eliminate a program what do they think they are saving? Would they be open to a program that costs time and not money?

Something is better than nothing

During a causal conversation I was told of a company whose employees would stretch in the hall for ten minutes twice a day. How expensive is that? It gave the employees a sense of community, fun, and well-being. Employees received a stamp in their wellness passport. At a certain number of stamps they were rewarded.

Those employers who demonstrate their commitment to employee health and well-being will be the places of choice for the best talent.

The University of Oklahoma recently completed a pilot program using low-cost Easy Desktop Yoga for a number of employees who work at their computers all day. Even in these economic times  OU just expanded their program by purchasing a second set of licenses.

Those companies eliminating programs are operating in emergency mode. Chronic emergency is harmful to  individual and organizational health.

Time magazine recently cited new studies by H.R. consultants and the National Business Group on Health. No consultant would be happy without showing numbers because measuring things is what they do. The upshot is large companies are spending money, or planning to spend money, on encouraging employees to stay, or get, healthy. The usual suspects are targeted: diet and exercise.  This is good, but what’s missing?

Answer: sleep and rest.

In kindergarten children have a nap after lunch. Why not workers? I work in a culture of one. I embrace the afternoon nap. If ever there was a productivity method, it’s napping when you’re tired. It’s rejuvenating and refreshing. When the serotonin levels dip after lunch that’s a signal for brain to rest. And if you’re tired you’re going to make mistakes.

This is a no-cost workplace-wellness practice. Of course, it’s counter-cultural. Even the siesta in Spain has been losing its appeal in a misplaced effort at workforce productivity. Why can’t the likes of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt try to study companies where employees are encouraged to take a nap?

You don’t think there are any? Just try asking Arshad Chowdhury, co-founder of MetroNaps.

When I asked him about the difficulty of getting people to take a nap at work, he said that it was matter of culture. But even large rule-bound companies are making headway. At the time I interviewed Chowdhury, employees at Proctor & Gamble Services in Germany had embraced power napping.

MetroNaps sells a futuristic chair which appeals to office culture. However, employers don’t need to spend huge amounts on employee wellness.  I know this is a heretical statement. They could do well by allocating a rest area and encouraging people to recharge.

We tend to think that everything is solved by technology when just doing something different can work better. Remember how much NASA spent developing a pen that would write upside down in zero gravity? The Russians solved the problem of zero gravity by writing with a pencil.  You don’t always need rocket science.