Thriving Tribes Archives

3 questions to help your team care, innovate, and thrive each month

Asking each other the right questions each month can help create a Green Zone tribe – which is more optimistic, resourceful and energetic. This practice reinforces what is important and lets everyone know that progress is better than perfection. There has never been a more important time for a tribe to be more agile and […]

Why Change Management Needs to Get MUCH Better

A survey we conducted revealed that the greatest cause of employee disengagement was “change fatigue”. The cost of this disengagement and burnout is enormous with a 2017 survey of 614 HR leaders showing that 46% of them believed this was responsible for up to half (20 to 50 percent, specifically) of their annual workforce turnover. […]

Shrewd Solutions to Massive Mental Fatigue at Work

Are you overwhelmed with busyness and the constant demand to do more with less? It seems you are not alone. This week I ran a webinar for employees that work in the community care sector and 53% stated that their greatest obstacle to personal vitality was that they did not have enough “me time”. Later […]

The surprising cost of workplace rudeness

In a startling HBR article by Christine Porath and Christine Pearson called The Price of Incivility they reveal that over 50% of the 14,000 employees they surveyed had experienced rudeness or disrespect in the last week. This represented a substantial increase over the last 14 years they have been monitoring workplace civility. What is even […]

What the Boss taught me about purpose, passion, and positive strengths

Bruce Springsteen in ConcertOK I’m old, and confess I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan for over 30 years. I’ve loved his music and lyrics, and his ability to stay at the top of a very volatile business prone to fads (as Gangnam style chalks up 1.3 billion YouTube views!!). Despite this, until this Monday I […]

10 best websites for beating workplace stress

Why should we worry about workplace stress levels? After working in Australian business for over 25 years, I have never seen stress levels higher than they are today. According to the a recent federal government report, Australians work an average 42.56 hours per week and are the 5th highest out of 29 countries reviewed. A […]

4 Ways to Help a Discouraged Workmate…

Get employee mental health strategy right, and it guarantees sustained performance. But get it wrong, and a crisis could be ahead. The subject of mental health fills many managers and employees with apprehension. In fact, many believe the best strategy is to ignore the issue altogether. A problem ignored, rarely disappears however – it usually grows. […]

Change: the mental health and profit correlation

Evolution tells us if we don’t change we’ll die – just ask the dodo.
Just like nature, organisations are also asked to adapt to changing environments which is often driven by a quest to improve productivity and profitability. Despite this requirement, economic history shows that many have not managed change well, with Kodak, Blackberry, Nokia, General Motors, and Angus and Robertson being high profile examples.
This need for continuous improvement has led to over 25,000 books being written about organisational transformation in the last 15 years, and yet only 30% of change initiatives are deemed successful. Something is not working.

The mental health and profit correlation all leaders should know about

Why don’t leaders take mental health seriously? As mental health month approaches in October, I’ve been reflecting on the question I hear most often from Human Resources and OH&S professionals: “Why don’t our managers take the mental health of their employees seriously?” I know from first-hand experience, that most managers would like to create a […]

7 low cost – high impact ideas for mental health month in October

Asking R U OK? during mental health month
After I tell the story of my depressive episode during my presentations, I ask people to raise their hand if they know someone – either in their personal life or at work – who lives with depression or an anxiety disorder. To everyone’s amazement they find that most of the audience raises their hand. This isn’t surprising when a survey by the Wesley Mission revealed that 85% of Australians know someone close to them who lives with a mental illness. In the workplace, the Medibank report Sick at Work showed that mood disorders account for 34% of all lost productivity through absenteeism and presenteeism (people are at work but not fully productive).
Despite this, in research I completed with over 4000 people living with a mood disorder, only 15% felt comfortable discussing their condition with their work colleagues.