Culture does not eat Muesli for breakfast

Many organisations talk about staff wellbeing as a solution to staff recruitment, retention and productivity. Whilst it can unlock great value, many initiatives don't deliver the outcomes organisations expect.

Making the team “well” when the organisation is “sick” wastes time, effort and expense. It can lead to an increase in absenteeism and ultimately leavers.

Now I’m very passionate about the benefits wellbeing initiatives can bring to business. In fact one of my businesses Energise.me specialises in it!

So, if I’ve got a passion for wellbeing, why am I telling you to “not do” wellbeing? Let’s explore that:

“Culture does not Eat Muesli for breakfast”

My quote is a play on the words of the great Peter F Drucker “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”. And that quote itself does lead directly to my point.

I’m not going to get into whether eating muesli for breakfast is good for your wellbeing. It might be, it might not be, but that’s not the point. The point is that whilst the strategy of encouraging your employees to make healthy choices in their lives is good for them and it’s good for business, if your culture is off, it’s not likely to lead to a meaningful improvement in their wellbeing it might have the opposite effect.

Remember the story of that frog that didn’t realise they were being boiled alive? The story goes that if you boil a frog slowly from a cool temperature it won’t realise it’s being boiled alive until it’s too late. There are some suggestions this might not actually be true, but let’s go with it being true for the purposes of this article.

So let’s imagine you have a culture that’s slowly boiling that frog (your team member) alive. Then you take the frog out of the culture, you show them how to avoid being boiled alive, you relax them, and you give them a set of skills to cope with the heat even. But then you put them back in the pot.

What do you think the frog does when you return them? Of course, they jump out.

In your case at work, imagine your finely designed and executed wellbeing strategy. It’s stressful here, so you’ve particularly focused on mental health and resilience, you’ve even shown them some mindfulness and yoga moves, aren’t you a great employer? Then they go back to work, they now know the signs of stress and burnout. They go back to their pot, their manager rains down on them, and possibly even dismisses the value of “that flaming wellbeing course” that has taken them away from the coalface.?Their workload is through the roof, and you’re so short staffed, they need to work the weekend as well (maybe even unpaid).?How long do you now think it will be before they jump out of the pot? They can’t even remember what attracted them to your pot in the first place. Was it ever the right temperature? ?Especially, when I’m advertising for staff in my lovely comfy, nicely warm pot? You get the message.

There’s a body of evidence to support what is fairly obvious to me.

“Our research has also found that temporal flexibility, supportive supervision and operational flexibility as work culture dimensions have a strong direct impact on well-being and affect WLB (Work-life Balance)”

THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORK CULTURE AND EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING Asta STANKEVI?IEN?1, Virginijus TAMA?EVI?IUS1*, Danuta DISKIEN?1, ?ygimantas GRAKAUSKAS1, Liana RUDINSKAJA2 1Department of Management Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania 2Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

“The principle of mutual gains refers to how employers maintain a balance of activities to address organisational priorities for performance and employee concerns, for example around health and wellbeing. Sometimes these can be the same, other times they differ. For example, where employers benefit from having a capable, flexible and committed workforce, their employees can cherish an inclusive culture, a sense of community and a positive work environment in which they can personally and professionally grow.”

Authenticity in the Pursuit of Mutuality During Crisis Rachel Nayani, Marijana Baric, Jana Patey, Helen Fitzhugh, David Watson, Olga Tregaskis and Kevin Daniels Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

So, employees want authentic work and have their values and priorities aligned.

Social exchange theory (SET) suggests that employees choose their commitment level at work based on their perceived support and community from their employer. Work engagement can predict various measures of employee success, including customers' perceived quality of service, profit, and productivity. Put simply, if I’m get less out, I’ll put less in.

Let’s revisit good old Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and apply it to this area. Yes, I know, we’ve studied that to death, I can hear your groans from here. But let’s explore it as it’s worthy of some analysis:

To recap, Maslow talks about a hierarchy of needs starting with physiological (a roof over of head, food and drink etc, going right up to Self-Actualisation. Each build on the other. I won’t go into all the details of each here as I’m sure you’ve seen it all before:

?Now let’s build on that and look at how we as employers can meet those needs:

?At a physiological level are you paying them a fair wage for the work they do?

Are you providing a Safe working environment – but not just physical safety, what about psychological safety? Do your employees feel safe to speak up? Do they have an appropriate workload?

Are you providing the right Social support – Do they feel part of something, do they have strong relationships at work?

Are you meeting their Esteem needs? Are you recognising them for the work they do?

?Are you helping them Self Actualise? Are you providing them with meaningful, challenging work? Does your culture encourage personal growth?

Of course, running through all of the above is leadership. How the organisation is led has a massive impact on its culture, after all, Culture does eat Strategy for breakfast.

So if we think about your culture. Is it meeting these needs?

Why not spend some time thinking about your own organisational culture and if these needs are being met?

• What are you currently doing well that meets these needs, and how could you make that even better?
• ?What are you not doing that you should be?
• ?What are you doing that you shouldn’t be?

The last one is often the most overlooked in the list and the one with the most impact. For instance, you have a lovely set of values that you spent a lot of time crafting, but your CEO’s behaviour is at odds with them. This will potentially be doing more damage than not having the values in the first place.

Only when you’re a fair way along this cultural journey, should you be calling me and saying, “Ian, tell me more about this Energise.me programme. We want to learn about whether Muesli is a good breakfast!” ?

If you liked this article or if you didn’t, please do comment, and tell us what you think and what you are doing.?