Lifespan vs Healthspan - Don't Care About the 1st

But we are not even measuring the second one, right?

Right.

But it doesn’t have to stay like that.

We have been fighting for our people for almost a decade now. Trying to increase the retention rate, doing stay-interviews, and who knows what else to lengthen our employees' life-cycle.

Meanwhile, we are measuring engagement, though all of us know that where there are real problems, you will never see it in any survey. My employer would be the last one to tell that I have trust issues when I have trust issues. It is not rocket science, right?

But the real problem is not this.

The real problem is that we are measuring the ‘lifespan’ of an employee, and we have no clue where the healthspan ends meanwhile.

Imagine that you hear from your goldfish that it is ready to fulfill your wish so you can live until your 100-year milestone, but you have to nod that you are accepting that.

What would be your first question?

‘Okay, I live till 100, but until when am I healthy?’

Exactly.

As you know very well (and hopefully make your lifestyle choices accordingly :) ), healthspan is much more important for the individual than lifespan.

So my question is, how could you as a leader implement that thinking into your daily life? Whether you are directing your team or the whole organization? How could you ‘measure’ the healthspan of an employee? Of a team? Of a department?

All the official organizational measurements will be biased due to the above mentioned, that is sure. Moreover, we coaches see in many cases that even the given employee has no clue how they feel about their healthspan.

But unfortunately, it is still not an excuse for you as a leader.

I do not have a simple answer to the question. I have one, but you will not like it. As the head of an organization, it is your responsibility to ensure that every single employee has someone above in the hierarchy who is aware of their healthspan status.

This seems easy but in 99% of cases, it fails. Why?

Because:

1. You are not keeping teams small enough to ensure that the team leader has time to care about their employees.
2. You are overloading all your team leaders with ‘real work’ (not my words... :) ), sometimes even declaring that they should care about their people in 20% of the time, for example. And then no wonder that they don’t care at all, as 80% is more than enough to spend your week with.
3. You are not training your team leaders to be conscious leaders as they are getting less budget than the upper management.

And there is even one more point to think about, even if it is definitely not true for everyone. You are not always setting the best example. Cancelling the one-on-ones, having serious work-life integration issues, and not knowing that even your own healthspan status has changed - these are real exclamation marks in your notebook as well.

Ergo?

Ergo, think about your healthspan, take a white paper and a pen, and draw simple marks beside all of your team members. Green if they are healthy, yellow if you see warnings, and red if they are over. Then find your own solutions, help the red to recover or escape, and decide whether you would like to keep the yellow ones.

But definitely ensure that you do everything to keep the greens green.

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