Nurturing a Culture of Care: A Business Imperative

As the year is coming to an end, also I try to summarize some thoughts. On Sunday, I was listening to a friend’s choir, singing beautiful Christmas songs in one of Stockholm’s churches. As I was sitting in the bench it was as a lot of the holiday season stress melted off of me and it gave me some valuable time and space for reflection.

First of all, it’s clearer than ever to me, how important care is. Care for your loved ones, yes, but also for your colleagues. The people you work with on a daily basis are the ones you’re dependent on Monday-Friday for a large part of your time awake, and they are dependent on you. In Norsk Hydro , one of our core values is Care.

To foster a culture of care isn't just compassionate—it's a strategic imperative for businesses.

While some might dismiss this as “soft”, it has a real impact on bottom line. Caring for employees isn't just altruistic. By lowering stress, you lower the risk of sick leave, and sick leave comes at a rather high cost for most companies. Not only do you pay for sick leave days and potential temporary people, but these temporary people have to be trained, and chances are they won’t be as efficient or as skilled as your permanent ones. Eventually, people might leave and then you have to deal with replacement costs. The hidden costs of non-quality can be rather high.

According to a study published in Clinical Psychological Science*, providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health. So, when you’re trying to find what works for you in the quest of lowering stress, maybe helping a colleague with something can be a starting point. We need to redefine leadership to ensure that we encompass empathy, active listening, and support. We also need leaders that are courageous enough to address sensitive topics like stress head-on. You will need to deal with not only realistic goal setting and priorities at work, but the whole individual. We bring our whole self both to work and home and having a stressful private life will also inevitably impact us in the workspace.

As a leader, stress management of your organization is your responsibility.

This is not a topic you can delegate to HR or Health and Safety team. We have to make sure that when we train leaders, this is integrated in the training. Historically, a lot of trainings have been focusing on how to manage your own stress, which is good. However, as there’s not a one size fits all, chances are that what’s good for you, isn’t going to work for the majority of your team, which means you need to create a space for your team to be comfortable to have an open communication with you.

Finally, care isn't just a buzzword. We have to encourage colleagues, not only leaders, to prioritize care within our organizations, not just for the sake of employees' well-being, but for the prosperity of the business itself. As we have “Care” as a core value, this is high on the agenda for us in Norsk Hydro , but to get it really woven into the fabric of the company takes active decisions and work by all our employees every day.

I know that I myself have a way to go here and any good advice is welcome. What are your best reflections around care at work?

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*Helping Others Dampens the Effects of Everyday Stress – Association for Psychological Science – APS

And if you don't know what to give for Christmas, please consider Tjejzonen where I'm volunteering since this year.

#care #stressmanagement #leadership #industriesthatmatter