Share Productivity Laws with Employees as a way to Entertain and Make a Point with Your Employee Newsletter

Have you heard of Parkinson's Law? It was first coined by British author and historian C.

Northcote Parkinson, writing for The Economist in 1955.

The law states that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Have you experienced this phenomenon?

A better question is have you seen employees who are given an assignment with plenty of time to complete it, but still manage to only get it to you barely on time, or even late? This is the Parkinson's Law in action.

Your employee newsletter is a magical tool to educate employees about productivity principles like this one within a workplace wellness context. Improving productivity, reducing stress, sharing the information with others, and having a chuckle or two are exciting reasons to educate your employees about productivity laws that cleverly (more so than others) define our lives. 

A bit of research on productivity laws discovers that there are actually nine different productivity laws commonly cited in time management literature and personnel management training. You've heard of Murphy's Law. It happens to be one of these nine.

In the future, I will share more about these laws of cause and effect with you, but the employee newsletter article idea I would like to recommend is composing a simple article on this topic right now. Make it about 100-120 word range. Remember, it is my recommendation that you never have employee newsletter articles that extend beyond 250 words, and keep most in the range of 120-150 words.

When you research these productivity laws, you can make a strong impact with your employees as I have done here taken from a newsletter article I wrote several years ago.

Have you heard of Parkinson's Law? Simply stated, the law states that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”  That’s the observation made by the British author and historian C. Northcote Parkinson, writing for The Economist in 1955. The few who are able to overcome this productivity-killing phenomenon are able to work so efficiently that they seem to have magical powers. Here’s how to join this elite group: Shorten the amount of time required to complete a task and correspondingly increase the urgency of completion by promising it sooner. You will develop more efficient work habits with this intervention, and you will find more free time in your life that you struggle to find right now. A simple way to work with this principle is to take a kitchen time and set it for say, thirty minutes and tell yourself you will finish a project before the bell goes off. The move to your next task and repeat the strategy. Subscribe to Frontline Employee -- a newsletter you can distribute to the workforce, rename and call your own, and  finally have an on-time, highly visible EAP newsletter for improved utilization and program preservation.

Improve Morale and Decrease Risk When You Provide Diversity in the Workplace Awareness Education

If you are not providing diversity awareness education in the workplace, you may want to offer about 10-12 minutes of this content during the year . It is a lot easier to do than you think, and a lot more welcome than you might imagine. It's all about the approach (the educational and non-threatening approach we use.) The benefits of diversity awareness include reduced risk of workplace violence, higher morale, improved communication, and most importantly, employees who behave with tolerance toward others while not feeling threatened by the education and awareness information they receive. You also acquire employees who help maintain a respectful workplace by not acting as bystanders to abuse. It is a very synergistic topic that has multiple layer effects for organizations. Reducing the bystander effect is really key to more positive workplaces. I may produce a PowerPoint on this topic alone. See the full unabridged program we offer here. Just scroll and click the video you will see half-way down the page. This program is editable, "brand-able", professionally narrated, and available in DVD, PowerPoint, Video, or a Web course. That makes it good for collecting certificates of participation as proof you took "due care" in the event a legal claim ever happens for something like discrimination. (By the way, I always recommend arm-twisting your insurance company into a discount for reducing behavioral risk exposures. Most states do that already for a drug-free workplace policy. A topic like this one should be no different. See what happens. Let me know.) See the program. WorkExcel Tip: When you purchase products from WorkExcel.com, you can download them, edit, amend, delete content, and acquire them in any of four different formats. All web courses include test questions, handout(s), certification, and you own web course entirely. Web courses or videos operate from your Web server. They upload in minutes--and they are totally self-contained with embedded PDF handout(s). We can even insert additional handouts you might want to distribute. Explore the other links to your left in this email. Phone me with questions. I answer my own phone.

Workforce Trends in 2018 EAPs Should Undertand to Take the High Ground for Program Growth

Forbes has issued predictions for workplace trends in 2018. Interesting . . .50% of the trends relate directly to human resource factors.

The predictions are heavy on issues concerning employee wellness, employee productivity, and reduced behavioral risk that can lead to productivity and economic losses.

Here are the HR related trends:

1. Leaders will encourage more human interaction. Companies will continue to promote their workspaces and design them to facilitate interpersonal relationships between employees. See more.

5. Financial and mental wellness gets prioritized. With 78% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and student loan debt at over $1.4 trillion, workers are struggling and it's affecting their health. See more.

6.) Employee burnout causes more turnover. Employees are burned out from working longer hours with no additional compensation, while companies are posting record profits. See more.

8. Companies will take diversity more seriously. Employees must become more aware, tolerant, and buy into the value of diversity. See more.

10. The aging workforce. About three in every four Americans plan to work past retirement age and almost two-thirds said they will continue to work part-time. New challenges for HR. See more.
Download the full trends article here.

Are you a workforce professional -- HR, EAP, Wellness, concerned manager? Consider the skills, resources, and opportunities you represent or have to make a difference in 2018 and beyond.

Go Direct to the Forbes Article

Workplace Diversity Photo of the Week for EAPs

EAP Photo of the Week
Click Link to See Caption

See Caption

 

See WorkExcel.com's Diversity in the Workplace Awareness Product

Opioids Abuse Education Awareness and Prevention

EAP presentation product for educating employees about the opioid addiction crisis.

Increasing EAP Utilization Hack #13: Ask for Referrals

Asking EAP clients to refer a friend is one of the most powerful approaches to increasing your EAP's utilization. Do you practice this promotional strategy?

Nothing is more convincing and influential than word of mouth referrals because they are tantamount to a walking live testimonials. Referrals from friends are trusted. If a good friend of yours says a restaurant is fantastic, it will motivate you more than a $5K full page display ad in the local newspaper. Clearly, this is a cost-beneficial EAP utilization improvement hack for you to consider.

The time to ask for a referral is at the moment of positive excitement when your EAP client says, "Wow, thank you so much for helping me." This is your cue to speak up and ask the EAP client to refer a coworker if the opportunity arises. It's that simple. You aren't asking every client to refer, but take advantage of those who would be obviously willing.

When you have an employee-client spread the word about the EAP, a lot is happening at that moment, and all of it is quite synergistic.

The employee client is promoting your program effectiveness, improving its reputation, decreasing resistance of would-be clients, helping others overcome the fear of asking for help, and intervening with your most ferocious and negative force, concern among the workforce that the EAP is not confidential.

All EA professionals believe their program is confidential, but not all employees do. The reason is simple. Confidentiality is so important that the fear associated with it creates its own anxiety and "disturbance in the force." Let's call it "EAP confidentiality perception attrition."

This anxiety gets passed along to the workforce where it is propagated. This is also what makes EAP supervisor training so important. You must tell supervisors in EAP orientations to not repeat, disclose, or otherwise imply knowledge of an employee's EAP attendance or even suggest an employee has attended the EAP. This is also a legal issue, but you want to impress upon supervisors the impact on the program's integrity and how this can negatively impact the perception of confidentiality among employees. If you want to make a bigger impression, say that the most at-risk worker--the one that might go postal--just might not attend the EAP because of something the supervisor said. (You can embellish from there.)

Fighting the natural attrition of perception of confidentiality requires promoting confidentiality, and employees who refer friends or coworkers to the EAP are naturally assisting in this effort.

I routinely make mention that the EAP is confidential in Frontline Employee EAP Newsletter to help you boost your utilization. But since articles are editable, you should insert this where, and as needed. It's vital. You want lots of touches during the year on this key point.

Do you have an EAP utilization improvement hack that you would like me to pass along or expound upon? Pass it along here at publisher@workexcel.com

Happy World Mental Health Day!

Each year, on October 10th, World Mental Health Day is celebrated, which is a proclamation initiated

by the World Health Organzation. This year is a bit special: The theme is "The Workplace" (Did you know?)

Work is sometimes--often--a 24/7 experience for many employees in the Western hemisphere (and beyond.) Suffice it to say, that work is on our minds a lot!

Our mental health is directly affected by work, and our mental health affects the workplace, productivity, and the bottom line. It's a two-way street, and enhancing mental health wellness is crucial to human welfare.

Depression and anxeity affect well over 500 million people worldwide. And the cost to productivity is a cool $1 trillion dollars.
Celebrate today by bringing attention to the importance of any work organization's employee assistance program, and remind employees and managers that the EAP stands ready to assist them.

You will find more information about World Mental Health day at these links, and consider any of the tip sheets from WorkExcel.com to help you celebrate it -- they are always reproducible, editable, brandable, and web-usable.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/world-mental-health-day/2017/en/
http://www.who.int/mental_health/in_the_workplace/en/
Resources
Tip Sheets for Workplace Wellness
Catalog of Products
2-Page Catalog
EAP Newsletters
Training/Awareness for Employees
Training/Awareness for Managers
EAP Tools and EAP Resources

Daniel Feerst, BSW, MSW, LISW-CP
Email me: publisher@workexcel.com
Publisher 1-800-626-4327
WorkExcel.com