Employees at a New Zealand company behind an innovative trial of a four-day working week have declared it a resounding success, with 78% saying they were better able to manage their work-life balance.
An analysis shows that the employees working four-day weeks felt better about their job, were more engaged, and generally reported greater work-life balance and less stress – all while maintaining the same level of productivity.
Office buildings, where many Australians spend most of their waking hours, can cause real health issues. Cubicles in offices usually consist of partitions made of particle board and vinyl carpet, synthetic flooring, a particle board desk and plastic or synthetic office chair, mostly lit by artificial lighting.
One excellent way to combat both sick days and stress is by filling your office with plants. Ideally, you want plants that will “scrub” the air of pathogens, improve the office’s mix of bacteria, and survive in low light with little care.
A key part of any manager’s job is to know how to approach staff who are struggling to do their job to the required standards or expectations.
But with increasing recognition of mental illness in the workplace, before you begin a performance management process with a staff member, it’s important to ask: could this be a mental health problem, rather than a pure performance problem?
And how do you tell the difference?
There are thousands of reasons to invest time and energy in fostering greater wellbeing in your workplace. And whatever role you play in your NFP, there are many things you can do to encourage greater wellbeing amongst staff and volunteers. Here are six, totally cost-free ideas to get you started.
You may know someone like this at work: optimistic and resilient, they appear to bounce through challenges drawing on an internal strength that helps them work through problems they encounter at work. Always hopeful and positive about the future, they treat stressful events as a “one-off” situation, appearing to have a built-in buffer that protects them against both ordinary and extraordinary events. Perhaps this is even you.
This sort of emotional resilience is often considered innate. But can it be taught?
Like going to work, death, dying and bereavement are things that at some point we all have to face. So it’s high time we started having the conversation about how the workplace responds to death and dying. This guest post by Jessie Williams, Executive Director of The Groundswell Project, might help to start the conversation in your organisation.
Flexible work is on the rise everywhere – particularly in Australia’s not-for-profit sector. But could working flexible hours have a dark side for employees?
In this guest post, Dr Heejung Chung outlines new research which finds that when it comes to work/life balance, having the freedom to work flexibly might not always be a positive force in the lives of employees.
From reducing stress to increasing staff engagement, the benefits of having pets in the workplace are widely acknowledged.
Now one charity is helping organisations to access the benefits of an office pet, while simultaneously giving unwanted pets a second chance at life.
What if we told you that even if you have a mental health policy at your organisation, it’s likely to be woefully outdated and could be costing you dearly in reduced staff well-being, engagement and performance?
It’s no secret: in the NFP sector, burnout happens.
But according to one NFP leader, there are some common myths about the sector that feed this culture of burnout.