Wearing two hats, one as a clinician and the other as an organisational consultant, I see strong parallels with workplace performance and high blood pressure. High blood pressure or “hypertension” is commonly picked up on a health check when someone is feeling well and showing no symptoms. In some cases, blood pressure can remain raised for years without being noticed while subtly affecting health. So, what has raised blood pressure got to do with workplace performance?
Many workplaces are striving to improve and sustain their overall performance and productivity. There can be a multitude of initiatives, policies and perks put in place with good intentions to support culture, leadership and employee wellbeing, but could you be missing cautionary signals beneath the surface? Much like raised blood pressure, some issues may not yet be producing obvious symptoms but can be developing beneath the surface and gradually affecting culture, wellbeing and performance.
Health checks are by nature put in place as an early detection system. Whether you access them through work, or perhaps if you are over 40 years you have had an NHS health check, the parameters they assess are based on evidence to get a sense of where your health is sound, what aspects are showing early warning signs of becoming an issue and where there is an undetected problem. We can consider health checking workplace performance and productivity in the same evidence-driven way. By understanding what workplace research tells us about the aspects that affect performance such as leadership effectiveness, purpose and psychological safety (amongst other topics), we can start to health check the right domains.
In my experience workplaces are often collecting a lot of employee data through pulse/wellbeing surveys or other measures but commonly do not ask their employees questions across some important domains that affect workplace performance. Additionally, questions may not be framed in a way that elicits what is truly meaningful or they skirt around the edges of an issue. If you don’t assess the right areas, how do you pick up early warning signs? How do you quickly find the issues wearing away that positive culture you’re working so hard to achieve? Another challenge I have seen is the differing view of leaders and employees on key issues affecting organisational outputs, for example the experience of psychological safety at work.
Health checking your workplace performance is a sensible measure, even if your perception is things are going well, much like attending your NHS or workplace health check is a wise move despite you feeling well. Identifying emerging problems earlier gives organisations an opportunity to act before they become more difficult and costly to address.
What can you do to identify early warning signs?
- Ensure you collect the right employee data that is evidence-driven (using workplace research) to assess for workplace performance.
- Anonymise sufficiently so people can be honest, there is little point collecting data where employees fear being honest or avoid providing answers.
- As a leader do consider that your experience of aspects affecting performance such as psychological safety and autonomy, may differ from employees.
With competing priorities and high pressure at work there can be a tendency to not notice those issues that are about to cause a future problem. Here I would urge you to find time to address these challenges, after all as with physical or mental health problems, prevention is better than cure.
To find out more about the Dr NY Performance Health Check, read more here. If you’d like to explore whether a Performance Health Check could be useful for your organisation, email me at nupur@dr-ny.co.uk or get in touch via the Dr NY website.