̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Thomas Roulet

Moving our bodies - and mindsets

skbf2 — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 12:44:51 +0000

Moving your body and mind can help promote mental wellbeing in the workplace, say Cambridge researchers.

Remote working is a ‘mixed bag’ for employee wellbeing and productivity, study finds

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:22:33 +0000

̽��ֱ��shift to remote working for many office-based workers at the start of the pandemic initially led to an increase in productivity, especially by reducing commute times, but a new large-scale study has outlined the many ways in which remote working has affected wellbeing and productivity over the past two years, both positively and negatively.

One of the big changes for remote workers was the number and quality of meetings. As outlined in a new article in MIT Sloan Management Review, the study from Cambridge Judge Business School and the Vitality Research Institute, part of the wellness and financial services group Vitality, found that the average number of meetings increased by 7.4% from June 2020 to December 2021.

̽��ֱ��study, based on more than 1,000 Vitality employees, also found that people in most departments spent more hours in low-quality meetings – defined as meetings in which participants multitask, are double-booked into competing meetings or tasks, or are accompanied by another person with a similar role.

“Low-quality meetings often translate into less productivity and high levels of multitasking can increase stress,” said study co-author Thomas Roulet from Cambridge Judge Business School.

̽��ֱ��study, which looked at employees from four Vitality locations in the UK and across all business units, is based on automated data collection using Microsoft Workplace Analytics complemented by weekly surveys.

̽��ֱ��authors focused on five core workplace behaviours that have the most significant impact on a range of wellbeing and work outcomes: collaboration hours (meetings, calls, dealing with emails); low-quality meeting hours; multitasking hours during meetings (including sending emails); ‘focus’ hours (blocks of at least two hours with no meetings); and workweek span (number of hours worked per week).

Work capacity was captured based on four factors: life and work satisfaction, anxiety and stress levels, work energy, and work-life balance.

̽��ֱ��relationships emerging from the data are clear: employees were working longer (a higher workweek span), spent time in more low-quality meetings, and had higher levels of multitasking, all of which are associated with worse outcomes, including a decline in work-life balance and quality of work.

More after-hours work predominantly affects one’s sense of work engagement but has no real impact on work productivity and quality. Increased focus hours affect work outcomes but not work engagement.

̽��ֱ��authors conclude that the shift over the past two years toward remote or hybrid working has improved wellbeing for some workers but not others, so they caution against a ‘blanket approach’ to workplace rules such as requiring employees to come into the office for a set number of days or under specific conditions.

̽��ֱ��research found, for example, that increasing ‘focus’ hours was beneficial to senior employees who may need to concentrate on more complex tasks, but it decreased well-being for junior employees who want more social interactions rather than working in isolation from their team.

̽��ֱ��article in MIT Sloan Management Review – entitled “How Shifts in Remote Behavior Affect Employee Well-being" – is co-authored by Shaun Subel, Director at the Vitality Research Institute; Martin Stepanek, Lead Researcher at the Vitality Research Institute; and Thomas Roulet, Associate Professor in Organisational Strategy at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Adapted from a story published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Adapting remote and hybrid work policies to employees’ specific work-life situations can result in increased well-being and productivity, but many employees are stuck in an increasing number of low-quality meetings when working remotely, according to a new study.

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Opinion: Coronavirus: five ways to be a better manager when working from home

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 14:21:22 +0000

It is essential that managers are attuned to the various personal needs of their colleagues at this time. ̽��ֱ��boundaries between work and personal life erode when we work from home and everyone will experience this situation in a different way, depending on their family situation, their dependants and the various dimensions of their personalities.

This requires managers to put themselves in the shoes of their colleagues and take their perspective. There is a large amount of research into this idea of taking another person’s perspective, as this approach has found to have a range of positive consequences – in particular bringing people closer. Fundamentally it requires us all to be our most compassionate and caring selves. Here are five tips to help at this fraught time.

1. Understand the specifics of personal situations

For those who have no children or dependants to take care of, it might be easy to imagine coronavirus as something that has significantly cleared our agenda. Some may believe they are more focused working from home, without the usual office distractions.

But the reality for many will involve overseeing care for children and even home learning following the closure of their schools. This will be a daunting task. Others may also be stressed about loved ones they are separated from and who might be at high risk of suffering from the current pandemic.

2. Adapt work expectations

̽��ֱ��abrupt shift in normal procedures requires managers to adapt their expectations of their workers, who may be less productive or finding it hard to focus. Managers should concentrate on listening more, given the lack of visible office signals, and adopt a softer management style that enables workers to explain their particular constraints and methods for adjusting to them.

It’s also important to remember that people might not be forthcoming on how the current turmoil is affecting their mental health. Managers need to be attuned to this so that organisations can offer support through their human resources departments or other channels.

3. Maintain contact and make it a routine

Constant communication channels need to be maintained and reinforced. Emails simply won’t replace the small talk and mundane workplace interactions that create a positive and friendly culture that enables organisations to move forward on work-related tasks.

One way to maintain contact and conviviality is to schedule regular video conferencing in which five minutes are allocated to each team member to share their feelings and experiences. Virtual coffee breaks planned at the same time every day can also do the trick, as they help recreate as much as possible a shared community experience. This will enable managers to gain a better perspective of how everyone is doing, because impressions and emotions are more likely to be shared in interpersonal and group communications.

4. Realise the loss of invisible social cues

We all communicate and interact through gestures and body language. This applies in the workplace as much as anywhere. When managing others, we do not even realise that our physical expression conveys almost as much as what we have to say.

In the current situation, most of these cues are now invisible. And behind the screen of a video conference many of the bodily signs we traditionally rely on will be lost. Managers must therefore consider how their messages are perceived and taken on board.

5. Make things even clearer

Managers need to be extra careful about what they intend to communicate, and be more explicit about their objectives, expectations and plans. Emails are more likely to be wrongly interpreted than in-person conversation, so managers should proofread their communications even more carefully – for tone as well as content. Even if you’ve worked alongside your colleagues for many years prior to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important to realise that they cannot read your mind.

This crisis will definitely change the way we manage and interact at work, whether this is through screens or physically. Embracing the idea of perspective taking is essential for managers to understand the particular situations and constraints of their workers, and provide the necessary support.

Ultimately, this shift in leadership expectations, more open channels of communication, and new routines will enable organisations to function in a human way, despite the forced social isolation.

This article by Dr Thomas Roulet is republished from ̽��ֱ��Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

How you can support Cambridge's COVID-19 research effort

Donate to support COVID-19 research at Cambridge

Everyone is adjusting to life during the coronavirus pandemic. For many, working from home is the new normal and poses all sorts of new challenges. Anyone in a position of management has, overnight, lost many of the tangible aspects of doing their job – particularly the non-verbal aspects of communication and how we interact in space, in person. Here, Dr Thomas Roulet from Cambridge Judge Business School offers some advice for managers as we all adjust to new ways of working.

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Mentoring can reduce anxiety, study finds

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 09:36:25 +0000

̽��ֱ��mentoring of junior colleagues can reduce anxiety and improve the mental health of the mentors themselves in high-pressure occupations, concludes a new study co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School involving an English police force.

While previous research had indicated that the anxiety of mentees can be reduced through the guidance of more senior mentors, the new study finds that imparting knowledge and experience can also help mentors by making their jobs more rewarding.

“We found that mentoring relationships provide a unique context for mentors to discuss and normalise their concerns, to share ideas for managing anxieties, and to find more meaning in their work,” concludes the study, published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior.

“Mentoring relationships appeared to provide an organisational mechanism to prompt supervisor and colleague interactions, which in turn facilitated a reduction in the mentors’ anxiety.”

In England alone, mental illness accounts for annual expenditure on healthcare of £14 billion and a reduction in gross domestic product of £52 billion owing to people unable to work to their full capacity.

Policing was chosen as an appropriate setting to study how mentoring can reduce anxiety in occupations that play important social roles, including the medical profession and the military – roles that require mental strength in challenging situations coupled with political pressure to become more efficient. ̽��ֱ��study follows a mentoring programme that was rolled out at one of 43 territory-based police forces in England and Wales since 2013.

Despite the pressures of their roles – including threats, abuse, snap decisions and the risk of death – police officers tend not to seek support from other officers, including more senior colleagues, to avoid “negative stigma” associated with mental health disorders. Mentoring can help fill this void, the study says.

“ ̽��ֱ��study suggests that a relatively inexpensive practice such as mentoring can help reduce anxiety among both senior and junior staff, and this could help organisations address the serious and costly workplace issues of anxiety and mental health,” says study co-author Dr Thomas Roulet, ̽��ֱ�� Senior Lecturer in Organisation Theory at Cambridge Judge Business School. “While the study focused on high-stress roles in the public eye, we believe that the findings may also apply to other occupations that also have anxiety-provoking pressures.”

̽��ֱ��study is co-authored by Dr Michael Gill of Said Business School at Oxford ̽��ֱ�� and Chief Inspector Stephen Kerridge of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

Excerpts of interviews with mentors and mentees indicated that it was beneficial for people in such busy and often frantic jobs as policing to have an opportunity to be “listened to” and to take note of the fact that “we’ve all gone through” certain work experiences.

“Mentoring provided reassurance to the mentors by illuminating how other, often junior officers also experience anxiety thereby normalising their own experiences,” the study says. “By acknowledging that anxieties are common, both the mentees and mentors in this study appeared to be more comfortable discussing such issues and therefore in developing different coping mechanisms.”

Reference:
Michael J. Gill et al. 'Mentoring for mental health: A mixed-method study of the benefits of formal mentoring programmes in the English police force.' Journal Of Vocational Behavior (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2018.08.005

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Mentoring of junior colleagues can reduce anxiety and improve the mental health of the mentors themselves, finds a new study.

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