Harnessing your human capital

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February 2, 2023 - During the EHS Management Institute 2023, held last month in Nashville, TN, over 130 environmental, health, and safety executives came together to discuss, share, and develop best practices for solving the most pressing challenges companies face today. The challenge that garnered the highest attention was the topic of ‘burnout’, its negative effects on employee engagement, and subsequently, worker health and safety.

Current approaches are starting to plateau

What we discovered was that even the most successful organizations are racking their brains on the best ways to reduce worker burnout and retain staff. Many leaders reported seeing some initial improvements in employee engagement, which would then taper off with no real root cause. The following list includes some of the common tactics current executives are taking to address overall employee well-being, albeit with varying degrees of reported effectiveness:

Combating the stigma of mental health: through employee education programs, dispelling myths, and promoting open conversation while also creating a non-judgmental and supportive work environment by normalizing discussions of mental health.
Creating awareness surrounding worker burnout: identifying and addressing any contributing factors to burnout, such as excessive workload or unrealistic expectations.
Promoting work-life balance: implementing policies and programs such as flexible work arrangements, paid parental leave, and telecommuting to help employees better manage their personal and professional responsibilities.
Encouraging employee engagement and empowerment: involving employees in organizational decision-making processes and empowering them to take ownership of their work to promote a culture of accountability and ownership.
Providing training and development opportunities: supplying employees with training and development opportunities that help them to acquire new skills, knowledge, and experience.
Prioritizing employee well-being: recognizing that the well-being of employees is directly tied to their productivity, engagement, and job satisfaction. Implementing programs and policies that promote mental and physical health, such as offering health and wellness benefits, providing mental health support, and encouraging regular breaks and vacation time.
Driving a culture of vulnerability: encouraging leadership to model positive behavior and actively participate in mental health initiatives to foster a positive workplace culture. This includes promoting open communication, recognition of employees' efforts and contributions, and a supportive work environment.
Offering employee assistance programs (EAPs) and employee resource groups (ERGs): including stress-management classes as well as confidential and professional support for a range of personal and work-related issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression to support employees in managing their mental health.

However, despite these efforts to improve employee engagement, there is an overall consensus that employers are still missing something. Employees are still burnt out, attrition remains high, and team performance is not improving within their organizations regardless of how much time or money is being invested. Companies continue to struggle with the very real human-capital crisis that is happening now.

The missing piece

Instead of addressing organizational goals as workforce tasks to be checked off one by one, we used tools such as The Six Working Geniuses to help leadership assess, evaluate, and identify what their team members are naturally good at and most importantly, what they enjoy doing, and conversely, which tasks they do not.

The research asks, “if we identified people’s working geniuses and frustrations, would that have an impact on employee engagement and thus have a net-positive impact on health and safety too?”

Identifying individual skills enabled researchers to determine what best aligns with their individual strengths. They learned that they were dominated by a bunch of ”get‘r done” types.

This led to the realization that there was a major gap and clearly an overwhelming bias toward wanting to get things done versus capitalizing on strategic thinking, wonder, and solution design.

What could the implications of that be for worker health and safety?

Path forward: 6 new things to do right now

What can we do with this new analysis to improve engagement? In addition to the traditional approaches mentioned, here is a list our group created to combat burnout more effectively:

Discover your and your team’s “genius”: this can create the baseline for awareness and springboard you toward additional improvements.
Optimize your meetings: stop bringing everyone to every meeting! Bring the people with the right genius for the right meeting.
Resource your projects: use the individual working geniuses to determine which projects will fill up (or drain) the employee.
Hire your people: the big one! Don’t just interview for the job title, interview for the working genius to see if there is a fit.
Reorganize your structure: do you have the right geniuses in the right roles? It may be time to re-examine the organizational structure through a new lens.
Plan your safety: do you have the right blend of genius to assess all the hazards, or are you top heavy in one or more area?

As one executive in the room said, “life is too short to be disengaged.” Combatting worker burnout requires a complete organizational mind shift. Rethinking the overall approach to worker health and safety from what services you provide your employees to filtering your employees into roles that will inspire and enhance their work experience can mean the difference between a completely disengaged and overworked team and an innovative and fully connected working group.

Read BSI’s continuing HSW series, including Surviving to Thriving: Overcoming Toxic Workplace Culture, Surviving To Thriving: Foundational Steps to Support a Thriving Business, and Surviving to Thriving: Tackling Workforce Mental Health and Well-Being, as our experts address the future of worker well-being and ways to enhance organizational value. Follow along with these and other EHS topics that should be at the top of your list at BSI’s Experts Corner.