Warning: This article contains content that may be distressing to some readers. For those who need immediate support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Australians are reeling after two attacks in Sydney’s southern and eastern suburbs last week, which have claimed the lives of six people and injured several others.

“Our thoughts and condolences are with the families, friends and colleagues of the victims,” says AHRI’s CEO, Sarah McCann Bartlett. 

Dr Zena Burgess, CEO of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and organisational psychologist says the effects of the attacks may be far-reaching.

“For the friends and families of the victims and those who bore witness to the attacks, the mental health impacts could stick with them for life.”

“We also need to consider the impacts these tragedies could have on the broader community. Many people will be distressed by these events and will talk about them in the workplace. They might speculate about motives or share concerns regarding further attacks,” says Dr Burgess.

“It’s possible we could see increases in emotional distress, such as anger, sorrow, fear and confusion. And, for some people, old trauma could possibly be reactivated.”

This is why, following any traumatic event, it’s important for employers to have robust processes in place to reduce distress and respond to those whose trauma may be triggered.

Supporting employees following traumatic events 

Most organisations will incorporate a response to a dangerous or traumatic event in the workplace into their crisis management or business continuity plan. This should guide them during and immediately after the event.

However, these plans sometimes omit support for employees who may be affected by an incident that occurred outside the workplace. In this instance, it’s advisable to assess who in your organisation might be impacted.

“It’s very important that the reality [of the situation] is acknowledged and the way people feel is heard,” says Dr Cathy Kezelman AM, medical practitioner and President and Executive Director at Blue Knot Foundation, an organisation that supports people to recover from complex trauma.

“Employees’ response to situations like this will also be dependent on their own lived experiences, including whether they have prior histories of trauma. So there’s a holistic response to consider as well as an individual response.”

This trauma can be cumulative, she adds, noting that the past few years have exposed people to an array of distressing situations.

“On top of [the recent attacks], we have a community that has been shaken by things like COVID and the current global [geopolitical] situation. There’s a sense of this pervasive threat throughout the entire community, so each thing that happens needs to be understood in that context.”

“When you’ve experienced repeated trauma, or repeated traumatic stress, that response is often heightened. So people will tend to be hyper vigilant, easily startled, anxious or sometimes they’ll shut down.” – Dr Cathy Kezelman AM, President and Executive Director, Blue Knot Foundation.

Following an organisation’s immediate response, the employer would then decide whether a company-wide message outlining where employees can go for support would be useful, including details such as how to contact their employee assistance provider (EAP). It’s also important to assess who may need more intensive mental health support and help connect them with a mental health expert.

When discussing at a team level, HR professionals should encourage managers to talk to their teams with empathy and factual information. 

“We don’t want to sugarcoat any of the details or minimise any of the distress people are experiencing, but we also don’t want to perpetuate any misinformation or stereotypes that might be circulating in the news or on social media,” says Dr Burgess.

When addressing your teams, consider the following:

• Create space for dialogue and grief – While some traumatic incidents might call for a company meeting or an all-company email, you may also need to allow for deeper discussions to take place.Employees may benefit from peer-to-peer debriefs or one-on-one conversations with their managers to unpack their fears, concerns and complex feelings.
• Don’t try and fix things – “Ask people: ‘What do you need right now’ and then just see what that reveals,” says Dr Kezelman. “Don’t jump in and say, ‘Do X,Y,Z’ or ‘That happened to me too,’ and take over the story. Just be there in an accepting, compassionate and empathetic way. Don’t try and solve it; don’t prod people. Just gently encourage people to get support and offer the support you have available in your organisation.”
• Promote self-care behaviours – In the aftermath of a traumatic event, it’s important to prioritise recuperating behaviours for any employees who are directly impacted. Create opportunities to bring teams together and create moments of authentic connection. Showing employees that they’re not alone and creating a sense of unity within your organisation can help to build resilience.
• Understand your limits – In the initial wake of a tragedy, ensuring employees have access to mental health resources and safe spaces to discuss their feelings is an important first step, but sometimes longer-term support is required.
  
  “The impacts of a traumatic event often don’t surface in people for weeks, months or sometimes even years,” says Dr Burgess. “If you discover this, consider [referring employees to] a mental health expert who can design a long-term support plan.”

Signs to look out for

Following a traumatic event, Dr Kezelman says employers should be on the lookout for out-of-character behaviour in employees which could signal that they are experiencing trauma or distress.

“People who’ve experienced trauma have a biological survival response – fight, flight and freeze. When you’ve experienced repeated trauma, or repeated traumatic stress, that response is often heightened. So people will tend to be hyper vigilant, easily startled, anxious or sometimes they’ll shut down.

“They might usually be a very conscientious worker who turns up on time and is reasonable in their interactions, but then they might become reactive or aggressive. It’s not that they’re behaving badly, it’s that their behaviour is telling us something.”

Dr Burgess says some changes to look out for include:

• A sudden drop in quality of work
• Becoming withdrawn from social situations 
• Sudden fatigue or low energy
• Difficulty making decisions
• Becoming uncharacteristically agitated or upset at work
• Changes to their appearance (e.g. looking dishevelled) 

“An increase in any of these behaviours could signal mental ill-health, so it’s important that managers are given the tools and resources they need to help identify risk areas.” 

Take a trauma-informed approach to HR

In the coming weeks and months, taking a trauma-informed approach to HR will be important, says Dr Burgess.

“A trauma-informed approach requires managers, leaders and HR professionals to remain aware of the many factors that could trigger an emotionally distressing situation for an employee, such as exposing them to distressing imagery or news, perpetuating stereotypes about mental ill-health or forcing them to come into the office if they’re feeling distressed about being out in public.

“It’s about doing everything within your control to minimise potential harm.”  

Dr Kezelman adds that employers need to understand that trauma will more than likely “overwhelm people’s capacity to cope”.

“Being trauma-informed also means being open, receptive and understanding that trauma is about feeling unsafe. So, [employers] can think about how to build a sense of psychical and emotional safety at work.

“Also, often people who’ve been traumatised have also been disempowered, so think about how  you work with people rather than impose things on them. How are people given choice in what happens to them?”

In a bigger-picture sense, it’s also important to make sure your culture is set up to enable a trauma-informed approach, she says.

“Is it a culture where people feel safe to say things like, ‘This is what I need’ or ‘I feel unsafe or scared?’ Or is it a culture where there might be fear of showing vulnerability or weakness?

“It’s all very good to sprout certain [values] and principles, but how do you marry that with the system of work? What is the culture of transparency? How well does the organisation communicate? How trustworthy is the organisation? Is feedback accepted well? And is it realised?'”

These are all important questions to consider because you can have all the right policies, but if what’s written in them isn’t lived out, you’re not operating in a trauma-informed way, she says.

AHRI members can log into AHRI:ASSIST to get a guideline on developing a trauma-informed HR Practice. You will find this resource in the health, safety and wellbeing resource page.

Ongoing mental health support

HR professionals can’t be expected to be mental health experts. It’s important to bring in the right expert support if employees are struggling in the wake of a traumatic event.

“Avoid putting pressure on leaders, HR and middle managers to ‘solve’ people’s distress around this tragedy,” says Dr Burgess. “For many, the impacts will be complex. As workplace leaders, your responsibility is to direct employees to adequate professional support.”

McCann Bartlett adds that it’s important for HR to take care of themselves.

“HR professionals are often lent on for support, but remember to take care of your own mental health too. Consider giving yourself a break from consuming distressing news content, for example, and lean on your HR community for support.”

AHRI has a range of free resources available to its members via AHRI:ASSIST. Log into your member portal for the following resources:

• Managing Grief and Loss in the workplace
• Having effective wellbeing conversations

The post How to support employees following a traumatic event appeared first on HRM online.

Editor’s note (05.04.24): This legislation is set to come into effect on 26 August 2024 for businesses with more than 15 employees. Small businesses (with less than 15 employees) will have until August 2025 until changes come into effect.

The right to work from home and the right to disconnect from work are both currently  being considered as additional new rights for employees in Australia.

While there are a number of steps that need to occur before these rights become legal entitlements, the issues are being debated. It’s important for employers, HR professionals and people managers to understand how these changes might impact the way they run their businesses.

Currently, there are no rights either in modern awards or legislation that give working from home entitlements or the right to disconnect. Similar provisions, which were temporarily included in the Clerks – Private Sector Award 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, were removed after working from home directives were lifted.

The Fair Work Commission (FWC), in conducting its four yearly modern award review, is considering whether the right to work from home and the right to disconnect should be included in modern awards. They are currently seeking submissions on the potential inclusion of both rights, which are expected to be heavily supported by unions and workers.       

The next phase of the Closing Loopholes Bill

At the date of writing, the Government has secured support to pass the Closing Loopholes No 2 Bill through the Senate by reaching agreement with the Greens and a number of independent senators. The agreed version of the Bill includes the right to disconnect.      

The push to have employee protections to work from home will unsurprisingly meet opposition from some employers, particularly considering the recent objective of some to mandate at least part-time office attendance.

This has resulted in recent examples where enterprise agreements have been unable to be agreed upon without stipulated working from home provisions.

It is likewise anticipated that creating a legal right to disconnect will be resisted by employer groups and deemed difficult to manage, monitor and enforce. This is especially true for organisations that have redesigned their work structures to be asynchronous.

However, research undertaken by the Greens also demonstrates that 56 enterprise agreements already include a right to disconnect, covering tens of thousands of employees. In Australia, it was first included within the Victoria Police Enterprise Agreement of 2019. Many of the provisions in these agreements typically come with extensive exceptions, allowing business operations to continue largely unaffected.

Read HRM’s case study outlining how Victoria Police introduced a right to disconnect in its EBA.

What might the right to disconnect look like?

The legislative right to ‘disconnect’ is proposed to cover all employees, not just those covered by modern awards.

At the time of writing, we understand that the proposed right as set out in the Closing Loopholes No 2 Bill that has passed the Senate, is a right for workers to disconnect from “unreasonable” out-of-hours contact from employers.       

Under the proposal, the FWC would be empowered to issue stop orders, similar to the stop bullying and stop sexual harassment orders. If the stop orders are breached, it is envisaged that civil remedies may be imposed. The Commission would have the power to determine what is “unreasonable” contact, taking into account a non-exhaustive list of factors such as: 

• the reason for the contact;
• the frequency and method of contact;
• remuneration;
• role and responsibilities; and
• the worker’s personal circumstances, which may include family responsibilities.

This change is purported to support a healthier work-life balance for employees. In fact, research from the Australian HR Institute, which surveyed over 600 senior HR professionals and senior decision makers, shows that almost two thirds of respondents think a right to disconnect would have a positive impact on workplace flexibility and 41 per cent already have some form of right to disconnect in place.

However, there are still plenty of points of clarity needed. For example, how this proposed change would interact with overtime and penalty rates is currently unclear.

Other considerations for HR and employers to keep in mind include:

• The practicalities of preventing contact with employees outside their working hours, especially for global businesses spanning multiple time zones, raises logistical and management considerations.
• An increase in employee claims if: the right is allegedly breached; or employees perceive unfavourable treatment, such as disparities in pay or promotions, compared to colleagues who remain connected outside standard working hours. This is also a consideration for employees who’d choose to work from home if that were to also become a legal right.
• Businesses relying on flexibility for connecting with employees outside regular work hours, particularly those with global operations, may experience disruptions to their operations.
• Employee morale may be affected if some exercise the right and others do not, leading to dissatisfaction within the workforce. This could result in a perception that some colleagues are not contributing, placing a heavier workload on those who choose to stay connected beyond regular hours.

 What might the right to WFH look like?

While working from home arrangements are not possible in all sectors and positions, if the right is included within modern awards, many employers may need to consider negotiating and entering into separate flexible working arrangements.

These may be similar to ‘time off in lieu’ agreements (being a written agreement which could be as simple as email correspondence confirming an employee’s entitlement to take time off from work in place of receiving overtime pay for additional overtime) or formal flexible work requests under the Fair Work Act.

Separate agreements may also need to consider what working from home means on an individual basis including by:

• Expanding the definition of ‘ordinary hours’ while working from home;
• Abandoning the requirement to agree on employee start and finish times or to agree to a specific range of times;
• Allowing for meal and rest breaks to suit personal circumstances; and
• Changing recording requirements in respect of timesheet reporting of hours worked.

Presently, the Fair Work Act only allows flexible working arrangements in certain circumstances such as pregnancy and/or parental requirements. The proposed inclusion of a right to work from home in modern awards would be additional to and broader than the current right, without being tied to a particular attribute or responsibility.

 Proactive steps for business to take

While the FWC considers the inclusion of these new rights in modern awards, there are proactive steps that employers, HR and people managers can take now. 

Consider:

Policies and processes

• Reviewing and assessing current policies and processes related to working from home requests, and for managing employees working from home.
• Consider conducting an audit on the potential impact of a right to disconnect. For example, if your organisation’s workers had the right to not respond to emails from 6pm to 8am, what impact might that have on operations?
• Examine practical measures that your organisation could take to prevent contact with employees outside their ordinary working hours if a right to disconnect was introduced.
• Consider what policies or procedures would need to be revised or introduced.
  
• Contemplate the right to disconnect provisions that would need to be introduced to employment agreements and enterprise agreements under negotiation.

Implementation 

• Consider establishing a system to monitor employees’ work activities outside the agreed-upon working hours.
• Actively encourage people leaders and managers to respect employees’ time away from work and employees’ out of work time.
• Provide training to managers to prevent any adverse action against employees who exercise the right to disconnect.
• From a wellness and work health and safety perspective, educate all employees about the right to disconnect and any applicable business initiatives, including promoting the wellness advantages of disconnecting from work.
• Implement internal processes for employees who choose to work outside agreed hours.
• Communicate to all employees, and across the business, the expectation that emails and tasks should be scheduled for delivery during agreed working hours.

Business implications

• Assess whether your organisation can comply with its obligations to employees should they request to work from home.
• Evaluate the impact that increased working from home might have on your business, culture and employee wellbeing, and, alternatively, what impact it would have to refuse working from home requests.
• Based on duties and responsibilities, consider what reasonable business grounds you have for refusing requests to work from home.

 What happens next?

The FWC is publishing a ‘work and care literature review’ on 8 March 2024. Submissions will be open to interested parties during consultations in March and April 2024.  

It is anticipated that the Closing Loopholes No 2 in its agreed form, including the right to disconnect, will pass the Senate. Once passed, it will proceed to Royal Assent, after which there will likely be a period of time before the right to disconnect takes effect.

Aaron Goonrey is a Partner and leads the Australian Employment & Rewards practice at Pinsent Masons, Emma Lutwyche is a Special Counsel and Jeremy Bilski is an Associate at Pinsent Masons. The advice in this article is general in nature and does not constitute formal legal advice.

Need help brushing up on HR laws and compliance? AHRI’s short course will give you an understanding of the key elements of legislation, regulation and practices HR needs to be across.

The post What could the ‘right to disconnect’ mean for your business? appeared first on HRM online.

Employee engagement levels are waning at the tail end of 2023, with new research from Gartner suggesting only 31 per cent of people are feeling energy, enthusiasm and engagement for their work at the moment.

While predictable end-of-year exhaustion is likely influencing these statistics, there are also potential structural issues to consider, says Neal Woolrich, Director of HR Advisory at Gartner.

He refers to three factors that are currently contributing to an “unsettled relationship between employers and employees” this year.

“One was the controversy around flexible work,” he says. “There’s a tension between employers and employees, especially employers who have brought people back to the office with mandates.”

There’s also a lot of anxiety around productivity, he adds.

“Organisations are worried that, because of other financial strains they’re [dealing with] – inflation, supply chain constraints and those sorts of things – they won’t meet their productivity targets. 

“Employees are also worried about their own performance. People are just tapping out – they don’t feel as though they can keep up any longer. They’ve already gone over capacity.”

The third factor, he says, pertains to growing mutual distrust between employees and employers. Both sides often feel as though the other isn’t meeting their end of the bargain.

“That mutual distrust is leading to a tense relationship that’s building up over time, and the net result is engagement challenges,” says Woolrich.

Read HRM’s article about how to manage an increasingly polarised workforce.

The research, which surveyed over 3500 employees globally, found that those who were feeling engaged contributed 15 per cent more to their organisations, and would offer 31 per cent more discretionary effort.

“If [employees are] not engaged, they’re less likely to be high performers and they’re less likely to be connected to their organisation’s culture. So if you’re trying to drive any initiatives around culture… and get people feeling emotionally inspired, it’s much harder,” says Woolrich.

Understand what employees actually want

If employees are feeling a lack of a meaningful connection to their work, it’s important to understand exactly what’s driving this. 

Woolrich says many employees feel like they’re “speaking into the void” when it comes to the support they need to do their jobs well. HR can act as an important bridge between employers and employees, coaching managers to design more engaging work experiences and encouraging them to collect diverse data on employee sentiment. 

For example, with the best intentions, a manager might assume an employee wants a development opportunity to re-engage them in their work. But if an employee is feeling exhausted at this time of the year, that opportunity might feel like more work for them.

In fact, Gartner’s research suggests it might be more effective to figure out how to remove friction points at work instead. In June 2023,Gartner found that 40 per cent of employees would prefer fixes to difficult processes over development opportunities. 

Those difficult processes – or friction points – often fall into one of four categories, says Woolrich. They are:

• Misaligned work design – Systems and processes aren’t up-to-date. People don’t know where to find support and resources when they need them. 
• Overwhelmed teams – Employees are stuck in the “noise” of work and don’t have a way to focus on what’s strategically important to them. 
• Trapped resources – An inability to move people or budgets around when circumstances change. 
• Rigid processes – A lack of ability to devolve decision-making to where it’s most appropriate.

“All these work barriers make it more difficult for people to get their job done; they build up like barnacles on a boat,” says Woolrich.

“The organisations we’ve seen over-perform in getting people more engaged are ones that have a strong focus on identifying work frictions and taking action on them.

“We found that people are willing to work hard, but they’re not willing to work hard on things that should be easier.”

A potential starting point to addressing these “barnacles” could be encouraging staff to keep a ‘friction log’ for a period of time then come together as an organisation to work through the most common challenges that emerge. For example, people might feel like you’re hosting too many meetings.

HR can also coach managers to better understand the things that dictate employees’ energy levels. This will look different to everyone, so AHRI has developed a helpful tool – the ‘energy pyramid’ (example below) – that helps employees prioritise the things that give them energy.

AHRI members can download a printable energy pyramid template and a checklist of questions for managers to ask their people in 1 on 1 meetings to assess energy levels. Log into your AHRI account, navigate to the ‘Recruitment and Retention’ section and you’ll find it under ‘templates’. Not yet an AHRI member? Learn more about the exclusive benefits you can recieve here.

Communicate the message differently

Gartner found six in 10 employees weren’t clear on what their organisations were doing to remedy employee engagement challenges.

Woolrich suggests this is because the language used in HR/management circles doesn’t always resonate with employees.

“I would [describe it] as a deal between employer and employees – a two-way bargain. That’s the kind of language I’ve seen work effectively in other organisations,” he says.

It’s also important to clearly communicate your efforts and journey with people.

“People are willing to work hard, but they’re not willing to work hard on things that should be easier.” – Neal Woolrich, Director, HR Advisory, Gartner

 He refers to the Australian Tax Office as an interesting case study.

“They plotted out what they’ve done in the years gone by, how they’ve responded to employee engagement survey feedback and the initiatives that have resulted. 

“[The roadmap also includes] what they are working on at the moment [and] what their focus is for the future. That encourages employees to participate in future engagement surveys because they know there’s a roadmap of progress [they can follow].”

Managers need employee engagement training

Employee engagement rates can be boosted by 51 per cent, according to Gartner, when managers are supported in making plans to execute engagement strategies.

However, after speaking with 144 Chief HR Officers, Gartner discovered that the majority of actions/behaviours that predict employee engagement rates sit with managers, but only 20 per cent of CHROs thought managers knew how to act on engagement feedback.

Woolrich says there are three common aspects that managers struggle with, which he encapsulates as skill, will and hill.

“The ‘hill’ is those organisational barriers (mentioned above). The ‘skill’ is HR business partners equipping managers with the support and training they need to understand how to engage their team. And then the ‘will’ is managers being brought into this and knowing that it’s important for themselves, their teams and the organisation.”

Looking at managers’ responsibilities from all three angles is important, says Woolrich, because he believes the job of the manager is “becoming unmanageable”.

“Managers’ roles and responsibilities have increased at twice the rate of individual contributors since the pandemic. They’re the ones who are copping most of the burden, and we [tend to] blame them – saying they need to do more. But it’s not all about the managers. It’s also about some of those organisational barriers that get in the way.”

Develop the necessary skills to tap into the full potential of team members with this short course on creating high-performance teams from AHRI.

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Australia is currently one of the most stressed-out countries in the world. Last year, 48 per cent of Australians reported high levels of stress at work, according to a report by Gallup. This makes them the second-most stressed workers globally (alongside New Zealand).

Some reports suggest the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) will exacerbate this issue by depersonalising the employee experience. 

However, rather than seeing AI as a threat to employee wellbeing, some are embracing it as an opportunity to provide more comprehensive wellbeing strategies. 

Chatbots as digital sounding boards

It might be easy to assume that most workers would prefer to discuss their wellbeing with a human rather than a machine. However, research shows employees have warmed to AI’s potential benefits for mental health. 

In a 2021 study by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence, 75 percent of employees said AI had helped their mental health at work. 

The top benefits cited were access to useful information, decreasing workloads and helping to prioritise tasks.

Even more intriguing was the finding that only 18 per cent of people would rather speak to humans than robots about their mental health. Respondents said robots provided a judgement-free zone, an unbiased sounding board and quick answers to their sensitive health-related questions.

To help employees access safe digital spaces, some organisations are turning to AI-powered chatbots that provide resources, coping strategies and referrals to mental health professionals. 

AI-powered wellbeing platforms can offer wellbeing check-ins, personalised advice and a neutral space to discuss problems, and act as a 24-hour support to be utilised as a triage system ahead of expert human intervention. 

“If we’re tracking our steps and all sorts of other things, why not track how our body is handling stress at any given time?” – Meg Price, co-founder, Noa Coach

This becomes especially useful in rural and remote areas where there is a lack of qualified mental health professionals. For example, in outback South Australia, there are approximately 19 psychologists for every 100,000 people, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

“If I’m struggling, I want in-the-moment help because I want to chat to someone and sort myself out,” says Meg Price, co-founder of Noa Coach. “But I also want something that helps me build healthy habits and wellbeing long-term.”

Although AI can be an invaluable tool for employees who are reluctant to discuss their emotions with a human, Price stresses that it should complement, not replace, human support. 

“It’s not one or the other,” she says. “It should be a helpful tool that allows you to find the words to speak to the people you need to speak to.”

If users score poorly on wellbeing checks or their issues persist, AI-powered apps should direct them to speak to their manager or a mental health professional, she says. 

Spotting the early warning signs of low employee wellbeing

A common challenge for HR is identifying precursors to wellbeing issues before they escalate into visible struggle. 

“While some progress has been made in developing prevention programs, prevention crucially relies on the reliable detection of specific individuals at risk for depression in the near future, which is currently not possible,” says Dr Eiko Fried, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

To explore how AI could fill this gap, Fried is leading a five-year project called WARN-D, focused on predicting depression using statistics and machine learning. 

His team is following about 2000 students in the Netherlands over two years, using their smartwatches and phones to gather moment-by-moment data. They hope that, after the project, they’ll be able to reliably predict when depression might occur. 

“The smartwatches capture data including activity, stress and sleep quality/duration, all of which relate to depression,” says Fried.

“We believe that if you truly want to understand a complex, dynamic phenotype like depression, you have to study it as it unfolds over time, in all its complexity.”

Harnessing the power of natural language processing

Some employers might feel uncomfortable collecting personal information from employees, and that’s valid. But Price notes that this data collection is becoming common.

“If we’re tracking our steps and all sorts of other things, why not track how our body is handling stress at any given time?”

AI can also be effective in identifying the early warning signs of stress through natural language processing (NLP). This branch of AI enables computers to comprehend, analyse and synthesise human language.

“We believe that if you truly want to understand a complex, dynamic phenotype like depression, you have to study it as it unfolds over time, in all its complexity.” – Dr Eiko Fried, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Leiden University

The NSW Government’s Centre for Work Health and Safety has used NLP to bolster its wellbeing strategy, partnering with software company Pioneera and its AI bot, Coach Indie. 

“The bot connects to office-based communication platforms to detect early signs of chronic stress and burnout in the workplace,” says a spokesperson for The Centre for Work Health and Safety. “Coach Indie analyses written text, word usage, sentence length and use of emojis and emoticons. If early stages of chronic stress are identified, the bot suggests research-backed [actions] such as breathing exercises.”

Pioneera bases its operations on the CSIRO’s eight AI ethics principles to ensure its use is safe, consensual and reliable. 

Tackling AI bias in employee wellbeing interventions

AI wellbeing tech is commonly designed to be personalised, allowing for tailored support. 

One of the concerns with personalised AI interventions is the potential for bias to creep in. For example, AI software might be trained on data that underrepresents or discriminates against a particular group.

“This requires considerable caution moving forward,” says Fried. 

“However, the statistical models themselves are not to blame for this. It’s the input and how we train them.”

To help overcome these concerns, it’s important to gather input from a diverse range of sources, says Price.

“I was in India recently and I thought, ‘How is AI going to help these people in poor areas of India when it’s been developed in a Western country by people who have no idea of the issues they’re facing?’ So the more people we can bring to that conversation about development, the better.”

As AI continues to find its place in the intricate tapestry of the employee experience, HR has a golden opportunity to lead organisations into a new era of wellbeing support where humans and AI converge to nurture, uplift and inspire the workforce. 

This article first appeared in the October/November 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

Improve your ability to recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions and learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace with AHRI’s short course.

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New research has revealed concerning statistics about mental health in the workplace.

Seven in 10 Australians wouldn’t tell their employer about their mental health condition, according to the study, which was conducted by Way Ahead, the Mental Health Association NSW. It surveyed 2000 people from across Australia – half with experience of mental health issues and half without. 

Alarmingly, only seven per cent said that workplaces always provided a safe environment for employees to ask for help. Further, 64 per cent said they would hide a mental health challenge for fear of discrimination and 38 per cent reported having been treated unfairly after disclosing a condition. 

Dr Zena Burgess, CEO, Australian Psychological Society, says these statistics are “cause for alarm”.

“We all have mental health challenges. It’s something that constantly ebbs and flows. So, if people feel it’s something they need to mask at work, not only does that have personal implications for them, but it also leads to bottom-line impacts and could mar your company’s productivity agenda,” says Dr Burgess.

The report also found that 15 per cent of people had never sought help from an employer and 18 per cent had waited three years before doing so.  

Creating a psychologically safe environment where people feel they can disclose their mental health challenges is not only the right thing to do in order to support your teams, it’s also vital in meeting your psychosocial safety obligations as an employer.

So what are some common mistakes that employers are making? And how can HR help them to do better?

Creating the wrong environment

Employers’ mistakes usually fall into two categories, says Dr Amanda Ferguson, organisational psychologist and host of the Psych for Life podcast.

The first is creating an environment conducive to poor mental health, where workers feel unheard, overloaded and unsafe to speak up. This may exacerbate existing mental health challenges, or even provoke them.

“Many workplaces have a culture of burn and churn,” says Dr Ferguson. “Employers seem to think, ‘We’ll just replace our employees once they’re worn out.’”

Not all overloading of workers is intentional. For example, an employer might offer extra responsibilities, thinking it would be a great opportunity for someone without realising they’re overwhelming the employee.

Or, the employer might not supply the right resources, says Dr Ferguson.

 “The company might be saying, ‘We’re giving you all the tea and coffee you can drink,’ but the staff are saying, ‘We need a better accounting system, or more ergonomic chairs.’” 

“Too often I see managers hide behind HR thereby letting down the organisation and their employees, and missing an opportunity for development and learning themselves.” – Dr  Zena Burgess, CEO, Australian Psychological Society

The problem is compounded when employees don’t feel safe to speak up – whether they’re overloaded, or simply want to exercise a right, such as getting time in lieu for having worked overtime, Dr Ferguson adds.

In some cases, this lack of safety may be the direct result of condemnation, such as a manager speaking negatively about an employee who refuses extra responsibilities. 

In others, it may be a perception based on a manager’s conduct. 

“The boss might be telling their team, ‘Yes, of course, you can leave on time,’ but not modelling that behaviour,” says Dr Ferguson. 

Failing to respond appropriately to mental health issues

The second mistake employers make is failing to act appropriately when issues arise. 

One of the most common is insufficient training of managers, says Dr Ferguson. Consequently, managers might be, at best, ill-equipped to detect and respond to mental health issues, and, at worst, critical of staff experiencing challenges. 

“Team leaders and managers themselves need to upskill to have personally confronting conversations about mental health,” says Dr Burgess. “It’s not the sole role of HR, but HR can be the coaches. Too often I see managers hide behind HR thereby letting down the organisation and their employees, and missing an opportunity for development and learning themselves.”

Dr Ferguson says other mistakes include failing to see mental health as an aspect of diversity, and promoting resilience without providing enough resources to “join the dots”, such as showing how their job matters.

“Workers need resources, not just endlessly being told to ‘be resilient’,” says Dr Ferguson. 

“Resilience requires self-regulation, for example, understanding, ‘I need my time in lieu’; social competence, as in, ‘I’m socially competent enough to tell my boss this is what I need’; and psychological safety, which enables an employee to speak up.” 

Coaching employers to respond differently

The first step is “owning that there’s a culture problem,” says Dr Ferguson. 

“Change must be top-down and bottom-up.”

After that, companies should prioritise training managers to take a “nuanced” approach, which means treating each employee according to their unique needs as much as possible. A good place to start could be developing a personal situation plan (read more about that here).

Managers should learn to detect issues early, have preventative conversations, and give employees the time and resources required to recover. 

“For example, in a high-risk workplace, a good manager would be proactive, preventative and psychosocially aware enough to say to an employee, ‘It looks like you’re burning out. Do you need some time off?’

“Rather than leaving the employee to speak up or merely asking, ‘Is there a problem?’, they’d  be sending a message to the whole organisation that we know burn out is dangerous, so we’re acting on it, and there’s no stigma.”

What about the EAP?

Making a referral to the company’s employee assistance program (EAP) is a good first step.

“But that can’t be where employers stop,” says Dr Burgess.

“I would encourage leaders to think about different ways they can model vulnerability, to demonstrate to their people that they’re willing to walk the talk when it comes to prioritising and de-stigmatising mental health at work. “

“This might look like hosting wellbeing sessions where leaders open up about what they do to proactively look after their mental health or ensuring that ‘mental health days’ are normalised by including it as a key feature in employment materials, such as onboarding documents, job advertisements and as an agenda item in one-on-one meetings with managers.

It’s also important that employees seek professional medical help, when needed. 

“I would always recommend the guidance of a trained psychologist for complex mental health matters,” says Dr Burgess.

“All of these measures can go a long way in helping an employee to feel safe and comfortable to disclose mental rough patches with their employer.”

Improve your ability to recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions and learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace with AHRI’s short course.

The post Most Australians would hide a mental health condition from their employer appeared first on HRM online.

Whether directly or indirectly, mental health is an issue that affects us all. 

It’s estimated that over two in five Australians aged 16-85, or 8.6 million people, experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life, with one in five (or 4.2 million) having experienced a mental disorder in the last 12 months. Mental ill-health costs the Australian economy tens of billions every year.

Each year, R U OK? Day reminds us that a conversation can change a life, and every day is the right day to check in on your peers, colleagues and loved ones who might be struggling with their mental health. 

With the introduction of a new Code of Practice to manage psychosocial risks at work earlier this year, it’s all the more crucial that mental health ranks highly on leaders’ priority lists. High levels of psychosocial safety at work make it easier for employees to speak up and ask for help when they need it, and to check in on others who don’t seem themselves.

If you’re looking for ways to boost the psychosocial safety of your workplace, use the infographic below to guide you through common hazards, management strategies and tips to assess your people’s safety.

How to design a psychologically safe workplace

Download the infographic here.

Improve your ability to recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions and learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace with AHRI’s short course.

The post Infographic: Building a psychosocially safe workplace appeared first on HRM online.

It’s that time of year where employees’ motivation levels might start to dip. The inspiration and energy of a new year has well and truly worn off, and the end of the year is not yet in sight.

Deadlines pile up, expectations increase and motivation levels wane.

On top of this, we know exhaustion levels are high right now, likely due to the tail end of three years of hyperproductivity, economic uncertainty and new ways of working. 

Researchers from the University of Melbourne have found that of employees aged 25-55, 50 per cent are reporting feeling exhausted at work and 40 per cent feel less motivated than they did before the pandemic.

HR professionals aren’t immune from this. An informal poll of 323 members of AHRI’s LinkedIn Lounge showed that 68 per cent said they felt more exhausted now than this time last year.

The combination of low energy and low motivation leads to a cocktail of potential risks: work quality can slip, out-of-character behaviours can emerge and retention efforts can be compromised.

So, what can HR and employers do to boost engagement levels in employees and themselves?

“Humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. When these needs are satisfied in the workplace, employees perform better, are more satisfied and stay with the organisation longer,” says Justin Weinhardt, Associate Professor of Business, Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources at the University of Calgary.

The trick becomes how to effectively infuse these three things into the work day.

1. It’s all in the planning

Think about how you plan your average work day. You might be someone who makes a long to-do list or blocks out time in your calendar for specific tasks. This can help to offer a sense of control over your day, but what happens when unexpected things arise, as they always do?

You might get called into an unexpected meeting, or perhaps a co-worker is distracting you from getting into a deep flow of work. Whatever the reason, ending your day without making a dent in your pre-planned tasks can be demotivating.

“Why do our plans fall apart? Is it because we are unmotivated? I don’t think that’s correct. At the start of the day, we are optimistic and we perceive an empty day full of possibilities of all that we can get done.”

This leads us to become “optimistically biased” about what we can realistically achieve in a day, he says.

“We forget to account for our children calling us, a colleague stopping in for a chat, or an unexpected meeting.”

“Create a plan that will make you motivated to get something done when your plans have been thwarted.”  – Justin Weinhardt, Associate Professor of Business, Organisational Behaviour and HR, University of Calgary

Weinhardt, along with experts in the UK and USA, conducted research which found that when people engage in ‘contingent planning’ – that is, considering and planning for potential disruptions they may face in the day – it helped to increase their engagement levels, as they set more achievable goals for themselves.

“What we found is that when workplace interruptions were high, employees who planned for how they would finish their work after they got interrupted performed better than when they just did typical time management planning.”

It’s about structuring how you’ll ‘bounce back’ from a distraction and preventing ‘attention residue’ from taking hold.

“For example, [consider] an HR manager [who] must submit their recommended changes to the company’s performance management system by the end of the week,” says Weinhardt. “Maybe that HR manager creates a contingency plan that [says] if they get interrupted too much, they are going to leave the office early to finish their report in a coffee shop or at home. 

“Maybe they work on that project at home and then come to the office. The HR manager could also ‘schedule’ a meeting with themselves for an hour to get uninterrupted time to work on the project. The central idea is to create a plan that will make you motivated to get something done when your plans have been thwarted.”

2. Redefine accomplishments

Each day, we’re faced with too many tasks and not enough time to complete them, says Weinhardt. This means, along with contingent planning, we need to redefine accomplishments and create cultures that set people up for a productive day.

“There is an obsession with busyness in corporate culture, because it’s easier to verify if people are busy rather than if people are productive. Just talk to anyone at work and they will tell you how busy they are. However, ask [them], “Do you feel accomplished today?” and people look at you strangely.”

Read HRM’s article on why leaders need to stop talking about how busy they are.

In order to feel as if we’re making a positive impact, we feel the need to demonstrate our competence through the volume of work we churn through, he says.

“We feel as if we need to accomplish ten tasks to feel accomplished, but we can rarely get ten important things done in a day.”

Even when we know this type of busywork will impact our productivity, we can find it hard to stop. For many of us, our brains are stuck in hyperproductivity mode and we find it hard to slow down – or stop completely.

Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, conducted an interesting experiment which demonstrated how much humans struggle doing nothing.

Participants were placed in sparse rooms and asked to leave all their belongings outside, including their phones, and to sit in silence and think for 15 minutes. They were told they could press a button, which would administer a small electric shock, if they wanted to. Surprisingly, 67 per cent of men and 25 per cent of women opted to press the button, just for something to do.

The takeaway? Our always-on brains have been conditioned to keep us constantly working.

“What we need is to actually follow through and complete a task where we use our skills, creativity and knowledge,” says Weinhardt. “This is what makes us productive. Running around from meeting to meeting or quickly dipping in and out of tasks does not give us that sense of accomplishment.”

Weinhardt suggests asking employees about the assignments and projects that give them the greatest sense of accomplishment. 

“Co-create a contingent plan where the necessary but unfulfilling tasks are still accomplished, but ensure there is a plan to increase the time they spend on tasks that use their knowledge and abilities and [align with their] interests.”

Read HRM’s article on how to help employees discover their ‘red thread’ tasks.

3. Let employees get experimental

Another way to boost engagement is to incorporate play and experimentation into work rather than relying on emotional or financial pressure to drive people, Lindsay McGregor, co-founder of Vega Factor and employee engagement and motivation expert, previously told HRM.

“If you yell and scream or punish people, they’ll default to tactical work. They’ll follow instructions and execute what’s on their to-do list, but they won’t go beyond that. They won’t bring creativity. They won’t help others.”

She refers to a client she worked with, a retail bank, that needed support motivating its people.

Along with her co-founder, Neel Doshi, McGregor worked on getting the bank’s leaders to think about play, purpose and potential as the key ingredients for a successful motivation strategy.

“To find play, the staff would get together each morning and think about experiments they could run. They’d say things like, ‘There’s usually a long line for our customers, which frustrates them, so how could we help them get what they need without standing in a line? Or make the process of standing in a line a little more fun?’ 

“The next day, people would share what worked and what didn’t. Not only did this make work more fun, it also scaled learning across the organisation.”

“Running around from meeting to meeting or quickly dipping in and out of tasks does not give us that sense of accomplishment.” – Justin Weinhardt, Associate Professor of Business, Organisational Behaviour and HR, University of Calgary

Next, they focused on their branch’s purpose, which was to improve the financial health of their community.

“They’d tie what each person was working on to their branch goal. That meant people didn’t feel like they were just showing up to collect a paycheck.”

The combination of these elements, and the absence of emotional pressures, is what McGregor and Doshi call a ‘TOMO culture’ – a total motivation culture.

“When a culture is high in total motivation, people feel a lot of play, purpose and potential for the actual work that they’re doing. So that’s not saying, ‘I work for a great non-profit, but I hate my job as an accountant,’ but being able to say, ‘The day-to-day work I’m doing as an accountant gives me play, purpose and potential.’ When you’ve done this, you’re able to motivate people to do both the tactical and the adaptive work.”

It’s about employers taking the time to ask: “Does everybody have an interesting, meaningful problem to solve?” she says. 

“So many organisations have big, grand mission statements, and those are important, but to feel truly engaged, people have to feel that if they don’t show up to work tomorrow, something they care about isn’t going to happen.”

Lindsay McGregor’s quotes were first published in an article for HRM Online in May 2022 titled: ‘Want to increase employee engagement levels? Try facilitating a TOMO culture’. Read the article here.

Learn how to take a systematic, data-driven approach to organisational design that will help achieve role clarity, effective collaboration and a positive culture with AHRI’s short course.

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In recent years, organisations across diverse industries have come to recognise the indispensable role that employee wellbeing plays in fostering productivity, building a positive work environment and driving long-term success.

However, recent research has indicated that when it comes to wellbeing some companies are not practising what they preach.

Last year, a global study by McKinsey Health Institute indicated a significant disconnect between how leaders perceived the state of mental health and wellbeing in their organisations and the way their employees saw it. 

The study showed an average 22 per cent gap between employer and employee perceptions, with leaders consistently rating all aspects of wellbeing more favourably than their people. 

Researchers concluded that many employers’ wellbeing initiatives, however well-intentioned, lacked a systemic approach to address the root causes of poor mental health. This was particularly true of toxic workplace behaviour, which was identified as the biggest driver of burnout symptoms in all 15 countries assessed, including Australia.

Employers’ poor understanding of the true state of workforce wellbeing has led some employees to accuse them of taking a performative and tokenistic approach, otherwise known as ‘wellbeing washing’.

What does wellbeing washing look like?

Similar to greenwashing, wellbeing washing happens when a company places more focus on appearing to care about wellbeing than they do on truly taking care of employees. 

Dr Kate Daley, Head of Psychology at workplace wellbeing platform Unmind, offers some common examples of what wellbeing washing can look like, including: 

• Giving a talk on burnout, but not having any strategies in place to address it
• Offering free yoga classes while employees are working 60-hour weeks
• Running a mental health awareness day campaign on social media without having a long-term commitment to improving mental health internally
• Raising money for a mental health charity at a company event but not offering support to the organisation’s own people.

“This can leave employees feeling unsupported or uncared for, which in turn can lead to disengagement and employee turnover. It not only gives the impression that the organisation is only ‘ticking a box’, but it also means that wellbeing isn’t being effectively addressed,” she says.

Earlier this year, a report published by Claro Wellbeing specifically assessed the extent and nature of wellbeing washing in the UK. Researchers found that almost one in four employees (38 per cent) believed their employer engaged in wellbeing washing. 

Survey respondents reported that while 71 per cent of organisations took part in mental health awareness initiatives, only 36 per cent offered ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ mental health benefits to their staff.

According to Dr Michelle McQuaid, Founder of the Wellbeing Lab, actions that employees perceive as wellbeing washing are not always deliberate.

“I think in some cases, yes, [wellbeing washing] is genuinely happening because workplaces have come to understand that wellbeing is something that their workers really want and value,” she says.

“However, in a lot of cases, we’re finding there’s a fair bit of misunderstanding as to what wellbeing is, and how wellbeing is supported at work.

“So it’s about organisations working more closely with their people to understand what wellbeing means to them, educating their people about all the things they do to support wellbeing and [emphasising] that they are happy to take feedback and new ideas if some of those things aren’t hitting the mark.”

“Don’t ever presume wellbeing is ‘done’ – it’s a journey.” – Dr Kate Daley, Head of Psychology at Unmind

Aligning your wellbeing strategy with employees’ needs

To avoid inadvertently engaging in wellbeing washing, Daley advises following a three-stage process to ensure that your wellbeing efforts are aligned with the actual needs of your employees.

1. Measure. 

“Ask employees what their needs are. Do they need more manager support, better skills to support peers, more access to mental health support or greater psychological safety?”

She stresses the importance of measuring the right thing: outcomes that influence employee wellbeing and their experience at the organisation. As she puts it, “Measure what matters.”

2. Understand

Taking time to unpack and understand the data you gather from both employees and leaders is an important step in closing the gap between organisations’ perceptions of their people’s wellbeing and the reality.

“Once an effective measurement strategy is in place, look at the insights and ask if your perceptions are accurate,” says Daley. “Does your perception match what you’re hearing from employees? Is there data to support your perception? Are employees aware of all the wellbeing initiatives that are happening behind the scenes?” 

3. Act

Once the appropriate measures have been identified, set clear success metrics to get an accurate picture of what’s working and what’s not, says Daley.

“These [metrics] will vary depending on which factor you’re targeting. For example, if the target is to reduce stress in a team, measure stress levels pre- and post-implementation of your strategy. If the target is to increase manager support, measure employee ratings of how supported they feel before and after manager training.” 

Transparency is also crucial, she says. As well as ensuring the workforce is well-versed in the wellbeing support and offerings that their employer can provide, it’s also important to be transparent about any actions or resources that you may not be able to provide and the reasons why that is.

“By making the efforts meaningful and meeting real needs, the authenticity shines through and it’s no longer seen as tokenistic,” she says.

Creating an authentic culture of wellbeing 

One common misconception about workplace wellbeing is that it sits purely on the shoulders of HR, says Daley. In reality, wellbeing is the responsibility of everyone in the organisation, including and especially executive leadership. 

Part of HR’s role is to use data to tailor interventions and initiatives and to build the business case to implement them. Another important HR action is to keep a finger on the pulse of company culture and its impact on wellbeing.

“Culture is absolutely crucial – that means the shared values, expectations and attitudes held by employees…. You can have the best wellbeing tools in the world, but if you have a toxic culture, you’re not going to have a healthy workplace,” she says.

Daley also suggests leaders set an example for their workforces by walking the talk when it comes to caring for their own wellbeing, getting involved with company wellbeing initiatives and keeping the subject on their day-to-day agendas.

“To move away from any danger of wellbeing washing, make sure you have a data-informed wellbeing strategy, interventions at individual, team and organisation level and that you keep it under review,” she says.

“Don’t ever presume wellbeing is ‘done’ – it’s a journey.”

Sign up for AHRI’s short course to learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace.

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‘The early bird catches the worm.’ ‘Lose an hour in the morning and you will be all day hunting for it.’ ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ Our obsession with morning culture dates back hundreds of years.

In modern society, it manifests in influencers and successful CEOs touting the value of rising before the sun in order to squeeze in a workout, get ahead on your tasks for the day, soak in a chapter of the latest self-help book and cap things off with an ice-cold shower – all before us mere mortals have even begun to stir from our warm blanket cocoon.

Those of us partial to a sleep-in convince ourselves that if we could just wake up a little bit earlier, we’d be better versions of ourselves: happier, healthier and more productive.

“One of the most frequent questions I get when I give talks is, ‘How can I become a morning person?’, because it’s considered to be productive. But it won’t work for everybody,” says Stefan Volk, Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Discipline International Business at the University of Sydney (USYD), who has studied how circadian rhythms and chronotypes can affect team performance. 

“There is a general bias towards morningness in society, and there are historical reasons for that,” he says. “For thousands of years, humans lived in line with the light-dark cycle because we didn’t have electric lights. Work could only be performed during daylight, so sleeping beyond daylight was a waste of previous work time.”

This working rhythm is deeply ingrained in human culture, he says. But we exist in a completely different world now. We have artificial lighting and connective technology that allow us to work outside of daylight hours. So why should our work hours remain stuck in the 16th century?

Understanding chronotypes – are you a lark or an owl?

Every species has a biological clock that helps it align with the 24-hour cycle of the planet, says Volk. This determines when we sleep, eat and perform at our best from a physical, mental and emotional standpoint.

“It regulates body functions, such as your melatonin, secretion, body temperature and so on. It’s a very important process. Chronotypes are a behavioural expression of this biological clock,” he says.

Essentially, it’s an individual’s in-built preference for when they do their best work – when they feel most attentive, alert and able to tend to complex tasks. 

“They say an extreme lark and an extreme owl could share a bed but never see each other because they have such opposed rhythms.” – Stefan Volk, Associate Professor, USYD.

“Most people have an intuitive understanding of their chronotype because they know if they’re a morning or evening person,” he says.

You may have heard of the wolf, bear, dolphin chronotypes before, but Volk prefers to think of them as larks (morning) or owls (evening). It doesn’t make sense to put strict guidelines around these different types, says Volk, such as 5am-10am being a morning person and 10am-1pm being an afternoon person. It’s much more fluid than that, he says.

“But it’s true that there’s a big difference between being a lark or an owl. They say an extreme lark and an extreme owl could share a bed but never see each other because they have such opposed rhythms.”

Want to determine if you’re a lark or an owl? This questionnaire, designed by Horne JA and Östberg O, is designed to give you an indication of where you might sit.

Performance at work

Volk, a self-proclaimed evening person, found he was often working late because that’s when he felt he did his best work.

“However, the whole of society was stacked against me because you have to be at work early and there are often responsibilities that require you to be up-and-running in the morning,” he says. “But that was a time where I was not at my best.”

This sparked his interest in researching the ways in which performance is impacted when employees work within and outside of their performance sweet spot, and learning more about the biases that often crop up in favour of early risers.

From a performance and health perspective, you only need to look at the huge body of research into the impacts of shift work to see how working outside of our circadian rhythm can have negative consequences.

“We see more obesity, more depression and a range of negative health outcomes for shift workers. 

Evening people’s performance is also often compromised due to what’s called ‘social jetlag’.

“They can’t fall asleep easily because their biological system won’t settle down… so they go to bed later but have to wake up around the same time as morning people. They are consistently sleep-deprived.

“Evening people are much more likely to have all kinds of psychological and negative health impacts, such as depression, obesity and addictions.”

Because most evening people have to live life outside of their natural rhythm, they can also struggle to self-regulate, which means they’re more likely to engage in behaviours such as drinking alcohol, smoking and eating poorly, he adds.

Read HRM’s article on the 7 different types of rest.

“On the other extreme, one of my colleagues did a study in the US when the country shifted to daylight savings, which is essentially just pushing [people’s] rhythm out by one hour. They were able to show that on a national level, there was a spike in workplace injuries… Because they were working out of their rhythm, they were less attentive and less observant.”

Data was analysed from 1983 to 2006, with 576,292 injuries detected in that time frame. The researchers found 3.6 times more injuries on the Mondays following daylight savings, which equated to 2649 work days lost to injury.

Managers favour morning people

Physical and wellbeing injuries aren’t the only things for employers to be concerned about. Morning people are also more likely to benefit from affinity bias.

“Anybody who is up early, who is in the office first, who squeezes in a workout before hitting the office at 6am is considered to be successful and diligent,” says Volk.

This means we often inadvertently discriminate against those who become energised in the afternoon or evening, he says.

“All the important tests in life are usually done in the morning. School tests, driving tests, university tests and job interviews typically happen in the first half of the day when the earlier types can perform better.”

In a work context, this could mean we are consistently underestimating the potential of a large portion of the workforce. Despite the proliferation of morning culture in Australia – think sunrise ocean swims, yoga classes and early morning gym sessions – Volk estimates that almost half of the population are actually afternoon-evening people.

“But we’re sending them home [from work] when they’re just starting to get into their most productive time. We’re not getting the best out of them,” he says.

Not only that, we could be actively preventing them from succeeding. Volk refers to a study which shows that when a manager is a morning person themselves, they are more likely to favour other morning people and think evening types are less diligent and hardworking.

“Even when these team members objectively performed equally, the one who was an [evening person] was more likely to get a poor performance evaluation. This is because of a bias we all have – we think what works best for us will work best for everyone else.”

That boss will see an employee coming in late and assume they’re slacking off, but they don’t necessarily notice that person staying back late, he adds.

“Interestingly, if your boss is an evening person [the research shows] that they don’t discriminate against morning types; they don’t distinguish between the two. That’s because the evening boss can relate to the evening team member, but they have the same admiration for the team member who comes in early… they assume they must be pretty good at their jobs.”

Design work with chronotypes in mind

Volk hopes that alongside conversations about making work schedules more flexible and personalised, employers will also consider individuals’ optimal performance periods.

“The standard 9-5 approach doesn’t suit most employees,” he says.

Instead, we should bake holistic flexibility into the work design of the future – that means going beyond simply allowing employees to work the odd day from home.

You could allow people to determine their own schedules, perhaps with a crossover period of a few hours, sometimes called ‘anchor hours’, for collaborative work. It could also mean embracing asynchronous styles of working and utilising tech platforms to facilitate communication between teams operating on different schedules.

Individuals also need to be encouraged to manage their workflow at times most suitable to their performance peaks, says Volk.

“There’s the so-called ‘morning inbox problem’ where people are getting to work and reading through hundreds of emails from the previous day. For morning types, that’s a waste of their most precious time of the day,” he says.

“Think about when you need to do the hardest work of the day… things like having a difficult conversation with a team member, a performance review, a meeting with a business partner or anything that’s challenging and requires your full mental capacity [should be] planned during your peak hours… Your routine tasks can be performed outside of this time.” 

Volk also suggests managers be strategic about how they build teams around people’s unique chronotypes and the work that needs to be done.

“There are tasks that require all people on the team to be at their best – a surgical team, for example. If the surgeons are operating on a patient in the morning, you ideally want them all to be morning types because if one person makes a mistake, that affects the overall outcome.

“Orchestras, sports teams, military combat teams, firefighters – we call them action teams – all have to perform together. The worst team member’s performance determines the team’s overall performance.”

“The standard 9-5 approach doesn’t suit most employees.” – Stefan Volk, Associate Professor, USYD

But there are also examples of when a team’s performance is based on that of the top performer.

“For example, on a long-haul flight from Sydney to Dubai, which is around 15 hours, you have two or three pilots in the cockpit. You don’t want them all to peak at the same time; you don’t want them all attentive and awake the first five hours and then [fading] for the remaining 10 hours. In these cases, you want distributed chronotypes.

“The same goes for nursing, nuclear power plant operators, police surveillance, etc. – anything where it takes one person to pick up on something, such as a pilot who can be attentive enough to alert others of a problem.”

In short, consider if the people in your teams need to be at their best simultaneously or separately.

Embrace accommodations

While there’s plenty of buzz around a potential move to a four-day work week, Volk suggests it might be more impactful to instead think about shorter work days over a five-day week ” because this way we tap into everyone’s peak period.”

Volk says there are, of course, limitations to the extent to which work can be designed around people’s chronotypes and preferences. He’s not suggesting you radically change your business’s opening hours to accommodate for the night owls among your employee cohort.

“But I think there is scope to explore how to get the best performance out of employees and also make them feel appreciated.

“We accommodate people in so many ways at work, but this is something we haven’t considered. It’s like ergonomics in an office where we set up people’s chairs and tables so they don’t develop health issues and can work comfortably and productively. This is the same thing.”

Ensure your team is thinking and acting strategically at every stage of the employment lifecycle with this short course from AHRI.

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Nationwide research has unveiled the state of mental health and wellbeing in the Australian workforce, and demonstrated why workers need HR’s support now more than ever.

After its previous report revealed the startling impact of the difficulties faced by the workforce from 2019-2020, The Wellbeing Lab’s latest State Of Wellbeing In Australian Workplaces report, conducted in partnership with AHRI, seeks to understand the overarching trends that have emerged in wellbeing pre-, mid- and post-pandemic. 

Over 1000 employees were surveyed about their take on the ‘new normal’ and asked to rate their general wellbeing at work: were they consistently thriving, living well, just getting by or really struggling?

In 2021, 6.9 per cent of employees said they were really struggling. This figure rose to 9.7 per cent in 2022 – an increase of more than 40 per cent. The number of employees who said they were ‘not feeling bad, just getting by’ also increased from 26.7 per cent in 2021 to 30.7 per cent this year. 

The graphic below charts changes in employees’ wellbeing from 2019-2022.

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