Office Chairs Kill Your Creativity Your Employees - Workology

Office Chairs Kill Your Creativity Your Employees - Workology Chairs have been a part of office life for hundreds of years. What has changed though, is the shear number of hours we are spending in them every day. Then we spend more time on the couch when we get home doing further damage. All this sitting increases employee health care costs and at the same time, sitting in chairs has been found to reduce creativity and interactivity in group activities. This one-two punch to a company’s profitability can be countered with some focused redesigning of the office layout and change to the classic desk and chair workstations. Your employees will live longer, happier, healthier lives, and your company will do better Humans have been sitting around for thousands of years, but it’s only been in the last 50 years, or so, that we’ve taken it to an unhealthy extreme. We sit in our car and drive to work We sit at our desk for 8,10,12 hours per day with very few breaks We sit in our car and drive home We sit on the couch to unwind for a few hours before bed With mobile phones, instant messenger, and email, we can carry on conversations with colleagues 25 feet away without ever leaving our chairs. For a body built for standing and moving, this switch to a primarily sedentary lifestyle has had some severely negative health impacts. Physical inactivity has already been linked to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Now, new research shows that it can increase the risk for certain cancers as well even for those who exercise regularly. When the highest levels of sedentary behavior were compared to the lowest, the researchers found a statistically significantly higher risk for three types of cancerâ€"colon, endometrial, and lung. Moreover, the risk increased with each 2-hour increase in sitting time. But all is not lost, dear friend! There is no reason to think that simply because we have been using chairs for just about every task in our offices before, we need to continue to use them as such moving forward. We can break the shackles to our rolling desk chairs and bring a new paradigm to what are bodies do when our minds do work. Research done by Andrew Knight and Markus Baer of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in Saint Louis looked at standing vs. sitting teams for collaborating to produce a university recruitment video “Our study shows that even a small tweak to a physical space can alter how people work with one another.” Knight and Baer found that the teams who stood had greater physiological arousal and less idea territoriality than those in the seated arrangement. Members of the standing groups reported that their team members were less protective of their ideas; this reduced territoriality led to more information sharing and higher quality videos. “Seeing that the physical space in which a group works can alter how people think about their work and how they relate with one another was very exciting,” Knight says. And instead of having meetings confined to any one room, consider having walking meetings and if you get outside the building, even better. Walking not only gets the the blood flowing, it gets the creative juices flowing as well. Research out of Stanford University has found that students who were walking came up with a greater amount of alternate uses for a specific item and more novel ideas as well. .ai-rotate {position: relative;} .ai-rotate-hidden {visibility: hidden;} .ai-rotate-hidden-2 {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;} .ai-list-data, .ai-ip-data, .ai-fallback, .ai-list-block {visibility: hidden; position: absolute; width: 50%; height: 1px; z-index: -9999;} Of the students tested for creativity while walking, 100 percent came up with more creative ideas in one experiment, while 95 percent, 88 percent and 81 percent of the walker groups in the other experiments had more creative responses compared with when they were sitting. While sitting is still a major part of our daily lives, we can break it up into smaller segments, get our employees moving more frequently. Remedies range from the simple and free (calendar alerts to move and stretch, removing the chairs from a meeting space, taking a walking meeting, etc) to the complex and expensive like installing mechanized height-adjustable desks for everyone.  These will not only decrease the costs to the company’s health insurance plan, they will also support your employees to be more creative workers as well. What are some efforts your company has made to get employees to get up out of their chairs and move more frequently?

Happy at work conference - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Cheerful at work meeting - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Im glad to report the upbeat at work gathering on May 27 in Copenhagen. We have an extraordinary program for the afternoon, with more activity and less talk than most meetings. Also, in a novel turn, were making the day a Powerpoint free zone. There are numerous incredible approaches to utilize Powerpoint and numerous terrible ones. We thought marry attempt and see what happens when you cannot utilize it for an entire day. We have some extraordinary speakers, including Mads Kjaer, the CEO of Denmarks best work environment, and Jesper Bove-Nielsen, the creator of Corporate Kindergarten. Here are several standards you can utilize, if youd like to assist us with promoting the gathering: A debt of gratitude is in order for visiting my blog. In case you're new here, you should look at this rundown of my 10 most well known articles. Furthermore, on the off chance that you need increasingly extraordinary tips and thoughts you should look at our pamphlet about satisfaction at work. It's incredible and it's free :- )Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

How to Build an Effective Employee Referral Program

Step by step instructions to Build an Effective Employee Referral Program Step by step instructions to Build an Effective Employee Referral Program In any case, how would you manufacture a dependable pipeline of representative referrals? The appropriate response, obviously, is to make a representative referral program. An Employee Referral Program Can Be Your Best Recruiting Tool Worker referral programs (ERPs) are frequently uncontrollably fruitful for associations all things considered, who best to tap for quality recruits than the very individuals who as of now make your organization incredible? That being stated, ERPs can pose an issue: when an organization is searching for a steady wellspring of value referrals, theres no assurance that representatives will consistently have extraordinary referrals to fill the ability pool. This is why recruiting groups need to begin thinking like advertisers. What might incite workers to allude qualified colleagues and companions, rather than every Joe Shmoe they know? Lets look at some basic choices that can deliver some large outcomes: Offer a Prize if an Employees Candidate Is Hired: It may sound hokey, however individuals love to win things. In the event that a representative stands to gain a hardly any additional bucks or a blessing testament to a nearby eatery, theyll be progressively urged to allude qualified competitors. Since the prize is contingent on the representatives alluded competitor really getting recruited, this will make workers ponder who they allude, discouraging employees from referring poor applicants. The situation here is quality, not amount. Make a Wall of Fame: If a worker alludes a candidate, they gain a spot on the Wall of Fame. The individual who alludes the most recruited applicants can hold a spot of respect on that divider. Acknowledgment can construct altruism among representatives and give them a sense of pride in the work theyre doing. Envision how stimulated customers and sellers will be also when they come into the workplace and see the sort of acknowledgment your group gets! Drawn in representatives are regularly a piece of the business brand itself. With a Wall of Fame in place, the enrolling group increases a pipeline of referrals and workers increase a feeling of having a place. They get the chance to speak to the brand in a progressively significant manner. Toss a Networking Party: Networking occasions are incredible approaches to flaunt your companys culture and meet representative referrals. Gatherings are nonthreatening situations where individuals don't hesitate to blend and blend. Attempt to join some worker acknowledgment into the occasion, as well, as this will impart to the referral up-and-comers in participation that your organization esteems its staff . This simple solution can help construct a successful representative referral program that produces quality recruits directly out of the entryway. Just Ask: No room on the divider? No room in the financial plan? What about your enrolling group just inquires as to whether theyve got anybody extraordinary to allude. This technique may not appear to be energizing, yet representatives who know talented people theyd like to work with will react with referrals. This strategy isnt about creating avalanches of referrals; indeed, it might just deliver one quality referral yet that referral might be your associations next incredible recruit. Get Creative and Think Like an Employee To build up a flourishing representative referral program, you have to abandon the spotter outlook and begin thinking like the average worker. In your psyche, its reasonable what the business brand is and why representatives ought to allude applicants, yet that may not be as clear in the workers minds. To build up a fruitful ERP, you may need to begin by imparting your manager image message all the more obviously to existing workers. Regardless of your strategy for support, its accommodating to begin with the fundamentals and ask yourself whether youd need your companions to work at your organization. If the appropriate response is no, you may need to lay some significant social basis preceding approaching representatives for referrals. When this basis is set up, your group has adequate chance to consider some fresh possibilities and begin a thriving representative referral program.

Respect for athletes and actors - Copeland Coaching

Respect for athletes and actors In the business world, things move fast. You write a business proposal, seek approval, and move on to your next project. Efficiency is key in business. Move fast. Waste little time. Produce as much output as possible. I recently had a wonderful opportunity to share my personal career story at a TEDx event in Worthington Ohio. Giving a TEDx Talk was a huge honor, but also a big responsibility. I wanted to be prepared. And, not the kind of prepared that I’ve been in the past when I’ve delivered some sort of PowerPoint presentation I whipped up for an executive meeting. But, what does being prepared for something like TED mean? Fortunately, I had a great team of folks around me to serve as advisors, including a professional speaking coach, a professional speech writer, and a great TEDx team. I honestly couldn’t have felt more proud to have such a great group working with me that I could put my trust in. What I quickly found was that preparing for a fifteen minute memorized talk was an entirely different animal all together. For the first time, I had a script. And, I didn’t just write the script once. I wrote and revised it ten times. Each time, the team would have feedback. Perhaps one word didn’t sound quite right. Or, maybe another sentence was needed to bridge two thoughts. Then came practicing. Memorizing eight pages of text is not easy for anyone. That was the first giant hill to conquer. Once the memorization was under control, I focused on my delivery. Even tiny details like the regional pronunciation of words was on the table for discussion. I’ll be honest. At times, this level of commitment felt tough. Then, one day, I bumped into a professional ballet dancer at the theatre where I was practicing. He was there, by himself, practicing his dance skills. You might think this was a sign that he had a big production just around the corner. But, it wasn’t. He was there practicing because he wanted to be his best at all times. He didn’t have a show around the corner. He had discipline. It really hit home with me in that moment how hard actors and athletes work when we’re not looking. They are dedicated to be the best at one specific thing, for the fifteen minutes when we are watching. But, it’s not random that they’re at their best for those fifteen minutes. Hours of tiring practice have gone into that perfect moment; practice that nobody else sees. This experience makes me wonder how much more effective, and efficient, we all might be as business leaders if we set aside a little more time to practice. Rather than planning to give a presentation once with no rehearsal, what if we took the time to hone our message? I hope to take my newfound respect for performers and athletes with me as I go back to my projects in the fast paced business world. Angela Copeland is CEO and founder of Copeland Coaching and can be reached at CopelandCoaching.com or on Twitter at @CopelandCoach.