1. Helping Each Other and Our Teams During Times of Change Brandon Sullivan, Ph.D. OHR Employee Engagement Manager March, 2013

2. Agenda Stressors in today’s workplace How the workplace is changing
Burnout
Engagement
What you can do to increase engagement

3. Top Workplace Stressors
Faster pace of organizational change
Decreased autonomy, voice, input into key decisions
Greater demands on your time, energy, and emotional reserves
Lower support from coworkers, supervisors, and others
Unclear expectations and goals
Conflicting expectations and goals
Decreased fit between you and your job
Top Workplace Stressors

4. The Old Workplace Mutual Loyalty Common Identity Trust & Stability
Individuals feel a strong obligation and loyalty to the organization
Employers feel a strong obligation and loyalty to employees
Mutual Loyalty
Individuals identify with the organization
Allegiance is to the organization and its members
Common Identity
Broad trust in institutions and leaders
Employer provides stable career path
Change treated as an infrequent and discreet event
Trust & Stability

5. The New Workplace Transactional Relationship Change is Constant
Individuals stay with an organization until they get a better deal elsewhere
Employers retain an employee as long as it makes financial sense
Transactional Relationship
New jobs emerge that didn’t exist before
Current jobs change or become obsolete
Organizational structures always adapting to new challenges
Change is Constant
Less trust in institutions and leaders
Greater transparency and accountability for results and use of resources
Less Trust, More Accountability

6. So What? Weaker identification with the organization as a whole
Stronger identification with occupation, discipline, personal network
Employee responsible for own career (and more empowered)
More focus on what you, your immediate team, and your network can do

7. Activity
Discuss with a partner 1-2 ways your current work and workplace are changing
How are these changes affecting your stress level?

8. How Do Individuals React?
When work demands consistently exceed the available coping resources, a process called burnout begins…

9. It Starts with Exhaustion
Feelings of being over-extended, depleted of emotional and physical resources, feeling “drained”

10. Next: Depersonalization, Cynicism & Detachment
Human services occupations: depersonalization – ceasing to see one’s students, clients, patients, or customers as individual human beings
Non human-services occupations: cynicism and detachment
Under the circumstances, this can be adaptive

11. Finally: Reduced Efficacy
Reduced feelings of effectiveness and personal accomplishment
Can result in less effort and poorer performance

12. Burnout
… if not addressed, burnout can lead to increased turnover and absenteeism, greater risk for physical and psychological illness, spillover of stress to personal relationships

13. Create the opposite of burnout
The Way Forward
Create the opposite of burnout

14. time, energy, enthusiasm
Employee Engagement!
Key Drivers
Campuses, colleges, units & departments build trust and create a sense of collective purpose
Consistently effective leaders and managers
Challenging work that provides a feeling of mastery
Engagement
Individuals are enthusiastic, passionate, and committed to their work and the University
Key Outcomes
Great work environment and effective culture
Discretionary effort (going above-and-beyond)
Performance and innovation
Recruitment and retention of top talent
Individual
Organization
time, energy, enthusiasm
Has to be a two-way street:

15. Taking Ownership What can we do? Build and communicate a shared vision
Key Drivers
Campuses, colleges, units & departments build trust and create a sense of collective purpose
Consistently effective leaders and managers
Challenging work that provides a feeling of mastery
What can we do?
Build and communicate a shared vision
Set challenging goals that contribute to the vision
Provide clear roles and expectations
Ensure the free flow of timely, high-quality information
Remove barriers to success with a sense of urgency
Take every opportunity to recognize and reward good work
Listen actively and seek to understand others’ viewpoints
Demonstrate concern and support for others’ wellbeing
Actively help others make progress toward career goals
Decades of research show these factors to be foundational for building highly engaged, high performance teams

16. Activity
With a partner, discuss which drivers of engagement are current pain points for your team or unit
Brainstorm some practical ideas your partner might try to address these pain points

17. Questions?