21. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2010) — A Midwest utility company learned firsthand that it pays to keep healthy employees fit, reaping a net savings of $4.8 million in employee health and lost work time costs over nine years.
A University of Michigan study of workplace wellness programs is one of the only longitudinal studies of its kind, said co-author Louis Yen, associate research scientist in the School of Kinesiology’s Health Management Research Center.

Over the nine years, the utility company spent $7.3 million for the program and showed $12.1 million in savings associated with participation. Medical and pharmacy costs, time off and worker’s compensation factored into the savings, said Alyssa Schultz, research area specialist intermediate.

The findings are good news for companies looking to implement wellness programs, said Dee Edington, director of the U-M Health Management Research Center and principal investigator.

“One of the advantages of the study is it shows that a sustainable program will give you savings,” said Edington, also a professor in the School of Kinesiology and a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health. “Previous studies looked at programs that are short and intense and cover the same people.”

The U-M study differed in three important ways. First, it shows that wellness programs work long-term, even though the employees who participated aged during the study. Second, the study took into account all bottom line costs for implementing the wellness plan. For instance, indirect costs such as recruitment and costs for changing menus. Most studies include just the direct costs to the company for paying for employees who participate. But even using the very conservative U-M figures showed a cost savings, Yen said.

A third difference is that it looked at lost work time as well as pharmacy and medical costs, Schultz said. The employees who participated in all years saw those costs had increased by$96; those who participated in some of the years rose $230; and costs for those who never participated jumped by $355. The program cost $100 per year per employee whether the employee participated or not. Therefore, a participation-related savings of $257 and $125 was calculated for the employees who participated in all years and those who participated in just some years.

Slowly, companies are realizing that while insurance plans must care for sick employees, those plans must also include wellness plans to keep healthy workers healthy, Edington said.

“It’s still a large company activity, but the growth (in wellness plans) is in the medium-sized companies,” Edington said.

So what should a company do when looking for a benefit plan for employees?

“You want a benefit plan that will take care of your sick people but also keep your healthy people healthy and working,” Edington said.
Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

 MLA University of Michigan (2010, August 18). Workplace wellness plan saves money over the long-term, new study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 20, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/08/100818151824.htm

Posted in Employee engagement, Corporate Culture, Emotion & productivity, Optimal Human Functioning, San Francisco Bay Area, Happiness and Income, De-escalating anger, Well-being, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Anxiety, Organizational change initiatives, Managing stress, Customer Engagement, Anger Management, Resiliency, Organizational psychology, Business & psych | Print | No Comments »

20. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

How do you feel about your employer? A new study in Perspectives on Psychological Science indicates that how happy a company’s employees are is strongly related to how well the company performs in a number of important areas - increased employee retention, improved customer loyalty, and greater profitability.

Such findings may signal a coming downturn for companies such as JetBlue whose former flight attendant recently told a customer over the loudspeaker to take a hike and then jumped out the emergency exit. Assuming more of Jetblue’s workforce is equally unhappy, the company’s profitability is likely to decrease in the short term.

Given the amount of time you spend at work, it seems reasonable that work influences how happy we are. More and more studies are documenting the connection between your attitudes towards work, your mood outside of the workplace and physical outcomes like coronary heart disease.
Come to find out, that may be merely the tip of the iceberg. Gallup scientist James K. Harter reported recently that how you perceive your work conditions also seems to have a significant effect on company profitability.

In Harter’s latest findings, Gallup examined data from over 2,000 business units (e.g., retail stores and sales offices) within 10 firms. Harter and colleagues pored over employee satisfaction surveys, customer loyalty numbers, employee retention rates, and financial performance of the organizations. Harter performed data anayses to determine the strength of relationships between employee job satisfaction and the outcome measures of the firms.

Findings showed that how employees perceive work conditions predict critical organizational outcomes. In other words, when employees hold their company in a positive light, the company was far more likely to have higher employee retention, increased customer loyalty, and improved profitability.

Unexpectedly, the findings indicate that employee perceptions influence these outcomes more than the outcomes affect employee perceptions. It may be that profitability begins with positive employee perceptions of their employer, their job and their overall contribution. Thus, happy employees seem to be key to increased profitability.

Harter suggests that ‘helping employees see the ultimate outcomes the organization is working to achieve and how they play a role in achieving those outcomes’ may be the greatest benefit managers can provide to those they supervise.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Founder Guide To Self
Award-winning author (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Happiness)
Award-winning blogger (Top 3 in positive psychology by PostRank, Top 100 by The Daily Reviewer)
Free 216 page eBook on latest ways to increase happiness from the inside out at http://www.Guidetoself.com

——————————————————————————–

Journal References:

1.     Manon Mireille LeBlanc, Julian Barling. Workplace Aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2004; 13 (1): 9 DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301003.x

2.     H. R. Bowles, M. Gelfand. Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance. Psychological Science, 2009; 21 (1): 49 DOI: 10.1177/0956797609356509

3.     Paul E. Spector. Employee Control and Occupational Stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2002; 11 (4): 133 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.00185

4.     J. K. Harter, F. L. Schmidt, J. W. Asplund, E. A. Killham, S. Agrawal. Causal Impact of Employee Work Perceptions on the Bottom Line of Organizations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2010; 5 (4): 378 DOI: 10.1177/1745691610374589

Posted in Employee engagement, Executive coach, Optimal Human Functioning, Corporate Culture, Emotion & productivity, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, San Francisco Bay Area, Well-being, Happiness and Income, Workplace bullies, Anger in the workplace, Pursuing Purpose, Real Men Real Emotion, De-escalating anger, Executive leadership, National speakers, Emotion and technology, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional IQ, Organizational change initiatives, Measuring emotions, Managing stress, Business & psych, Realistic optimism, Customer Engagement, Happiness, Anger Management, Men's emotions, Organizational psychology, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Depression, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

2. June 2010 by John Schinnerer.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Almost everyone includes happiness, well-being and success at the top when it comes to lifetime goals. Everyone wants well-being, but few know how to develop it. Recently, Deepak Chopra, a Senior Scientist at the Gallup Organization, presented results of a fantastic new study that reveals the commonalities among people who are in the top 10% of well-being, success and happiness. The study looked at individuals across the globe to eliminate any cross cultural confusion. Findings indicate that the more satisfied you are in each of these key areas, the better your life will be.

Five Secrets to Incredible Well-Being

1. Accomplishment 
    
a. Career. To what extent do you love your work? Does your job give you the
opportunity to use your strengths on a daily basis? A mere 20% of the workforce
reports being happy with their job. To increase your career well-being, identify
what your strengths are using a tool such as the Realise-2 or Gallup’s Strengths
Finder. Then, mindfully, do a task each day which relies on one of your top
strengths. Also, start to use a vocabulary of strengths (instead of weaknesses)
within your workplace.     
b. Financial. While money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness, it does help. It is
particularly helpful to eliminate the chronic stress of debt. Living debt free
is helpful in increasing your financial well-being. If you are not currently
debt free, make it a goal to become so. The other piece to financial well-being
is the understanding that spending your money on experiences (e.g., movies,
skiing, amusement park) is more satisfying than spending money on material goods
(e.g., new TV, sofa, clothes, etc.).

Posted in Emotion & productivity, International Wellbeing Study, Danville CA, National speakers, Resiliency, Hope, Employee engagement, Executive coach, Well-being, Executive leadership, San Francisco Bay Area, Awe & Elevation, Optimal Human Functioning, Alamo CA, Organizational psychology, Men's emotions, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Life coach, Dr. John Schinnerer, Business & psych, Managing stress, Organizational change initiatives, Anxiety, Managing Sadness, Alexithymia, Anger Management, Managing Anxiety, Happiness, Emotional management, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

22. May 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Check out this fantastic article at Wired on Pecha Kucha - a new form of presenting using only 20 power point slides while showing each slide for 20 seconds. It’s a great blend of slam poetry and corporate presentations. Slims them down, spices them up, cuts to the heart of the matter and allows for discussion by the audience.

Check out the sample presentation at the end about emotionally intelligent signage. Great novel topic. Empathy in signage.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha

Have a fantastic, wonderful, strengths-filled weekend!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Positive Psychology Coach

Author of the award-winning book Guide To Self:The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion & Thought

Guide To Self, Inc.

913 San Ramon Valley Blvd. #280

Danville CA 94526

GuideToSelf.com - Web site

DrJohnBlog.GuideToSelf.com - Award-winning Blog (recently named #1 positive psychology blog by PostRank and Top 100 blog by Daily Reviewer!)

@johnschin - Twitter 

Posted in Emotion & productivity, Corporate Culture, Danville CA, Emotion & learning, National speakers, Employee engagement, Executive coach, Well-being, San Francisco Bay Area, Optimal Human Functioning, Visual perception, Emotion and technology, Organizational psychology, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Business & psych, Emotional IQ, Organizational change initiatives, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Customer Engagement, Nervousness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

6. December 2008 by John Schinnerer.

Happiness is catching. Happiness spreads through friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors. There is a ripple effect whereby happiness extends widely through social networks, even between people who may not know one another. One’s happiness depends on the degree of happiness of those surrounding her.

A study performed at Harvard University, by Nicholas Christakis, is the first of its kind to demonstrate the existence of clusters of happy and sad individuals. Happiness depends upon the happiness of those around them. What’s more, individuals who surround themselves with happy people are more likely to be happy in the future. One’s future happiness can actually be predicted by the number of happy people surrounding them and the degree to which the social network as a whole experiences constructive emotions, such as happiness.  These findings come from an analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network, a longitudinal study that has followed nearly 5,000 people for over 20 years.

Study findings suggest that happiness results from the spread of happiness throughout social networks and not merely from individuals choosing to surround themselves with like-minded individuals. For example, if your next door neighbor becomes happier due to a job promotion, your likelihood of becoming happier increases by 34%. And this happiness effect can linger for up to one year.

This relationship between individual’s happiness holds true for the first three degrees of separation. For example, when John becomes happier, it buoys the happiness of John’s friends as well as the friends of John’s friends. So there is a ripple effect of happiness within social circles where happiness is contagious and spreads similar to the waves of a wireless network. And we are consciously aware of little, if any, of it.

In the past five to ten years, more and more studies have looked at happiness and what determines it (e.g., genetics, money, elections, marital status and emotional management). However, no study has looked at human happiness as it relates to the happiness of others. While the study is the first of its kind and needs to be replicated to ensure the accuracy of these findings, the findings are remarkable and exhilarating.

Emotional contagion, the process by which one person picks up the feelings of another, has been scientifically documented since 1994. Emotions may be ‘caught’ from others for a length of time ranging from seconds to weeks.  This is particularly true of destructive emotions - anger, fear and sadness. In fact, the hard part is not ‘catching’ the emotions but in protecting oneself from them, keeping them at bay. Until this study, emotional contagion had not been documented for any of the positive, constructive emotions such as joy, contentment, peacefulness or happiness.  

The difficulty is that most people primarily feel destructive emotions. Most people experience more destructive emotions than constructive emotions.  

On the other hand, roughly 10% of adults in the United States feel three times as much positive emotion as negative. This 3:1 ratio is the measuring stick for a thriving happy life as set by Barbara Fredrickson at UNC Chapel Hill. It appears that this top 10% is raising the level of happiness of many others. Imagine if it were possible to raise this thriving, happy portion of the population to 15% or 20%.

Assuming the percentage of the populace experiencing happiness could be improved, here are just a few of the possible societal benefits:

·        The economy would improve (e.g., higher ratios of positive, open-ended inquiries are present in executive teams in highly successful firms)

·        Creativity would increase (e.g., happiness is linked to greater innovation)

·        Productivity would soar (e.g., a happy employee is a productive employee; optimistic salespeople outsell pessimistic ones by approximately 38%)

·        The burden on the health care system would be eased (e.g., happiness improves immune system functioning).

·        People would live longer (e.g., happy, optimistic people live 7 – 10 years longer than those who are pessimistic and unhappy)

·        The educational system would show significant academic gains (e.g., students taught to be more happy and optimistic showed significant gains on achievement testing and received better grades)

The exciting part is that happiness can be taught. It can be learned. People can learn to feel positive emotions more frequently and more intensely. Emotional management is a learnable skill. Just as one practices a sport and improves over time so it is with emotions.   As individuals learn to string together more and more happy moments, the ripple effect spills over and one person’s happiness positively influences others.  It even influences the happiness of other people they don’t know.

The goal is emotional management. The goal is happiness. The goal is to learn to mitigate destructive emotions and encourage positive emotions. Happiness is social phenomena. The more individuals experience positive emotions, the more society as a whole is happier, healthier, and more productive and that is no small feat.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville-San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

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