September 23, 2015 | Posted in: Leading Hartfully

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The Harvard Business Review interviewed more than 19,000 people, at all levels in companies, across a broad range of industries asking the question of what stands in the way of our being more satisfied and productive at work.

The results were that people feel better and perform better and more sustainably when four basic needs are met:

1. renewal (physical);
2. value (emotional);
3. focus (mental);
4. and purpose (spiritual).

No big surprises in the answers as this is what I’ve been teaching for decades that when we feel more energized, appreciated, focused and purposeful, then we perform better.  I recently read several articles in Training journals about the importance of play at work and gamification in the learning arena helping workers learn better and having more fun at work improves productivity. Really? They are JUST NOW printing these articles?? Those of us in the Recreation and Training industries have known for many decades that work made fun gets gone and good times lead to good business. Also that laughter and learning go together to improve retention. When we are more fully engaged, present, comfortable, centered and on purpose, we do better all the way around in life.

When we get to rest and renew our energy during the day, we are better able to focus, handle workloads and be creative. One reason to get out of your office over your lunch break. Your brain and your body need a rest so you come back refreshed and renewed.

Feeling valued creates a deeper level of trust and security at work, which frees us to spend less energy seeking and defending our value, and more energy creating it. Having a sense that what we do matters and serves something larger than our immediate self-interest toward our personal purpose which hopefully is aligned with the organizational purpose is a grand source of motivation.

What’s surprising about our survey’s results is how dramatically and positively getting these needs met is correlated with every variable that influences performance. What they found that meeting even one of the four core needs had a dramatic impact on every performance variable in the study. When all four needs are met, the effect on engagement rises from 50 percent for one need, to 125 percent. Engagement, in turn, has been positively correlated with profitability.

You can start with just one core need and add the others as the previous one becomes habit and ingrained in your organizational culture. Only 20 percent of respondents said they were encouraged by their supervisors to take renewal breaks during the day. By contrast, those who were encouraged to take intermittent breaks reported they were 50 percent more engaged, more than twice as likely to stay with the company, and twice as healthy overall. Leaders need to question their outdated assumptions that that performance is best measured by the number of hours employees puts in — and the more continuous the better — rather than by the value they generate.

In a recent interview with Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post empire regarding nap pods she has installed in her organization; she stated that she does not pay her staff for their stamina, she pays them to for their creative brain power and if they are too tired to think, they are not bringing creative ideas to the table. So a renewal nap of 20 minute is certainly worth it in the long run. You can’t argue with that.