Attitude Equals Profits: Take Your Vacation Days to Improve Your Attitude and Improve Company Income
May 4, 2018 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Attitude equals profits: satisfied workers drive company results according to the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement who found a direct link between employee satisfaction and a company’s fiscal performance. I say, “Duh! – what have we been saying from anecdotal evidence and other research all these years!” It’s time to take your vacation days to improve your attitude. If you won’t take time off for yourself, then do it for your colleagues or for the bottom line of your organization.
At any rate, key findings of the study included:
1. High employee satisfaction is often the result of strong internal communications efforts throughout the organization.
2. Another satisfaction driver: internal competition among work teams to implement organizational goals.
3. Satisfaction leads to a status called “employee engagement.” Organizations with engaged employees have customers who use their products more.
4. Employee attitudes affect those of customers.
5. It is less expensive to foster employee satisfaction than it is to acquire new customers.
6. Organizational culture is the single greatest driver of employee satisfaction levels.
Here are some additional reasons to take your hard-earned and well-deserved vacation days:
- According to a recent survey of 1400 US workers, by www.Careerbuilder.com, more than one-third of workers will be taking work with them on vacation by either carting along their laptop, checking emails, or being in voice mail contact. 16% said their supervisors expected them to check in during their holiday and 19% said they would check in voluntarily. Of these workers, 61% said they would check their voice mail and email daily.
- In the same survey, 40% said a vacation of 3-5 days is enough to feel refreshed, 17% said they would take a shorter vacation or no time off this year, while 44% plan to take more than 5 days.
- Not surprisingly, half of the workers said they feel stressed at the office and 22% of these workers indicate some stress while taking time off because they have to check in. They also indicated that vacations were the #1 event they have postponed in order to progress in th
eir careers.
Shift: Shift Tasks to Increase Energy
May 12, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Adults, in our infinite wisdom, think that children have short attention spans. Children know they are just shifting to a task that brings them more energy when they are getting drained from the task at hand. Shift from left-brain tasks such as budgeting and “administrivia” to right-brain-oriented tasks such as reading your mail, playing with a pet, or talking on the phone. Your productivity will increase and your mind will feel refreshed with this shift in gears. The same shift is needed when working on a right-brained creative project. If the ideas stop flowing, shift gears to something more mundane or something fun to give your brain a break.
Shifting your body also shifts your way of thinking and gives you a new perspective. Get up and move to jostle your body, jog your memory, and get that blood flowing to your brain to carry more vital oxygen to your cells upstairs. If you have been staring at a computer screen for too long, even shifting your gaze and your focus to something else will help with your energy.
Shift your tasks according to your body and brain rhythms to be more productive. If you are brain-dead after lunch, use the morning hours for creative tasks and the afternoon for less taxing projects. If you are not a morning person, then make sure your important meetings and difficult tasks are scheduled after your body wakes up and is alert enough to handle the task. Becoming more child-like, which is not to say childish, will give you more energy by going with the flow of energy and shifting your tasks, your brain, and your body to something that excites you and holds your attention.
Listen to your body and when it is fighting the urge, take a break and come back to your task when you are fresh. It will save you stress, mistakes, and mishaps. Sometimes you have to shift your space and move towards the Escape key to shake things up and shift into high gear. As I wrote this revision for my book Keys to Energize, I was floating aboard ship in the Caribbean harbor of St. Kitts to have the solitude I needed to think and type without interruption. Cruising solo having the world come to your balcony is a fantastic way to write and recharge. Take stock of your needs and figure out if you need to downshift or shift into high gear to charge up your energy.
Sometimes it’s a shift in thinking, a shift in perceptions, a shift in your environment, a shift in attitude, a shift in your belief system, or a shift in movement. It’s up to us to figure out the category, intensity, frequency, or duration of the shift for the most positive results.