Cultivating resilience in tough economic times – the Phela Wellness solution

We are living in tough economic times. With other accompanying uncertain business conditions, labour volatility, skills shortages, and energy supply disruption, it make the achievement of business targets even more difficult. Notwithstanding these challenges senior executives remain under pressure from shareholders to perform. They in turn have no option other than to put more pressure on business leadership and management to deliver results. All this amounts to an increasingly stressful working environment. Numerous recent studies show how this stress detrimentally affects the performance and health of the workforce. The two go hand in hand – stress affects health – and health affects performance. So the accompanying loss of productivity hits the bottom line at a difficult time – just when companies can least afford it.

It therefore comes as no surprise that organizational health has become a strategic focus in business practice. This not only relates to the physical health of the employee (and of course the manager), but also to the psychological and emotional health of the workforce as a whole. But now we know that the dimensions of wellness don’t end there – they also include intellectual, vocational and environmental wellness. Health can now no longer be seen merely as an absence of disease and organizational health measured by the number of sick leave days taken. The concept goes much deeper.

Phela Wellness focuses its expertise in organizational wellness. It is intensively involved in researching and facilitating new approaches to workforce solutions. In refining its applications it employs up to date insights from neuroscience, functional medicine and health measurement technology to offer verifiable pre- and post-intervention evaluation. Its approaches, methodologies and interventions in organizational wellness take into account three areas of application:
• The personal health of the leader
• The leader’s ability to influence the health of her/his team
• The capacity to identity and address factors in the business and working environment that compromise health.

Personal Health:

Even at senior executive levels one could assume that there would be a greater consciousness about health and healthy lifestyle; such as the need to eat well and exercise. Sadly there is still a lack of functional awareness of the nature and role of workplace stress. Now, beyond developing measures of stress management, the very complex business context described above demands the cultivation of resilience – the capacity to bounce-back from setback. It includes the ability to maintain a positive and focused attitude in the business conditions of on-going uncertainty. Developing this capacity enables the leader to become a role model of wellness in the business context. The Phela Wellness approach utilises the latest technology developed in neuroscience to assist leaders to develop and practice resilience and thereby walk the required talk.

Team health:

In addition to amenable physical working conditions team health has been shown to be strongly related to motivation and attitude. These factors in turn are both influenced by organizational culture and leadership style and competence. Strong, but emotionally intelligent leadership, not only establishes a health-enhancing mood in the workplace, but actively encourages health practice both in the workplace and at home. Leaders are now encouraged to view their team health as a measure of their own management performance. Phela Wellness consequently offers additional training and empowerment in the employment of powerful communication and motivational tools from the field of positive psychology to promote a happy and healthy workforce. Wise organizations recognise the bottom line implications.

Working environment:

Space does not permit here in dealing with this organizational health challenge other than in a cursory way but the subject relates not only to the obvious identification of occupational hazards and employee safety and health. It significantly relates to creating an environment conducive to maintaining healthy habits, be they nutritional, exercise, recreational. Ultimately a healthy working environment also relates to the employee finding fulfilment in their work and experiencing a sense of value in making their contribution. Research demonstrates conclusively that where these three areas a given active attention improved employee morale results in absenteeism going down and productivity going up. For Phela Wellness therefore organizational health as a strategic focus has becomes a no-brainer. We’re here to help support you in developing your own unique approach to organizational health.

Contact Phela Wellness on:
011 544 8000 or visit www.phelawellness.co.za