Team Health & Performance
Research shows that Australian businesses are now facing an emerging challenge with respect to an increasing number of staff who under perform due to workplace fatigue, accelerating change, chronic stress and an imbalance between work and quality of life.
"Lost productivity due to presenteeism is 7.5 times greater than productivity lost to absenteeism,” says chief executive of leading corporate health specialist Ken Buckley. Presenteeism is a silent epidemic costing employers billions of dollars in lost productivity and poor service to customers.
Most of the money in the so called ‘Health System’ is spent on preventing illness and death, getting people back to OK but very little money, time or energy is invested in helping people to move from OK to being the best they can be. That’s long been considered the responsibility of the individual.
Similarly with organizations we tend to be reactionary when it comes to training and staff development. High performance organisations invest in developing their people before they need to.
Organisational Wellness
Organisations, like individuals can be in a state of dysfunction and stagnation; they can be surviving without obvious symptoms of disease but under-performing; or they can be healthy and performing to their potential. Wellness is not just the absence of disease; it extends the definition of health to include a process of awareness, education and growth. It is never a static state. There are degrees of wellness just as there are degrees of illness. Well organisations encourage their people to continually grow and improve themselves personally and professionally. People who are focused on wellness are generally more positive, proactive, self-responsible, productive and satisfied with life. Wellness is about quality of life and fulfilling potential. Well Organisations are more successful, sustainable and enjoyable to work for.
Organisational Health & Performance
Poor Performance |
Average |
Peak Performance |
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Dysfunctional |
Above the competition |
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Crisis management |
Continuous improvement |
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Survival focus |
Pursuing excellence |
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Justification / excuses |
Responsible / proactive |
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Complacent |
Creative / innovative |
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Change resistant |
Change embracing |
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Lack of personal development |
Highly developed leadership |
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Poor performance |
Team & self-management skills |
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“The health of an organization in physical and financial terms is dependent on the physical, psychological and social health of it’s people.”
Our belief is that if you can invest in the development of individuals within your organisation and create a critical mass of people who are physically, mentally and socially fit – then you will create a culture which is closer to the peak performance end of the continuum.
When it comes to improving business performance the majority of businesses will pay more attention to improving systems, procedures, resources, technology in relation to the ‘Task’ side of their business, than they will to the ‘People’ side of their business.
In today’s business environment, organizations are looking for people with the following attributes:
• A high level of Emotional Intelligence (not just intellectual capacity)
• Creative thinking and problem-solving skills
• Effective self-management skills
• Team skills that are transferable to changing team environments
• Leadership attributes
• A positive attitude to change
• Self-motivated and self-responsible
• A sense of humour
Many of these traits can be learnt or developed. Most people learn them through life experience as they mature. Therefore we need to recruit for these traits to start with but also provide opportunities in the workplace for accelerated learning in these areas.
People can gain an intellectual understanding of principles through books and seminars but they learn best through experience, challenge and fun, supported by ongoing coaching/mentoring.
“As the business environment changes, so do the traits required to succeed”
Emotional Intelligence takes first place ahead of intellectual capacity when it comes to the ingredients for sustainable success, according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence at Work. Emotional competencies such as self-awareness, grace under pressure, failure tolerance, persistence and people skills, are all traits that can make the difference between surviving and thriving in today’s business environment.
Character traits such as these are not learned in classrooms. They are acquired through experience and maturity. The challenge for most people is that the learning curve in business is often steep and treacherous. Learning from experience can sometimes be painful and costly.
A number of leading companies are now using experiential learning and adventure experiences to explore and develop the leadership potential and team skills of their people in a ‘non-business critical’ environment.
What we learn through experience, emotion, challenge and fun, has more impact on behaviour change, than traditional training methods. Adventuring into unknown territory takes us out of our comfort zone and into the learning zone, where we have the opportunity to test our personal resources and challenge the inner rules that we live by.
Onya Soapbox (with Katrina Webb and Wayne Enright)
Provides a range of services to assist individuals and teams to improve their quality of life and performance. We provide a holistic approach and our methodology includes a mix of experiential learning and coaching/mentoring.
Services include:
• Leadership & Team Development
• Health & Life Balance Programs
• Stress & Change Management counseling
• Strategic Planning facilitation
• Coaching and mentoring
• Unique conference activities
• Team Retreats
• Adventure learning experiences
Our flagship Programs are:
• Foundations of Dynamic Teams
• This program focuses on eight principles that provide a solid foundation for effective teamwork and can be designed to run over a period of 1 day or a 2-3 day retreat.
• Living Balance is a workplace wellness program that helps staff to develop the habit patterns necessary to maintain a balanced quality of life and peak performance.
For more information please contact Abby Edwards or Katrina Webb at www.onyasoapbox.com or www.katrinawebb.com.au
Wayne Enright - Healthy Teams
