The Harvard Business Review asks an important question: “How do you create a great place to work?”
One way to solve the challenge? Focus more on employee wellbeing.
Ron Friedman is author of The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. In HBR, he writes: “A growing number of companies have begun recognizing that helping employees maintain their wellbeing is now a vital component to creating a thriving workplace. And many are taking steps well beyond the usual corporate wellness programs to foster employee wellbeing.”
He also offers a list of “the most intelligent workplace practices” he’s encountered recently, including:
Facilitate physical fitness. A wide range of studies have found a direct link between physical movement and mental agility. We have clear evidence that regular exercise improves concentration, memory, and creativity – not to mention mood.
Make healthy eating easy… Not only do healthy foods keep us energized, research indicates they facilitate higher quality work.
Foster mental growth. As human beings, we have a psychological need for growing our competence. That applies to all domains in life, but it’s especially true at work.
Indeed, one study the piece sites is from the Journal of Health Psychology. It’s titled “On carrots and curiosity: eating fruit and vegetables is associated with greater flourishing in daily life.” It provides a fascinating look at the benefit fruit and vegetables (FV) can have on the human mind.
It concludes: “It provides the first evidence that eating FV is related to greater eudaemonic well-being in a naturalistic setting. Eating FV was also related to greater self-reported curiosity and creativity. FV consumption may underlie a broad range of experiences that signal flourishing. Future randomised controlled trials of FV should include measures of eudaemonic well-being as outcome variables.”