Essential 5: Opportunity for Growth

This is the fifth and last newsletter in which I explore Essentials in the U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being.[1]

The Framework can be viewed as a starting point for organisations in updating and institutionalising policies, processes, and practices to best support the mental health and well-being of employees.

Five Essentials for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being

Source: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/workplace-mental-health-well-being.pdf

Last week we explored Mattering at Work and this week we will look at Essential 5: Opportunity for Growth.

Essential 5. Opportunity for Growth

This Essential rests on the human needs of learning and accomplishment.

Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills in the workplace, which provides opportunities for individual intellectual, social, professional, and emotional growth.

Learning helps workers meet deadlines and reach goals at work while promoting healthy social interactions. Without learning or working towards shared goals, workers can start to feel stagnant, frustrated, and ineffective. While learning is the process of growth, accomplishment is the outcome of meeting goals and having an impact.

Accomplishment confers a sense of competence that reduces stress, anxiety, and self-doubt. When organizations create more opportunities for learning, accomplishment, and growth, workers become more optimistic about their abilities and more enthusiastic about contributing to the organization.

The Opportunity for Growth components in the framework are:

· Offer quality training, education, and mentoring

· Foster clear, equitable pathways for career advancement

· Ensure relevant, reciprocal feedback

Offer quality training, education, and mentoring

Investing in training, education, and mentoring has many benefits. It can

increase productivity and business profits
improve employee motivation and confidence
improve employee career development
increase employee job satisfaction and lower staff turnover
improve work quality and safety
attract good employees
assist with succession planning

LinkedIn’s 2022 Global Talent Trends report found that 59% of employees listed professional development as the top area their business should invest in to improve company culture.

In 2022, Culture Amp looked at data from more than 9.5 million employees across over 5,500 organisations and identified growth and development as key drivers of engagement, retention, and business performance.

Employees who don’t feel they have access to learning and development are twice as likely to leave in 12 months.

The findings suggest a new approach to employee development that considers three aspects: business needs, current skills and strengths, and individual aspirations.

· Determine business needs and what skills you will need to meet them

· Assess current skills and strengths and identify any gaps

· Talk to employees about their personal goals and aspirations and how they could benefit the business

All the training and development options available should be considered. This could be a blend of physical or virtual education sessions, workshops, online learning, on-the-job training, and work experience.

Mentoring, coaching, and shadowing can develop employee skills.

Mentoring is based on a relationship between the mentor and the mentee. The mentor provides:

advice, guidance, and direction
ongoing support and feedback.

Coaching is a development tool to unlock employee potential and improve performance.

Shadowing refers to one employee following and observing another employee for a specific period. This allows the employee to learn the ins and outs of the job while watching someone perform it.

Foster clear, equitable pathways for career advancement

When employers offer transparent pathways and advancement opportunities for all employees, it fosters inclusion and diversity in the workplace. There should be an equitable and fair distribution of opportunities and any barriers to advancement based on race, gender, religion etc. removed.

With more remote work, there must be an intentional effort to remove proximity bias where preferential treatment is given to employees in the immediate vicinity of the leader. Remote workers should have no concern that their working arrangement may adversely impact their access to growth or other career advancement opportunities.

Research by Gartner found that only 1 in 4 employees are confident about their career path with their current organisation. Fewer than 1 in 3 employees know how to progress their career over the next five years. Only 50% of employees report that their manager tailors feedback based on the role they want to move into. As a result, employees are increasingly considering leaving their organisations.

“Employees are leaving their current employers for better professional development opportunities (45%) at similar rates as they leave for higher compensation (48%),” said Vitorio Bretas, director in the Gartner HR practice. “35% of employees surveyed said they left their employer for better career trajectories.”

Clearly, there is work to be done. Organisations must make it easier for employees to understand how they can grow and change their careers at their current workplace

Ensure relevant, reciprocal feedback

Leaders and managers must provide the appropriate level of guidance to help employees with their career choices, by considering their strengths and growth opportunities.

Leaders and managers must be equipped with the capability to engage with employees in a manner that is positive, collaborative, and outcomes oriented.

According to Gallup:

“Routine feedback is better than none, but meaningful feedback -- the kind that helps individuals learn, grow, and do their jobs better -- is how you improve productivity and performance.”

In September last year, I wrote a newsletter about employee experience which included guidance on providing feedback.

“Feedback also must be specific and focused on solutions. Sweeping statements like ‘your work needs to improve’ provides absolutely no guidance to your employee about how they get improve. Be specific on the area that needs development and provide guidance on how the improvement can be made. Encourage your employee to come up with improvement suggestions themselves. Do not prescribe a solution as the chances are it will not be taken. Let your employee find the solution and there is more chance that will own it and do it.”

When career paths in organisations are unclear, employees may look to their leader for direction.

Dorie Clark writing for HBR suggests three ways in which leaders can help.

Help them analyse patterns

What is their passion? What do they find interesting? What are their strengths? Where do they naturally excel?

“Armed with their answers and the preferences they articulate, you’ll be able to suggest logical next steps and avenues for them to explore.”

Expand their worldview

“For some employees, probing into their interests will help uncover patterns about where they excel, what they find most compelling, and possible future directions. But others, especially if their role is fairly narrow, may not have had enough exposure to opportunities to form a reliable picture.”

Leaders can provide opportunities for these employees to try new things. This could be presenting at a team meeting, attending a conference, working on a project, or participating in a think-tank.

By letting them experience new challenges and then debriefing regularly to see what they enjoy and where they have natural skills, you can help them identify areas of interest to explore further.

Don’t steer too hard

Leaders must remember that they are there to support the employee in achieving their career ambitions – not dictate to them. What emerges may not be what the leader envisaged, and leaders must be prepared for that.

Wrap

That wraps up my exploration of the Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being. I highly recommend looking at the Framework as it contains many resources regarding each Essential.

There are also examples to help organisations and their leaders as they apply the Framework in their workplace. Examples include Gap, Inc; Kent State University; 9-1-1 Dispatchers; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento, CA; and DTE Energy.

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/10/20/us-surgeon-general-releases-new-framework-mental-health-well-being-workplace.html

Workplaces as Engines of Mental Health and Well-Being - 5. Opportunity for Growth