Steering Point Articles
Diversity and Conflict for a Plural Workforce
“The chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”[1] This saying – attributed by some to Samuel Johnson, by others to Bertrand Russell – is apt when it comes to diversity in the workplace. Far too late in the day, employers realised that their workforces were stiflingly homogenous, most especially when it came to race and gender.
The Workplace Motivation Theory That Works
Self-determination is one of the most commonly used motivation theories in the workplace, we explore how it can be balanced with autonomy and alignment to organisational strategy.
Organisational Psychology and Motivation
Motivation is one of the key factors that drives employees to work towards achieving their goals in the workplace. In a competitive business environment, organisations constantly seek ways to motivate their employees to improve productivity and performance.
AI and the Future of Work
The explosive unveiling of ChatGPT at the end of last year set the professional world alight with questions regarding the role AI will play in the future of work. For many in the creative industry, the instant reaction was one of fear and despondence.
Stress Management and Leadership Through Mindfulness
One cannot expect to manage others effectively if they do not manage themselves well. That means being aware of your emotions and thoughts, processing and regulating them, and effectively dealing with high levels of sustained stress and its ripples.
How do you Sleep (and How’s it Affecting Your Work)?
The 5am club! Seize the day! The early bird gets the worm! Whatever the slogan may be, we’ve been conditioned to believe that time in bed is time misspent, even though every morsel of scientific evidence points to the contrary. Studies show that reducing sleep by as little as 1.5 hours for even a single night could cause a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32 percent.
Bouncing Back from Professional Failure
Striving for excellence is all well and good, but perspective is vital. To function at any decent level consistently requires an understanding that all things cannot be well at all times, and that the moments in which we fall short of our own or others’ standards are opportunities for learning.
Crafting: How to Increase Engagement, Performance, and Job Satisfaction
Dissatisfaction is likely to come to all workers at some point. Oftentimes it passes, proving itself to be no more than a tough project or bad day at the office. But if the problem is consistent and/or stifling, action may need to be taken. For those who don’t think the job itself is the problem so much as how they’re handling it, a potential solution is work crafting.
Emotional Intelligence and Engaging Others
What if we approached mental fitness the way we approach physical fitness? That is to say, conceiving it as necessary and making it a priority. What would that regime entail if it were a daily act, and what might be gained as a result? What if we resituated emotionality in our profession as a catalytic force, not a disruptive one? Thus, shifting the workplace from a rational environment to a place of outward feeling and engagement. The answer to all these questions is related to the development and implementation of emotional intelligence.
New Year’s Resolutions: How to Make Them Useful
There’s something endearing in the lofty aspirations we wheel out each January, unkeepable promises that our poor future selves are made to feel slovenly for not fulfilling until we get the chance to do it all over again this time next year. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are more reasonable targets we can set ourselves – and more practical ways we can go about achieving them – so that when the chiming bells usher us into 2024, we can look back at our year and say we really did something worthwhile with it.
Creating and fostering cultures of meaning
A modish topic, but sometimes less emphasised, facet of success is company culture. Culture is a catchall term, but it comes down to how organisation systems are formed and maintained. It is social in origin and totalising in dissemination. That matters because humans are not innate; we produce and reproduce these systems through learned behaviour, mirroring, and various institutions.
Mindfulness in the workplace
Plenty of the shifts we saw to working practices—such as introducing some form of home or hybrid working as standard—have already become accepted as part of the much-touted “new normal”. Others are still evolving, not least when it comes to the relationship between businesses and their employees’ health and wellbeing. One practice that has emerged as potentially pivotal in bridging the gap between personal welfare and workplace performance is that of mindfulness.