{"id":62754,"date":"2021-08-23T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-07-25T13:52:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T20:52:03","slug":"ode-to-joy-at-work-recharging-our-resilience-with-focus-on-employee-experience-and-wellbeing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/retail\/2021\/08\/23\/ode-to-joy-at-work-recharging-our-resilience-with-focus-on-employee-experience-and-wellbeing\/","title":{"rendered":"Ode to joy at work\u2014Recharging our resilience with focus on employee experience and wellbeing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While all of us experienced incredible disruption in the past year, retailers and brands emerged as one of the frontline heroes that kept us fed and alive. From farm to fork, from source to store\u2014goods and products still had to flow. Meanwhile, the expectations increased, and many of these products were now expected to arrive directly to our doors. Imagine directing the global flow of goods from your living room. Imagine if your manufacturing plants now had to shift to protective gear and sanitizer production in a matter of days. Imagine if your store associates transitioned to online customer care agents, as customer questions exploded overnight. Retailers and consumer goods brands do not have to imagine. They lived it. Pre-pandemic, two Unilever factories produced about 700,000 hand sanitizer units each month. By May 2020, over sixty Unilever factories were manufacturing about 100 million units per month, while keeping factory employees safe and healthy. Read the Unilever Microsoft case study<\/a><\/p>\n

As one CEO put it: \u201cWhat keeps me up at night isn\u2019t supply chain logistics or sales. It\u2019s the well-being of my workforce\u2014because I know our company lives and dies by them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a lot being written about resilience, well-being, and burnout. Jennifer Eggers, the author of \u201cResilience: It\u2019s Not About Bouncing Back,\u201d describes resilience as the power to be energized and elevated by disruption. Microsoft WorkLab shares that personal resilience requires agency, compartmentalization, and joy. Mayo Clinic<\/a> research found that employees need to be invigorated by 20 percent of every day\u2019s work activities.1\u00a0<\/sup> A joyful 20 percent of an employee\u2019s day provides them the energy for the other 80 percent. With each percentage point below that, the risk of burnout rises by 1 percent. And a beautiful thing is that we are all different and find joy in activities that are unique to us. For me, 20 percent of time spent learning something new and mentoring my team is the joy that keeps on giving. Read this Microsoft WorkLab article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

If personal wellbeing results in productivity and resilience, and the key to resilience is 20 percent of joyous moments during the workday, what steps can we take to recharge our batteries?<\/p>\n

Grow each employee\u2019s sense of purpose<\/h4>\n

Nobody feels a sense of purpose when they engage in avoidable repetitive tasks, such as typing in data that could be scanned, or manually counting inventory. Productivity increases overall company profitability, but it also increases the value we feel in our work and sense of purpose, which leads to joy and resilience. An executive from Walgreen Boots Alliance said it best, \u201cHaving the tools, resources and technology to do your job more efficiently and effectively definitely makes employees happy\u201d Watch this Microsoft video<\/a>. Below are examples of consumer goods companies growing their employees\u2019 sense of purpose:<\/p>\n