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March 7, 2022May 30, 2023

Finding your fit: the relationship between stress, career and creativity

While an optimal amount of stress can help you focus and perform better, ‘bad’ stress and anxiety can impair your ability, says the author of Beat Stress at Work, Mark Simmonds. That’s why your characteristics and your work must be a good fit

Fit is everything.

If you want to give yourself the best chance possible of enjoying a rewarding career – one where you are able to fulfil the loftiest of ambitions – it’s important that you’re able to choose a path where you are able to manage ‘bad’ stress as much as possible. One way of doing this is to treat your job in the same way you would treat a personal relationship. In other words, look for a job where there is a close alignment between your own values and those of the company. If there is misalignment between the two for too long, the pressure will mount and it will more than likely end in tears.

This is what happened to me when I kicked off my career. It was really painful.

The prolonged panic attack

In my early twenties, I started working for Unilever, the global consumer goods company – one of the largest in the world. Its household brands, like Dove, Axe, Knorr, Magnum and Domestos are available in around 190 countries.

Unilever also has one of the most respected management trainee programmes for young people who want to forge a career in marketing. I succeeded in joining it when I was 25, working for Birds Eye Wall’s, one of its operating companies at the time and I was pretty proud of my achievement. The career roadmap was now neatly laid out in front of me and the future seemed bright.

A year later, I found myself pacing up and down the basement of the Birds Eye Wall’s building liked a caged animal. I was alone, surrounded only by freezers full of frozen peas, beef burgers and fish fingers and my own confused thoughts. I was trying to work out why I was suddenly feeling so anxious, why I seemed incapable of completing the most basic of tasks at my desk upstairs. I needed a bit of head space, away from people, to think clearly and work out what was going on in my frazzled mind. At the time, I was only a trainee, the lowest of the low. Admittedly, I had now been handed a little more responsibility and people in the team were relying on me to get things done, but I was still a relatively insignificant cog in the wheel.

Yerkes, Dodson and the electrocuted rat

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was experiencing a prolonged panic attack. During those ‘basement wandering days’, I felt frightened and agitated all the time. Back in 1908, two psychologists, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson, discovered that mild electric shocks could be used to motivate rats to complete a maze, but when the shocks became too strong, they would start panicking and scurry around the maze haphazardly in an attempt to escape. This became the basis of the Yerkes-Dodson Law which suggested there is a clear link between performance and arousal.

For example, an optimal amount of stress will help you focus on an exam and remember all the key facts. You might feel energised, stimulated, even exhilarated. That is ‘good stress’ and this might help you perform even better. But too much anxiety can impair your ability to remember anything worth writing down on the exam paper. You might freeze and become incapable of thinking straight. That’s ‘bad stress’ when you might not even perform at all. For what it’s worth, I felt like that electrocuted rat.

A round peg in a square hole

When I was writing the book, Beat Stress at Work, I reflected back on that period and tried to work out what had gone wrong. What was it that had caused me to suffer from the prolonged panic attack and the years of discomfort that followed working at Birds Eye Wall’s? The problem was fit. I was a round peg in a square hole.

By nature, I was more of a creative type and enjoyed ruminating and cogitating, playing around with ideas and concepts, preferably on my own. I liked to have time and space to think things through. However, Birds Eye Wall’s was a fast-paced environment where making decisions quickly was very much the order of the day. Long ‘to do’ lists and pressing deadlines were very much the order of the day and all the beautiful inefficiency associated with the creative process was frowned on.

Matching careers and characteristics

I developed the Matchmaker to help people make good career choices. It identifies a number of characteristics that define the DNA of both the company and the individual. The goal is to try and ensure that there are as many matches as possible, because the more matches there are, the more aligned the needs of both parties will be, and the less likely that ‘bad’ stress will rear its ugly head.

You can see in the Matchmaker table that in the case of Birds Eye Wall’s and me, that it was only ‘team orientation’ where alignment existed. For crucial pairings such as ‘focus on people development’ vs. ‘focus on task completion’ and ‘bias towards introverts’ vs. ‘bias towards extroverts’, the company and I were misaligned. Over a period of time, this misalignment began to cause me more and more ‘bad stress’.

So, how do you use the Matchmaker?

1* If your current job is causing you significant ‘bad’ stress, use this framework to highlight the differences that exist between you and the company, dimension by dimension. Put your name and your company’s name in the relevant boxes and insert a star where your names appear side by side.

2* Use the completed framework as the basis for a constructive conversation with your employers to see if you can achieve greater alignment. Be prepared to discuss the source(s) of your stress. Try and agree what they can do, what you can do.

3* Alternatively, if you are on the lookout for a new job, then use the dimensions of the Matchmaker to help you identify companies/positions where there is likely to be greater alignment between you and them.

Remember that fit is everything. Don’t be a square peg in a round hole if you can avoid it.

Mark Simmonds runs a creativity agency called GENIUS YOU and is the author of Beat Stress at Work.

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March 2, 2022May 31, 2023

The hybrid workplace: how to prioritise mental wellbeing and inclusiveness

How companies can use the same technology that enables remote working to foster social interactions between colleagues that can greatly improve employee wellbeing

The past two years have been a roller coaster for industries worldwide. Covid-19 lockdowns caused most companies to transition to online work, with people working from home for most of 2020 and the start of 2021. As countries have started to open up once more, the effects of online work have remained. Many companies are now engaging in a hybrid working environment in which employees work partly remotely and partly on-site.

Hybrid models come with many benefits, and many employees prefer them for their flexibility. Therefore, it’s likely that hybrid models will stay for good. However, there are a few issues with this model. As society is now more focused on mental health, experts are asking whether a hybrid model can adequately address mental health issues and employees’ inclusiveness.

Can remote work be damaging to mental wellbeing?

At first glance, working in the comfort of your own home sounds like a brilliant idea. But after spending long periods of remote working, there are obvious drawbacks.

The most obvious issue associated with remote work is the lack of social interaction. Lack of in-person speaking can feel very lonely if you are a very social person. Before lockdowns, many people spent most of their day working with colleagues. The absence of in-person interaction also makes it more difficult to feel included or part of a work family.

More hidden problems can arise from losing the ability to separate your work life from your home life. When traveling to a physical workplace, you have a set amount of hours, and you can fully disconnect once you’re back home. When working from home, it’s harder to disconnect from work once you’ve finished your day. This can lead to higher stress levels due to worrying about looming deadlines and unfinished tasks.

Furthermore, people tend to work longer hours when working from home. This can be because there is no good end to the workday. When working on-site, you often have to finish at a specific time in order to get home on time. The incentive to get home simply isn’t there when you’re remote working. So many people end up working longer hours when finishing a lengthy task.

How can companies deal with these issues?

This issue needs to be addressed by companies that favour a remote or hybrid working model. Although changes may not solve all problems, companies can promote practices to improve inclusiveness and mental wellbeing.

Companies can do this by trying to increase social contact in remote environments. The same technology that enables remote working can be used to improve social contact. Most employees now will be familiar with online meetings and remote communication for work. Companies can set up meetings and group chats that are not for formal work. Instead, these meetings can allow employees to relax and have casual conversations.

Sarah Bennett, CIO of Mercator IT Solutions, shared how the company has managed to improve their employee wellbeing and boost their retention rates. ‘We have our formal channels but we also have a ‘Coffee Break’ thread – this is the place that less work-related chat can go on, a bit of friendly banter, suggestions for social calls (not all video calls have to be for meetings!) etc. When clear policies are in place that ensure staff know how the channels should be used and what is and is not acceptable, it can work very well. Aside from this, there are so many things that can be provided for everyone to access that can support wellbeing, such as access to virtual yoga and mindfulness sessions, and exercise classes.’

If there are policies in place to ensure staff knows what’s appropriate for these relaxed group chats, they can help reduce loneliness in remote environments effectively.

Bennett continued: ‘It’s the very technology that enables remote working that is the key to maintaining the social contact that staff would ordinarily get in the office. All the platforms have chat functions, file sharing and video conferencing technologies and while companies need to ensure the channels are not misused there is clearly an opportunity for these platforms to be used to connect staff. Regular meetups to discuss work and hurdles that are being met are vital – the onus is on employees’ line managers to be more proactive in maintaining communication.’

Another great practice is encouraging social breaks throughout the day to replicate breaks in the workplace. Breaks in remote working might, for example, result in staff spending a few minutes on their phone or watching something on Netflix. Having breaks where staff can relax and talk among each other on group chats or meeting rooms allows for healthy social interaction throughout the day. It also helps staff disconnect when they’re not in working hours. Talking with friends can reduce stress or worry about ongoing tasks in the office.

Ebo Aneju is a Content Writer at SEO agency, Pearl Lemon.

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