Joanne Kaldy

Americans are often discouraged from taking time away from work. However, particularly after the past two years, a little rest and recharging is more important than ever. Commit to at least some of the following:

• Take a brisk walk or just sit in the sunshine.
• Listen to music you love. If possible, crank up the volume and sing along.
• Identify your ‘power hours’ and reserve this high-productivity time to focus on tasks requiring the most skill and focus.
• Keep your schedule current and share it. Let colleagues know when you’ll be available to meet, converse, and work on various projects and when you will be unavailable, unreachable, and away from work.
• Try to some new experiences. Check off something fun on your bucket list and celebrate your efforts.
• Rest the urge to check in with work when you’re off the clock.

There were a record number of cyberbreaches last year, and many of them were in health care and related organizations. According to a new study:

• Employees were responsible for 39% of health care breaches last year, compared to 18% across all industries.
• Most breaches were the result of miscellaneous errors, as opposed to malicious misuse incidents.
• Data misdelivery (such as sending an email to the wrong person) is the most common employee error in this sector.
• Attacks against a web-facing application account for about a third of breaches, even though human error remains a big problem.
• Nearly 60% of data breaches in health care organizations involve personal data, while 46% is related to medical information.

While the worst of COVID may be behind us, workers everywhere are still struggling with their mental health. Need proof? Searches for mental health strategies and support have increased 133% since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago. Moving forward, managers and other leadership need to understand how mental health impacts their employees:

• The constant barrage of emails, texts, videoconferences, and calls are seemingly never ending. As a result, workers often feel like they’re running place and always running behind and trying to catch up.
• Lack of boundaries between work and home make it difficult for workers to “punch out.” Many feel like they’re always working and have no real work-life balance. Worse, they often feel like their employers don’t care about their need to have a life outside the company.
• Working parents are struggling to find childcare solutions, causing some to leave the workforce completely. Others are doing their best … [Read more...] about (5/26) Punching Out: The Dire State of Worker Mental Health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and employees’ psychological wellbeing has never been more important. Especially as more organization embrace different, increasingly flexible work models, workers need to feel comfortable, safe, engaged, connected, and confident. These three steps can help you address employee mental health while implementing new work models:

• Bring mental health under the DEI umbrella. Consider establishing an Employee Resource Group to create a safe place for workers to engage in honest discussions and enjoy a sense of belonging. These can be virtual or live and enable employees to connect, chat, share feelings and concerns, and see that they’re not alone in their struggles.
• Offer benefits that include mental health. If you’re not doing this already, make it a priority. Your employees need this now more than ever, and offering these (and making sure everyone knows about them) shows your workers that you care about their mental health … [Read more...] about (5/25) 3 Ways HR Can Support Mental Health as Workers Return to the Office

Let’s face it. There are some personality types that can be irritating. It’s helpful to identify these and learn to deal with them so they're not detrimental to teamwork and morale:

• Excessive Optimism. It’s great to be optimistic, but it’s also essential to be realistic and recognize when there are problems that need to be addressed. These overly optimistic individuals may have trouble facing facts and prefer to stay in denial when problems arise.
• One-Upmanship. This personality type is overly competitive, boasts about (or even exaggerates) their accomplishments, and they downplay or dismiss others’ successes.
• Unsolicited advice. This type feels like they are qualified to give everyone guidance, criticism, and suggestions in just about every situation and on every subject.
• Oversharing. These individuals feel a compulsion to share personal details about their lives with their colleagues. They also often share inappropriate or embarrassing … [Read more...] about (5/24) Various Types of Annoying Employees

Introduced last week, the bipartisan Building America’s Health Care Workforce Act would extend pandemic-era allowances to help boost the nursing home workforce. The bill would:

• Allow temporary nurse aides (TNAs) in nursing homes 24 months to complete training and testing requirements to become certified nursing assistants.
• Enable TNAs to apply their on-the-job experience and training toward federal requirements to become certified.

Although COVID is still with us, the worst of the pandemic seems to be over. Everyone is eager to settle back into normalcy, but the truth is that we can’t go back to the way things were. Change is necessary and inevitable. Moving forward, put your focus on reviving, restructuring, and revamping:

• Work on reviewing and updating polices. Make sure they align with workers’ expectations and needs. For instance, scheduling flexibility is one of workers’ top priorities in the post-pandemic world. Your policies should spell this out, including who is eligible, what flexibility options are available, and how they will work.
• Focus on work-life balance for employees. After the pandemic, everyone has a greater appreciation for the ability to work reasonable hours and handle realistic responsibilities. Make sure you have policies that focus on mental wellbeing, wellness programs and opportunities, and management that is supportive and encouraging of healthy … [Read more...] about (5/23) The Future Workplace: Why You Need to Revive, Restructure, and Revamp

Procrastination is probably more common than you think. Instead of being embarrassed about it or denying that you procrastinate, take a few steps to move forward:

• Start with low-hanging fruit. Tackle the task in tiny pieces. For instance, instead of stressing about a big report, take it in manageable chunks. Today, work on the outline. Tomorrow, draft the introduction/executive summary and so on.
• Set deadlines and stick to them. Make these realistic so you don’t have an excuse to miss them.
• Make it an experiment. Don’t build up the value or impact of the task or project to the point where you feel paralyzed. For instance, starting a podcast isn’t a lifetime commitment. It’s something you’re trying. If it’s not a good fit, this doesn’t make you a failure or mean that you'll never be able to have a successful podcast. Give it your best try and learn from your mistakes.
• Reward yourself when you make progress. Whether it’s a latte and scone, … [Read more...] about (5/19) Stop Procrastinating and Tackle That Big Project

Tension at the office can be a good thing when it’s constructive. This challenges workers, encourages healthy competition, and spurs creativity. The foundation of constructive tension involves a “same page trust” that includes six elements:

• The purpose of our collaboration
• The goals we share
• The roles and responsibilities we have
• The plans we are working toward
• How we provide feedback together on progress
• The team behaviors we want to see from each other.