התמלול המלא של Achieving peak productivity without sacrificing well-being

of the resources that are available to you? And in our work environment, what we see as well is, is that productivity needs to be measured in relationship to a defined scope of work. So are you actually doing what you've been contracted to do or what you've been employed to do? And I think as well, the importance for an individual is, is that I have a sense of accomplishment Linda Mzamane: And definitely connecting productivity with that sense of achievement is important, certainly as an employee. In your experience, what are some of the most common ways that productivity pressure can impact employee wellbeing? Lara Barlow: So my experience, I think what I've seen the most is, is that you see that employees generally tend to take on additional risk in order to meet a deadline. In my experience as well, you see an increase in terms of the number of workplace incidents and injuries. Employees become inward-focused. They often tend to withdraw from a larger group or circle within the workplace. You have [00:04:00] decreased levels of motivation and basically you find that there could be one or two individuals who find themselves in a difficult situation, who then inadvertently on negatively impacting on the morale and the spurt of the rest of the team as well. Linda Mzamane: Yeah, that can have quite a ripple effect. Are there any practical strategies to manage workload safely? Lara Barlow: I think an important thing is actually to take a moment and to, to clarify exactly what is expected and what are the expected outcomes and deliverables. I think it's also important to understand when work is being allocated to individuals is the ability to understand what are the individual competencies of the team members and to play to the strengths of the team members. Because so often what happens is, is that you find that. Individuals have heightened sense of anxiety because they've been asked to do a piece of work that they're not necessarily feeling competent or capable of, and automatically an individual will question themselves and go, but I'm not going to be able to do it. [00:05:00] Am I going to be able to deliver on this piece of work? I think for any manager or any person in the workplace is to have regular one-on-ones, and one-on-ones I think are about checking in. On your team members and not checking up on your team members. So how are they doing? What are the blockages that they're experiencing? How can I assist you in overcoming those roadblocks? Linda Mzamane: I love that distinction between checking up versus checking in. I think a lot of organisations tend to. Check our flavor heavily on the checking app. Yes. Which really adds to work pressures. Certainly. Absolutely. Can we talk a little bit about some of the main challenges or barriers to implementing practices like this in different Lara Barlow: workplaces? So I think there's always this perception that when you talk about wellness in the workplace and employees want time, and I

don't think that that's the case at all. If you are an organization that puts employee wellness at the center of what it is that you are wanting to achieve, I think you are. Understanding that you are [00:06:00] wanting to facilitate productivity and you are wanting to put your employees in places where they feel like they're going to achieve. It's not just about time off. It's not just about saying, oh, well Laura needs an extra two or three days. Embracing the idea of wellness and taking the time to invest in it is really about facilitating productivity within the workplace. I think budget constraints sometimes on specific programs, so people are wanting, you know, to roll out specific programs and I think sometimes management sees we might not necessarily have the budget in order to be able to do that. And really, I think leadership plays an important role. It has to start with leadership. I think leadership needs to buy into. Wellness. It's not something that is just solely the employee's responsibility. The employer also has equal responsibility, and I think a lack of transparency in terms of communication. If we don't talk about wellness in the workplace, if we don't create the spaces where people feel [00:07:00] safe to raise issues of wellness, then we really aren't going to give ourselves the opportunity to. To tackle them and to develop programs that really are customized to addressing the individual challenges that employees might be facing in a specific working environment. Linda Mzamane: And I think to your point, leader buy-in is critical Lara Barlow: and just cultivating a sense of empathy in the workplace. I think so often the workplace becomes just a very tactile, transactional place and we are dealing with human beings and we all have so much on our plate. We are juggling the roles of. Being an employee, a mother, a daughter, we've got many, many different roles. And those roles come with all sorts of challenges. Mm. And so having an empathy in terms of what are people experiencing and where are they at in the periods of their life. Mm. Would you Linda Mzamane: say you're noticing any trends in terms of how empathetic workplaces are becoming? Do you think it's still quite a sort of clinical, sterile transactional environment? Lara Barlow: I think it depends on the organization that you, [00:08:00] you are having a look at. But I definitely think that there is a groundswell, there is a movement, and I think forums such as podcasts are raising these issues and making them more and more tangible to people in the workplace. And I was just recalling the other day about. When exactly did we go into lockdown for Covid, and I think it was the 27th of March, and one of the highlights for me, I think of what Covid was, suddenly there was a movement. We suddenly did feel empathy for people. We were being able to tap into what other individuals might potentially be going through. I think we've almost gotta resurrect that and go, COVID was a very specific time and none of us want a pandemic. Come back again. But we definitely want to be able to regenerate that sense of empathy that people were feeling, not just for the people that they knew, but for the wider population. People were in struggle, and there was a greater sense of awareness around that. Linda Mzamane: How do you think leaders can identify the early warning signs that their teams are [00:09:00] being overloaded? Lara Barlow: I think there's some of the obvious signs that you can notice for. So is there increased absenteeism, people taking leave at short notice, people dropping the ball in terms of meeting deadlines or missing key process steps that are normally routine and that people have been accustomed to and all of a sudden? They're missing critical steps resulting in poor quality of work, not delivering, not meeting deadlines. And from an occupational health and safety perspective, what we often see is an increase in terms of incidents and injury. People lose concentration, they become easily distracted, or they're looking for a distraction, and so find themselves doing things in ways that they wouldn't ordinarily do. Mm-hmm. Linda Mzamane: Do you have any success stories that you could potentially share of how an organisation that you've worked with has successfully managed productivity demands without sacrificing employee wellbeing? Lara Barlow: We had one specific contract that we were mobilising a number of [00:10:00] years ago, an extremely difficult client. It was an industrial environment. They had very specific high standards. They were a multinational organisation. And we knew that this was going to be tough. It wasn't necessarily the healthiest working environment. And so we really were very intentional in terms of how we were gonna set the team up on site. We had identified individuals that were very competent in terms of communicating up the line and across the line with the client. So we put those individuals to be client facing and then we identified. Very specific strengths that we were looking for within team members, and we tasked those individuals to go build the teams around them to target very, very specific areas. And in that way, what we really wanted to do was to sort of disperse the amount of pressure that people would be feeling and put. People who really were capable of dealing with higher levels of pressure front and centre, and let them be able to [00:11:00] engage with it and then filter the positive message back down to the team so that people were able to manage expectations, but also manage their stress in response to the environment. Linda Mzamane: And I think the key takeaway there is also is just allowing people to play to their strengths in terms of what their capabilities are, what their capacity for being at the coalface is. Absolutely, um, based on what leaders would know about their sort of experience as employees. Lara Barlow: There's a great tap in

there as well to help individuals do some inward reflection and go, what is it that I'm really good at? What do I bring to the table? What positive contribution do I make? So often I think people feel that they might be lost within the context of a team, but every single team member has such an important role to play, and you really are more successful when you identify the strengths and you play to the strengths and the competencies of individual team members. Linda Mzamane: Thank you so much for your insights, Laura. But before you go, that's bad advice.[00:12:00] We'd love to hear about some of the worst advice you've ever received in our bad advice segment. Joining us for this is Professor Renata Schoeman. Welcome Renata. Nice to have you with us. Okay, so looking back through your careers, what tip have you heard? Maybe it was early on, maybe it was more recent, that turned out to be misguided. Let's start with you, Lara. Lara Barlow: So this was many, many, many years ago when I first started art, and I suppose I had discovered my voice and I had been told by someone in the organisation that I was working with at the time was that I should not make waves and that I didn't have to be the self-appointed moral compass of the organisation. And later on in life, I also had another, a boss of mine, who I think I caused him many, many grey hairs, said to me, life doesn't always have to be black and white. You need to find the grey. And my response to him [00:13:00] was, well, when you are in the role of compliance and keeping people safe, the grey is a dangerous place to play in. And for me I, I think that one needs to have a voice. I think one needs to be confident enough to be able to speak and that sometimes in making people uncomfortable, you can be a force for good and a force for change, and you shouldn't bite your tongue for fear of upsetting a few individuals. Linda Mzamane: Absolutely. We have to be bold enough to rock the boat when necessary. Hey, absolutely. Yeah, sure. And how about you, Renata? What did someone tell you? Thinking it would be a pearl of wisdom? Uh, when it actually was the opposite. Professor Renata Schoeman: It is interesting. It happened about, what is it now, 18 years ago, and it's very similar to Lara's story where I was told chasing things by the same person. Um, the first thing is he will amount to nothing without me. Linda Mzamane: Oh, that sounds like a boyfriend. Professor Renata Schoeman: Well, that at work, Uhhuh. And the second thing [00:14:00] related to this is just don't ruffle any feathers. Just keep quiet and, you know, don't stir. Linda Mzamane: Mm. Professor Renata Schoeman: Subsequently, retrospectively, I can now see exactly what it was, and I can also see the person for who and what it was, and I subsequently did leave. The employment area where I was due to the value clash. I can't live with something that's not right. And it's not a matter of black and white. It's a matter of if something doesn't align to your values, if you stay in that situation, you are going to suffer. It's going to take a mental health toll and it did. It did definitely take a toll on me. So for me now, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's difficult. But I will stay true to my values and I advise that for everyone. If you are aware a value clash which is different than from the organisation you are in and you can't change the organisation, then leave and look after yourself and stay true to your values.[00:15:00] Linda Mzamane: Absolutely. We definitely have to keep company culture and values in mind when making career decisions. So good for you for leaving Renata. Thanks again to both of you for sharing these stories with us. Lara, we will bid you farewell now as we explore this topic further with Renata. Thank you so much for joining us, Lara. Thanks ladies. Linda Mzamane: Are your teams struggling to maintain high productivity while also managing stress? Life Health Solutions has a wellness programme that provides professional and confidential support services to employees. This program includes psychosocial counselling, financial well-being assistance, and telephonic legal services, offering 24 hour access to our care centre. Tap on the link in the show notes for more. Neuroscience and burnout are such a fascinating combination. Our brains are always keeping things interesting in a way. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how this link can help leaders look [00:16:00] after themselves and their teams. Renata, you run your own practice seeing patients, supervising students and research projects, and you serve on a number of advisory committees and boards. It sounds like performing at a high level is very much part of your daily life. What is your personal experience with managing this kind of pressure? Professor Renata Schoeman: I definitely think the older I get, the better I get at it, and maybe it takes less of an emotional toll on me. I've been reflecting a lot on it because I am very busy. There is a lot on my plate and my train. Sometimes I try to offload, and as I offload, I upload again, so it's never getting better. But what I realised, it's not as simple as saying that it's time management. It's absolutely time management, and perhaps even bigger than time management is discipline, but it's about energy management. Mm-hmm. As long as I engage in activities or engage with people that energise me, [00:17:00] I can manage this. But if I only engage in things that drain me, I won't last. So things that I'm very disciplined about is really exercising daily. Um, I exercise at least 30 minutes every single day, Monday to Sunday, come hell or high water. It doesn't mean you run every day, but that discipline becomes a way of living. The other thing is that I realise, and what I often try to teach my patients and my my students is people think we can rest over the weekend or we can recharge during holiday, but if you think, if

you leave yourself phone there on the table or whatever, it's not charging by doing nothing. You actually have to plug it in and deliberately do something. To pick up the battery levels again. The second thing is that if you run your cell phone to zero, you cannot even switch it on. You have to wait and you have to reboot it to switch it on. We are the same if we do a little bit of [00:18:00] energy management actively daily. Your battery is never empty. You never go into that shutdown mode, so don't wait till Friday to rest the weekend. You need to literally switch off every single day, energise and also detox from technology every little day a little bit. In that way, you protect yourself. The energy management enables the discipline, enables the time management. Linda Mzamane: Mm. I absolutely love looking at it that way. Energy management, things that drain your energy versus things that energise you. I think that's a perfect way to look at all of the things that we're juggling. So, what happens to the brain when it is burned out? Professor Renata Schoeman: Now, luckily, our brain, we, we talk about the terminology burnout, but luckily it doesn't really burn out and turn into ashes. We can feel that way, though. Yeah, like all the matches lit up at the same time. It's gone. Um, so burnout is an occupational phenomenon. So the World Health Organisation classified as occupational [00:19:00] phenomenon in May, 2019, and that's really when burnout became a talked about topic and where there was the increased focus on corporate mental health and awareness of mental health in the workplace. Now, I think it's a little bit misleading. Again, the terminology of burnout, as I said, we don't physically burn out, and it's not only something that happens in the brain. It. When we talk about burnout, we talk about different types of symptoms. The one is depersonalisation. We want to keep everything and everyone at arms length or throw your cellphone and please don't ask me anything. It's also about emotional exhaustion and it's, it's more than actually just emotional exhaustion. It's a mental disor. The exhaustion also, and the physical depletion that we have. And then also that feeling of a lack of a sense of accomplishment. There's just nothing that feels, doesn't matter how hard I work, I don't feel I accomplish anything. And that is what we mean with the terminology burnout, [00:20:00] but when we talk about it from a neuroscience perspective, it is a biological response that our body have to chronic stress, and we cannot avoid stresses in our life. We are faced with stresses every day, our personal hassles or stresses, your workplace demands. So you can't avoid that. So what is happening, if you think do not look at your energy management, as I have just explained, is that you go into a biological response distress, which has to do with increased cortisol levels with a whole range of physical problems that's happening, whether it's gastrointestinal system aches and pains, fatigue. Also neurotransmitter changes. So you literally have a depletion of things like serotonin or adrenaline dopamine. So it can arrange with emotional responses then of anxiety, depression, irritability, um, a lack of concentration, motivation, drive, uh, inability to take [00:21:00] decisions. So it has a whole constellation of symptoms, what is happening. So it's not your brain burning out. But it's perhaps the neurotransmitters that's being depleted, Linda Mzamane: Taking your analogy of when a, a cell phone battery goes all the way down to zero and it needs that time to reboot before it can be switched back on again in the human experience. What does recovery look like when you've been through a phase of burnout? Professor Renata Schoeman: I get extremely worried and upset when I hear about people that's booked off for a month or three months or six months for burnout. Because that is not an intervention, that is not recovery. That is, you're going to lie on the couch, you're going to put yourself on the table. You're not actually plugging it in to do anything about it. Nothing is going to change. So that is not recovery. The idea is to steer away from developing burnout, and maybe we can look at that, but once you are in that place where you have symptoms of burnout, it's [00:22:00] very important to get professional interventions. Usually, when a patient sees a psychologist or a psychiatrist with burnout, they're already actually having an anxiety disorder or a major depressive episode. And because there's already a mental health diagnosable condition, it means something has to be done about it. It usually entails medication for a period of time. It definitely needs to include psychotherapy and preferably, it also should include occupational therapy where there is really an evaluation of what is the job choices and demands that also lead to the developing of the symptoms and what can we change otherwise, you're booked off. Nothing is being done about the neurotransmitters, about the actual diagnosis. You go back to work being exactly in the same space and you have to face exactly the same condition so nothing is resolved. Linda Mzamane: Mm. And then it's only a matter of months again, until [00:23:00] you kind of feel, then you need to do that exercise again. Professor Renata Schoeman: It's even worse. There's very good research that shows if you've been off work for a month, you only have a 10% chance of really recovering to your previous level of functioning. So shorter absences from work is better. You can have small interventions on a regular basis rather than book someone off a month, rather, uh, give them access to the necessary support once a week for the next 20 weeks or whatever the case might be. Mm-hmm. Um, but, but your chance of really going back to your previous level of work decreases progressively the longer you book off from work. Linda Mzamane: Now you serve on the

ministerial advisory committee on mental health in South Africa. What conversations are happening about burnout at this level, if any? Professor Renata Schoeman: Sure.I'm obviously not really allowed to disclose with confidentiality agreements of what's discussed in meetings. What we do here is about [00:24:00] conducts, that's complaining about burnout, and it doesn't matter where I go. Everyone complains about their workload, everyone. Flippantly, almost all remark about how burned out they are. And it's also maybe important to distinguish between what is fatigue and what is burnout. Burnout is a very specific constellation of symptoms and from a medical perspective, it's usually, as I mentioned already, depression or anxiety. Fatigue is fatigue. All of us are tired, and if you had a tough week Friday, you're tired. It doesn't mean you're burned out. At year end, it's a busy time. You're tired. It doesn't mean it's burnout. Fatigue gets better if you rest. Fatigue gets better. If you do something joyful and you can enjoy it again or socialise a little bit or whatever that is, that is fatigue. So I think we overuse the concept of burnout and we all also. Overused. The idea of we're all overworked, we're not all overworked, we're just not used to work anymore, and we're definitely not resilient. Linda Mzamane: When you say we are not used to working anymore, is that due to [00:25:00] maybe covid time? What do you mean when you say that? Professor Renata Schoeman: I suppose there's a few generational differences as well that we see in terms of the way that we did work. There's a very good report that came out last year, the digital health report, which shows that South Africans have the most screen time per day in the world and it's not productive screen time. Only about four hours is productive screen time. And if you look at your cell phone or we look at a patient's cell phone, they complain that they're overworked. But lo and behold, they have four hours a day to spend on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, watching a movie, YouTube, whatever. So if you really working that hard, where the hell do you get time for that? So we have a misperception. We make ourselves extremely busy, but we are not busy with business. It doesn't energise you to spend time on social media. So what are you doing there? It just drains you and steals from your time. Linda Mzamane: Maybe it's a mental break. I mean, I know I certainly use social media as a [00:26:00] mental break when I have completed a task that's debatable. Yeah. Judge me or not. 'cause I think certainly there's a lot of people who may use it in that way as well. Professor Renata Schoeman: Yes, there's a little bit of choice in it if you fill your mind with positive things. I think if you go and just maybe it's significantly better than doom scrolling or just comparing your life to whatever you see on Instagram or Facebook and comparing yourself with that and also if it's a limit, if it's 30 minutes, yes, by all means take a break. But we use that very easily. Sure. But when it becomes three or four hours, it takes away from real time to to really engage in things that energise you. And we also know the negative impact of excessive screen time where studies date back to 2017 that already show. And that's pre covid years. That excessive screen time meets to sleeping disorders, anxiety, depression, irritability, and concentration issues. Now we have concentration issues, so we take longer to complete our task. We [00:27:00] distract ourselves with our technology. I. So we feel extremely overworked and anxious because we don't get to everything, but except of just managing it better. The other thing is that I think it's the aftermath of Covid, is when we pivoted to the online environment, and if you think how we operated pre covid, you had a meeting when you walk to the next office and you quickly have a glass of water, then you have the next meeting. So we had small little micro breaks in our day that helped us to just recover a little bit. Now we book meetings back to back, to back to back. It's just not healthy for us. We really need to book less meetings. And also maybe ask if all the meetings are necessary. Is it something that I can solve in a five minute telephone call or in a quick email? Is a 30 minute meeting really necessary because we lose time that we can use productively, but unnecessary spending time using technology, technology is a beautiful aid. It can make us so productive. It's also a [00:28:00] big year to evolve. Mm, double-edged sword Linda Mzamane: Where do you think leaders are most likely to fall short when trying to balance productivity with employee wellbeing? Professor Renata Schoeman: Linda, what I've seen over the past couple of years said we first started to work at the Business School in the space of corporate mental health, roughly around 2017. And I think the pendulum has almost swung over too much where from, we wanted awareness. We wanted organisations to support people being aware of practices that can help or practices that really to the detriment of people's health. But the pendulum has swung over. We are, unfortunately, employees are now at a point where they see the mental health is the responsibility of the organisation and the the, there's a lack of personal responsibility. So that is the one thing I think organisations. Have done a lot, but employees' expectations is now you are the cause of my problems. You need to solve it without any personal [00:29:00] attention to resilience and self-care. Linda Mzamane: Mm-hmm. Professor Renata Schoeman: The second thing where I think there's still things that can improve, there's a lot of organisations that really does very well in terms of support and corporate mental health. But unfortunately for some, it's still a tick box exercise. We have all the bells and whistles in place, but we do not really look at a culture of psychological safety.

We do not look at a culture which supports values that, that we say we have and we do something different. So it shouldn't be a tick box exercise. It should really be something that infuses the culture. And then the third thing that leaders do wrong, they don't set an example. Now if you don't take care of yourself and you work these excessive times, and I don't believe in the concept of work life, balance work is part of our life. You can't balance it. It ease life. Okay? But work-life boundaries, they need to be work life boundaries and it's the leader's role. Mm-hmm. To, to [00:30:00] model that boundaries as well. Linda Mzamane: We touched on this a bit earlier about strategies of managing burnout at work, where, you know, these long periods of absence aren't necessarily the way to go. What do you think is the most simple but effective strategy to help manage burnout in the workplace? Professor Renata Schoeman: Very first thing is just communication. It's like, just really practice what you preach and say that if someone is taking strength, that you can reach out to someone. And what we've seen through the years is that ICAS or HR is usually not the first touch point. This usually in an organisation, the, you know, that one person, male or female, that is really the go-to person. Linda Mzamane: Mm-hmm. Professor Renata Schoeman: And to make sure that that person is empowered and skilled enough to know where I could just be. The ear and the shoulder and support that person not to develop compassion fatigue and where that person are then empowered to know where I can refer the individual to. The second thing is we cannot have all [00:31:00] the answers in ours. Your organisation cannot give everything everyone need in terms of professional support, but know where to refer to, know the network in your area. And make it possible. So for example, if someone do take strain, make it possible for them to take off one afternoon a week to go and see the therapist or the doctor rather than it gets to a point where they admit it for three weeks, booked after six months or whatever. And the third thing I would highly recommend, I think I touched on the leadership example and they, the fourth thing is it's a resource mismatch as well. So if you make sure that every employee have what they need to do their job properly, and that refers to time. So a fair distribution of workload and not overloading your star performers. Linda Mzamane: Mm-hmm. Professor Renata Schoeman: And B, knowledge. Often, people are promoted into positions where they do not necessarily have the necessary knowledge or the mentorship they need to [00:32:00] execute the job and then performance drop. But everyone say, oh, it was the wrong appointment, but it wasn't, there was just not the mentorship and the support that was needed. If you make sure there's enough knowledge, resources, financial resources, where it's needed. And the human resources, then that is one of the basic preventative strategies to prevent burnout. In all my years, I'm now 18 years in private practice. I do also, part of my work, I do a lot of independent medical evaluations for insurance companies, for people that's been on this slippery course of I'm off for one month, six months, temporary disability, et cetera, et cetera. In all this time, there was only two people, only two that really. Couldn't return to work again. Linda Mzamane: Sure. No, but that's so fascinating. Thank you so much, Professor Schoeman, um, for, for, for joining us and for being generous with your time. I know that our listeners will benefit from your knowledge and experience, so I thank you very, very much. It's a huge pleasure, Linda. [00:33:00] Both our guests today have given us real food for thought, plus practical tips on how leaders can manage burnout better. It doesn't have to be an either-or situation. As we've heard, it is possible to keep a business operating at a high level while still supporting the well-being of the people inside it. What is one nugget of advice you're going to share with a colleague after listening to our conversation today? For me, I think the key takeaways from Lara were about work being measured against my actual job and what I'm hired to do. Also, the distinction between employers or managers checking in versus checking up. I think this is super important for a healthier work environment. And from Renata, I think the concept of energy management over time management and the idea of taking personal responsibility about managing our own wellbeing and not deferring the responsibility solely to our employers or leaders is a big one. So definitely some tough truth bombs there, but an enjoyable thought thought-provoking conversation. I'm [00:34:00] Linda Mzamane, and this has been the Sound Advice Podcast brought to you by Life Health Solutions. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes. For more information and helpful resources, please check the show notes. Until next time.