Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

3 Keys to Meeting Thrive Needs

“Certain ideological systems and work environments are broken. In this age, it’s up to change makers, risk-takers, and the faithful to repair or start fresh when our contexts aren’t bearing fruit for the common good.”

Michaela O’Donnell, PhD in Make Work Matter

It’s the end of January 2022 as I write this and I’ve already had about half a dozen requests since the beginning of the year to speak on or facilitate sessions related to workplace retention. Whether you want to frame it as the great resignation, the labor participation rate, COVID still wreaking havoc, or nobody wanting to work anymore, workplace engagement and therefore retention is at what many people feel is an all time low. Business leaders are scrambling, because it is impacting business outcomes.

In one of these recent sessions, one person began to rant about people “not being like they used to be.” I had gotten to the point where I had heard enough, and I asked him (in a way that I hope came across as polite) what he was doing at his company to adapt to this new reality. He looked at me dumbfounded while the gentleman sitting next to him grinned and started to rattle off the ways in the last six months they’ve changed their people practices -really their whole paradigm around how to get work done- and how it’s working. These two men who were sitting side by side are competitors in a way. In a historically traditional industry. I know who’d I go to work for and who I’d buy a product from. The one who is adapting, the one who is innovating, instead of the one who is complaining. I bet their turnover rates compared to one another tell the same story.

When I went back to do a search on one of the three things that create a thriving workplace, doing a search for the words “autonomy”, “flexibility”, and “freedom” on our blog, the first post I could find took me back almost ten years to 2012 right after I started Horizon Point in 2011. Apparently I have been talking about these things for over ten years, advocating for us to think differently about what and where it means to work.

We’ve yet to find a better structure for organizing what people need to thrive in the workplace than what Daniel Pink outlines in Drive. It’s 1) Autonomy 2) Mastery 3) Purpose.

So here is a collection of blog posts and thoughts, dating back 10 years, linked to these needs:

1 . Autonomy:

Autonomy and Productivity Together Can Be Better

How Innovative Companies Go About Rule Making

The Name of the Game is Freedom: How Innovative Companies Motivate and Retain the Best

Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

Punching the Time Clock May Not Be All It’s Cracked Up to Be

2. Mastery:

Mastery is being able to learn and continuously improve and get good, really good at something. It requires several things to achieve, but we are finding more and more what is critically missing from people getting there (and finding purpose) is margins. Margin being the ability to have time to think, process information, and be able to apply creative thinking to solve problems, learn and grow and actually enjoy doing it.

Here are a couple of posts to help you think about margin:

Take a Lunch Break

6 Ways to Build Energy

Also refer back to our Survive post on doing a time tracking exercise to also help examine margin and times of peak productivity that can help to lead to mastery.

And finally, mastery usually is built towards during periods of flow:

5 Questions to Ask Yourself about Flow in the Workplace

3. Purpose: The final pillar of building a workplace where people thrive is building purpose. We believe you do this by establishing company mission, vision, and values and hiring and retaining people that align with your organization’s values. Food for thought on this pillar can be found in these posts:

What are Company Values and How Do You Create Them?

6 Ways to Design Your Performance Management System Around Values

7 Ways to Supercharge Employee Engagement

A Series of Posts on Mission Statements

What happens when we stack the pyramid in our favor? Innovation happens. And innovation is an absolute necessity in today’s VUCA world. But we often limit innovation to products or processes and we don’t think about innovating people practices.

That’s why we’ve launched Illuminate, to help you actually spend the time innovating your people practices. Join us today- seats are limited.

February 1, 2022
Building the Bridge Between Survive and Thrive in the Workplace
Oftentimes getting from one place to another requires a bridge to cross. A connection point between two things that seem unconnected or so far apart they can’t be reached by conventional means is necessary.

These “bridges” are often grounded in both sides of what they are trying to connect. They are meaningless and useless if they don’t have two sides for anchoring.

So is true of meeting survival needs and getting to “thrive” needs in the workplace. Relational needs are the bridge. Relational needs have roots and support in both survive and thrive and they provide a way between the two. Meeting relational needs is the bridge. They also may be the linchpin.

In her book Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown seeks to map and define the language of feelings and emotions before being able to build meaningful connections. In her section on “Places We Go When We Search For Connection” she seeks to define belonging and connection and contrast it with disconnection and loneliness.

In this section, Brown drives home the point that relational needs (belonging and connection) are both about surviving and thriving. She states, “from an evolutionary perspective, connection was about survival, today, it’s what gives purpose and meaning in our lives. Research shows that ‘people who have strong connections with others are happier, healthier, and better able to cope with the stresses of everyday life.’”

In contrast, disconnection can “‘actually share the same neural pathways with feelings of physical pain.’ Current neuroscience research shows that the pain and feelings of disconnection are often as real as physical pain.” (For more on this and the connection to building inclusive workplaces, tune into this Neuroleadership Podcast.)

We need connection – pun intended – to build the bridge to meet our survival needs that are evolutionary and adaptive, as well as to help us meet our full potential and thrive-to produce meaningful, creative, and purpose-driven work..

So what do we do to meet relational needs and build bridges in the workplace?:
1. Focus on communication. Communication is an essential part of relationships. I found it fascinating in our 2021 book of the year, Do Nothing, how author Celeste Headlee emphasizes our need to communicate with voice as a key to meeting relational needs and thriving in the workplace (and in other places) in contrast to communicating through writing. Communicating with voice she postulates, instead of texting or emailing, helps to meet the evolutionary and neurological needs tied to relatedness. Our brains haven’t evolved enough for communication primarily through text, email, and other chat features to meet the lower order survival needs formed through relatedness. We need to be heard and we need to hear others to be successful in meeting relationship needs. She, among other authors, also points to how social media “communication” has largely reduced our ability to meet our relational needs and has fostered a culture of more disconnection and loneliness and the undesirable outcomes (as listed in Atlas of the Heart as “less empathy, more defensiveness, more numbing, and less sleeping”) these states produce.
So, in the workplace we need to:

a. Puts guardrails around communication almost exclusively done through means that don’t give people literal voice. COVID has made this harder. A simple guardrail would be “cameras on” during a virtual meeting. A larger area of focus would be training leaders on what modes of communication are appropriate given what needs to be communicated and teaching people how to not “hide” behind email and text messaging when difficult conversations are needed. Read Do Nothing for more practical insights on this.

b. Build workspaces that foster communication in person. This doesn’t mean the open office environment, but it does mean common spaces where people can interact formally and informally throughout the work day as people return to the office post pandemic. This could be common break areas for meals and common meetings areas conducive to formal meetings and also informal chats that pop up doing the workday. (Note: Don’t take this to mean we are advocating for a 100% return to the office all day, everyday post COVID. Research shows that most people want a hybrid arrangement and the research also supports the critical piece autonomy and flexibility play in meeting thrive needs. More on this in next week’s post.)

2. Focus on building psychological safety. In Atlas of the Heart and her other works, Brown repeatedly emphasizes how important belonging is. She says that “true belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” The best way to foster this type of belonging that leads to meeting both survive and thrive needs is to build a psychologically safe environment. Here is some more information from us on psychological safety and some tools for building a psychologically safe workplace from Google.

When we produce a psychologically safe environment we get over the bridge to the thrive side, thus increasing positive workplace outcomes and diminishing negative ones as found in the research by Amy Edmondson.

In summation, work by William Patrick cited in Atlas of the Heart emphasizes our need not for individualism (which we seem to value so much, particularly in western cultures) but from our “collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.” Our workplaces can’t thrive without these things either.

Interested in learning more about how to apply these principles in the workplace? Sign up for our Illuminate workshop.
January 27, 2022
3 Ways to Meet Survival Needs in the Workplace
I will never forget reading Arianna Huffington’s account of her personal experience that forced her to focus on wellness and wellbeing, namely sleep. In one of her books, Arianna talks about how she woke up on the floor after hitting her head on the way down. She had collapsed due to utter exhaustion.

Arianna went on to found Thrive Global and wrote another book, The Sleep Revolution. The mission at Thrive Global is to “end the burnout epidemic with sustainable, science-based solutions that unlock employee performance and enhance well-being.” They are tackling wellbeing through employers, helping us see that these issues are not an “employee benefit” but a business “strategy”.

At Horizon Point, we couldn’t agree more. Much of what Thrive helps people focus on is small behavioral changes that end up creating habits at the individual level. If the majority of employees adopt these strategies and change habits, then it ends up impacting workplace outcomes at the organizational level. Doing this successfully demands that organizations understand and adopt ways of working that support these behavioral changes. We can’t demand people change their habits when we don’t support organizational structures and cultures that allow the habits to take place.

We need to help people meet their “survival” needs. When we do so, that allows them to “thrive” by being able to meet higher-order needs and impact business results.

So what do we need to support to meet survival needs?
1. First, as Huffington points to, SLEEP is foundational and critical. According to the CDC, “Insufficient sleep is associated with a number of chronic diseases and conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression.” In order to consider sleep, we also must consider people’s natural circadian rhythms. This necessitates that we look at how our bodies function naturally as Daniel Pink says in his book, When. Taylor focused on this book in a recent blog post. Here are a few concrete steps for workplace implementation:
a. Get rid of anything that requires people to go against their circadian rhythms. Hello rotating shifts – and to a lesser extent, night shifts. Get rid of them if you can. If you have to operate on a 24/7 structure, then at least keep people on a consistent shift that does not change. There is study after study about how detrimental this practice is to people’s health. Here’s one: Shift work impairs brain functioning.

b. Get people to do a time audit. (Here’s a good time tracking spreadsheet download to do so.) I particularly like this one because the notes column helps people to jot down how they are feeling, not just what they are doing. I would encourage using the notes section to also note when attention seems to be waning. In other words, how long have you been focused on a task when you notice it is harder to stay focused? Research suggests that this point is usually about 50 minutes to an hour for most people. Helping people track their natural peaks and troughs of energy, attention, and productivity helps them to understand their natural rhythms. It also can help them discern what is getting in the way of a consistent time to go to sleep and to wake, which research has shown is critical to performance. You can then take this and apply some general parameters around meeting times and workday structure for your team. For example, our team at HPC did this and we found that mid-morning was almost everyone’s peak productivity time. Because of this, we try to reserve this time for individual work on important tasks as opposed to meetings. We also seek to eliminate other distractions and time-wasters during this peak performance time block.

2. Next, know that you have to aid people in completing the stress cycle. Stress is a natural part of life. It is adaptive and helpful in many cases, but we need to monitor the fine line between boredom and anxiety, as we’ve noted before in a blog post. Like dealing with a chronic lack of sleep, dealing with consistent high levels of stress leads to the same type of health risks and reduces cognitive functioning, thus negatively impacting workplace outcomes. We’ve compiled 7 Ways to Help Employees Complete the Stress Cycle. Check out some of the concrete steps to actually do this in the workplace in this blog post.

3. Finally, paying a living wage and/or helping employees maintain financial wellbeing is critical. We’ve written about examining wage practices (how to do it) and why what you pay does matter. You can check those posts out for practical tips and advice on addressing this survival need. But I think the podcast from Adam Grant titled Why It Pays to Raise Pay (listen about 4 minutes into the podcast to hear the MIT professor talk about this) drives the point as to why we have to focus on this survival need because when we don’t, we are actually “making people dumber”. We reduce people’s cognitive functioning when they are constantly worried about how to make ends meet, whether it is because their paycheck does not support their ability to survive, or because they have made financial decisions that trap them into not having enough to pay their debts. So first, examine if you are paying living wages (check out MIT’s living wage calculator). If you are, great. Then second, coordinate with your banker or financial advisors to offer classes to employees about how to maintain financial wellbeing. Most of them will do this for free for you, just make sure you’re reviewing the curriculum that will be used and selecting something that has been research-backed.

As the previously mentioned podcast says, we really need to think about these survival issues because when we don’t, we literally make people “dumber.” Not meeting survival needs reduces cognitive functioning. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the ERG Theory, we know survival needs as “existence needs”. We can’t talk about helping people thrive until we create workplace conditions that are conducive to people existing or surviving.

Interested in learning more about how to help people survive and then thrive in the workplace? Check out and sign up for our Illuminate Workshop.
January 25, 2022
The Point’s Top 5 Posts of 2021

2021 has been another interesting year. Despite the challenges experienced this year, we have strived to continue to provide insight on a wide variety of topics on The Point. We try to bring real-life scenarios and personal experiences into our writing. We’re always glad to help you on your quest for knowledge to better your career, your work environment, or your organization!

Here is a look back at The Point’s Top 5 Posts of 2021:

5. Hiring Incentives in 2021

4. 6 Steps for Planning and Implementing Effective Extended Leave

3. World Mental Health Day- October 10th, 2021

2. To Offer or Not to Offer: Pros and Cons of Sign-on Bonuses Post Covid

1. Taking a Walkabout

Thank you for a great year. Please visit us in 2022. We promise to keep you informed and entertained in the new year!

If you’d like to subscribe to The Point, you can do so here.

December 21, 2021
2021 Book of the Year

It might seem odd that a company with a core value of “productivity” would choose a book of the year titled Do Nothing. But in a year of seeing people’s mental and physical health deteriorate due not just to issues a global pandemic continues to cause, but also because of the phenomenon of overworking and under living, we found the book captured the essence of putting productivity, and work, in perspective.

As the author, Celeste Headlee states, “The question is not about whether you are productive but what you are producing.” And we would go on to say that the question also expands to examine the method in which you structure your production and whether or not it leads to healthier, more joyful lives and more meaningful output.

Over the course of the year, we watched ourselves and our clients attempt to be on two to three virtual meetings at a time, catch up on work emails over the weekend because the work week demanded forty hours of meetings alone, and watched as story after story was brought up about people’s mental health crashing and therefore causing a complete meltdown of physical health. Emergency surgeries were needed, trips to the ER for chest pains took place, and people cried at lunch with us because they were so exhausted and did not see a way out of their current state of life revolving around the need to meet “productivity” demands at work and at home.

But as our core value of productivity intertwines with the value to put people first and to foster passion with an end goal of innovating the workplace, we found that many of us don’t have the bandwidth or the energy to innovate anything as we constantly chase the next goal or metric, all while trying to multitask as we are chained to our phones and computers.

We’ve lost sight of the goal of work with purpose and replaced it with work towards some endless pursuit that creates exhaustion and insanity. This narrative may not be something you’ve personally experienced, but we’d venture to guess you know and love at least one person that has been impacted by this conundrum.

So, we all took or are taking sabbaticals in 2021 and 2022 to think deeply about what this means and to develop training and insights to shift the paradigm for ourselves and our clients on what it means to work, to be productive, and to think deeply about just how we got to this point where enough is never enough.

Do Nothing provides a history and research lesson about how, over the past 200 years since the industrial revolution, we’ve gotten here and gives us six “life-back strategies” on “how to break away from overworking, overdoing, and under living.”

And although we as a team may not agree with everything Headlee postulates in her narrative which may be more based on how she defines work (something for pay) versus how we do (something for pursuing purpose), we agree with its method of the scientific practitioner approach by taking sound research and applying the learnings of that research in our own lives and workplaces to experiment and learn. Then, we can follow the information and data our learning provides to make better decisions.

And as Headlee suggests, in our metric obsessed world, sometimes the information provided doesn’t come in the form of numbers but in the way we feel. We need to be paying more attention to how we feel and what that means for us to be productive in a way that leads to creativity and innovation. This book provides us with the opportunity to think about how to do that.

In fact, one method of feeling should be tied to our ability to have time to think, not just do. Our ability to think, apply, and learn is what separates us as human beings. It’s what makes us human and it’s what produces great work. It’s what produces innovation.

Given the thinking and learning we’ve done over the course of 2021 and into 2022 on the topic of workplace wellness and wellbeing and in an effort to innovate the workplace through people practices, we are excited to be offering workshops- one on a cruise ship, yes on a cruise ship!- to help you come to understand the research, design experiments at your workplace, and help follow the data and the feelings to help not only yourself but also to help your workplace build a culture where people thrive. To not just create change at the individual level, but to create it through organizational systems and structures. These workshops will also provide an opportunity for relationship building and fun.

The premise of our book of the year and our workshops is not to literally “do nothing” but to realize we’ve gone so far to the opposite extreme that we need to find a way to focus on doing nothing so that we can center ourselves so that we can find balance and pleasure not only in leisure but also in work, and to realize that sometimes they are both so integrated that you cannot have one without the other.

We are so appreciative of the opportunity to pursue purpose with you this year. Thank you for your business and your friendship. Blessings to you and your organization as we all strive to build workplaces where people thrive and enjoy doing work worth producing and have the health and mindset and permission to enjoy leisure. Both are noble goals, and both require one another to happen.

If you are interested in learning more about how to create organizations where people thrive, please visit our Illuminate website at: https://horizonpointconsulting.com/illuminate/

December 7, 2021