International Men’s Day (IMD) is celebrated on 19 November every year and is marked in around 80 countries worldwide. 

As a day of observance, IMD is a great opportunity to take part in a global conversation about manhood, masculinity, and men’s issues. With a focus on uniting humanity, IMD encourages everyone to work together to:  

✔️ Acknowledge the contribution of men and boys 

✔️ Tackle discrimination and disadvantage 

✔️ Foster positive gender relations  

✔️ Make the world a safer place for everyone 
 

This year’s theme for IMD is Men's Mental Health and providing men with opportunities for connection, support, and education to enhance their health and wellbeing.  

Having discussions around men’s mental health is an important factor in eliminating gender inequality and practicing an inclusive workplace. On this International Men’s Day, let’s all work together to reduce the stigma and make it easier for people to talk about men’s mental health within the workplace.  

Looking for training content in this space? We encourage you to check out some of our providers and their content here.  

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Having discussions around men’s mental health is an important factor in eliminating gender inequality and practicing an inclusive workplace. This International Men’s Day (IMD) lets work together to reduce the stigma in the workplace. 

Online training to support mens mental health

Having discussions around men’s mental health is an important factor in eliminating gender inequality and practicing an inclusive workplace. This International Men’s Day (IMD) let’s work together to reduce the stigma in the workplace. 

Online training to support men’s mental health 

Picture two co-workers. The first is busy all day, racing from meeting to meeting, replying to messages, staring down a to-do list, and barely taking a second to breathe. The second appears to have time on their side, working at a methodical pace and taking regular breaks between tasks. Who do you think is more productive? 

Conventional wisdom suggests the first person is more likely to be productive. After all, the more time you spend working, the more you’re likely to get done, right? Many of us have been conditioned to believe in this ‘work til you drop’ attitude. 

In reality, the second person, who opts to take regular breaks, is significantly more likely to be productive, as they give their brain the time it needs to reset and process information. New research by Microsoft finds that taking regular breaks decreases the risk of employee burnout while also improving focus and engagement and helping people manage stress. In this case, the old adage rings true: work smarter, not harder. 

Unfortunately, many people probably relate more closely to the first person in this scenario. You might even know the feeling: you work and work, until sometime in the afternoon after yet another Zoom meeting, you feel the tension build up in your temples or the stress pool in your stomach. This way of working is unsustainable and, ultimately, unproductive. 

We’ll dig into this new research on why our brains need breaks, looking at the case for taking breaks, as well as the benefits of breaks for productivity. 

Sometimes, ‘break’ can be a dirty word in our breakneck, fast-paced modern culture. When you’re always on the go, facing various deadlines and pressures, it feels like there’s no time to take a break. Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index report backs this up, finding that 54% of respondents feel overworked, while 39% say they are outright exhausted.

Many feel the pressure is always on to be succeeding, achieving, and boosting their productivity. There’s no time for a break — I’ll sleep when I’m dead! However, when we step back, take a deep breath, and critically evaluate this mindset, we realise it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The case for taking breaks is clear-cut. Put simply, our brains are designed for sprints, not marathons. They need time to rest, reset, and consolidate knowledge. Without this, our brains cannot function optimally. It is often during these moments when we are not actively thinking about anything that our best ideas suddenly come to us — those brilliant ‘lightbulb’ moments. 

This phenomenon is no coincidence. As Psychology Today explains, “the frontal lobe brain networks — responsible for reasoning, planning, decision-making, and judgment — work for you in creative ways when the brain is quiet, not while you are effortfully trying to find a solution to a problem. Moments of insight increase as the brain unwinds. Why? When not actively tackling a task, the brain connects random ideas and consolidates these with prior knowledge into exciting new thoughts, ideas, directions, and potential solutions.”

In other words, those moments when you’re putting in all your effort but running into a mental block often signal that you need a break. Increased effort does not necessarily correlate with increased productivity. In fact, this mindset is worth debunking. Obviously, you are more likely to complete a task if you work on it for 25 minutes than if you work on it for 2 minutes. However, as with many things in life, you will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. For example, working on a task for 3 hours straight does not guarantee a better outcome than breaking that work up into four 30-minute increments. At a certain point, your brain will be crying out for a break. 

Numerous studies have attempted to quantify the benefits of downtime for our brain health. One such experiment, conducted by Marc Berman in 2008, saw 38 university students study lists of random numbers, then recite these numbers from memory in reverse order. Next, half the students took a walk in a botanical garden for an hour, while the other half walked the same distance through busy, heavily trafficked city streets for an hour. The students then memorised and recited the lists again. On average, students who walked through nature recalled 1.5 more digits than the first time they took the test, whereas those who walked through the busy city streets improved by only 0.5 digits. 

This study shows the benefits of downtime for our memory, focus, and attentiveness. Similar patterns have been observed in school students. A 2016 study by psychologist Karrie Godwin found that, during longer lessons, young primary school students were distracted about a quarter of the time. However, during shorter lessons, with more frequent breaks, attention and engagement skyrocketed. Ultimately, they determined that it was more effective to give students more breaks, settling on several 10-minute lessons rather than fewer 30-minute lessons. 

On a larger scale, a similar pattern is evident in studies of the 4-day workweek. One study from Iceland found that when workers reduced their hours from 40 to 35 per week, productivity stayed constant or rose in most workplaces. Likewise, Microsoft Japan tested a 4-day work week and saw productivity increase by 40%. 

While this might seem paradoxical, giving workers more breaks allows them more downtime to rest, reset, relax, and ultimately increase productivity. In these instances, less is definitely more. 

The benefits of breaks for productivity 

As anyone who has ever had to work long shifts will tell you, breaks are beneficial for many self-evident reasons: mental health, physical health, memory, and even attentiveness. Plus, who doesn’t like taking a 10-minute break to grab a coffee and a snack? When it comes to productivity, taking regular breaks is equally important. While this might seem counterintuitive to some people — how can working less be more productive? —  a recent Microsoft study analysed the benefits of taking breaks, concluding that our brains need regular breaks to maintain productivity. 

During the study, 14 people attended Zoom meetings while wearing electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment — a cap to monitor the electrical activity in their brains. On the first day of testing, participants attended four back-to-back half-hour meetings, all on different topics. The following day, these meetings were interspersed with 10-minute breaks, during which time the participants completed a guided meditation.

Following the study, researchers found three key takeaways: 

1. Breaks between meetings significantly reduce stress

Raise your hand if back-to-back meetings stress you out. Well, according to Microsoft’s research, you’re not alone.  During the study, beta waves, which are associated with stress, accumulated in participants' brains when attending back-to-back meetings. In other words, participants became increasingly stressed during back-to-back meetings. 

On the other hand, when participants took a break between meetings, beta wave activity dropped, allowing for a reset. As such, participants entered the following meeting feeling more relaxed, as beta wave activity held steady and never had the chance to accumulate.

2. Taking breaks increases focus and engagement 

We all know the feeling: you’re on your third consecutive meeting, your colleague is presenting an important slide deck, you’re trying your best to focus, but your mind keeps wandering, eventually drifting off into daydreams. Luckily, science now backs up these feelings. 

According to Microsoft’s research, participants who took meditation breaks between meetings showed brainwave patterns with positive levels of frontal alpha asymmetry, which correlates to higher focus and engagement.

In contrast, participants who didn’t take breaks had (you guessed it!) negative levels of frontal alpha symmetry, suggesting negative engagement during the meeting. 

Put simply, not taking breaks between meetings made it far more difficult for people to focus.

3. Stress levels spike when transitioning between meetings

Finally, researchers noticed that if participants didn’t take breaks, stress levels spiked when transitioning between meetings. For participants who did take breaks, stress levels decreased during this period.

According to Michael Bohan, who oversaw the research, this is because “you’re coming to the end of the meeting, knowing you have another one coming right up, and you’re going to have to switch gears and use your brain to think hard about something else.”

“Our research shows breaks are important, not just to make us less exhausted by the end of the day, but to actually improve our ability to focus and engage while in those meetings,” he adds.

Ultimately, the message is clear: to maintain focus and engagement, reduce stress, and improve productivity, breaks are vital. To function at your best, breaks should be factored in as a regular part of your daily workload; just like checking your emails, replying to Slack messages, and attending meetings. 

While old-school thinking may perceive taking a break as lazy or unproductive, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, breaks are one of the best productivity tools in your arsenal. So, next time you hit a brick wall at work, remember this breaking news: your brain needs breaks, and so do you.

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can check out our articles on scheduling breaks to increase productivity and why you need to switch off from technology during your break.

We’ll dig into the new research on why our brains need breaks, looking at the case for taking breaks, as well as the benefits of breaks for productivity. 

Why our brains need breaks to maintain productivity

Written by Lauren Waldman, founder of Learning Pirate, and a revolutionary in the discipline of organisational learning and development. With nearly 20 years of experience as a learning professional, complemented by qualifications in neuroscience, Lauren is driving the evolution of the way individuals and organisations learn, approach learning, and join forces with their brains! 

Imagine this: you’ve been locked up at home for most of the year, balancing your home, social and professional life in a way you never have before. While that’s happening, you’re also experiencing a vast array of emotions and feelings, constantly wondering what’s to come next in the world. On top of all that, you’ve had to maintain productivity for work but have found it increasingly hard to focus.  

But we don’t have to imagine this. This really did happen, with many still living in a variation of this existence across the globe.   

Now let’s add learning. Learning that may need to be done to onboard as a new employee, or to upskill as an existing one.   

Learning in order to adjust and adapt to new protocols, policies, procedures, health standards and cultures.   

Learning that is required for people to do their jobs on shop and factory floors, to maintain compliance, keep people safe, understand new products and services etc.  

Does anyone else feel their levels of overwhelm increasing as you read this? A slight tightness in the chest as the pile of things to do gets bigger?  

This is what employees, otherwise known as humans, are experiencing all over the world when it comes to balancing workload, maintaining productivity, and trying to keep up with necessary learning at the same time. 

At a recent event (Learning Futures, hosted by iVentiv) myself (appearing as a floating virtual head), along with Nick Ramsay and David Hastings of Go1, facilitated a session with learning leaders to have some pretty open discussions about learning under the conditions of heavier cognitive and emotional loads. 

To bring this into context, let’s look at the brain and the science which helps us navigate all of this.  

First thing to know, the brain is expensive! And its currency is energy. Our brains are designed to process and send information through electrical signals (energy). As you may imagine, the more areas activated, the more energy is being transmitted. Not as much as you may think, but more than when you’re in the resting state. 

In the resting state, when you’re not actively participating in a task or being stimulated, like when you’re doing focused learning, the brain is consuming about 20% of the body’s energy. That’s a whole lot, considering its size and the amount of real estate it occupies in relation to your entire body. 

So how does knowing this help us as learning professionals - and everyday humans for that matter? 

 Having a baseline understanding of our own cognitive resources allows us to not only be more aware and understanding of the limitations of those around us, but enables us to help to protect them as well.  Allow me to explain. 

Focused learning takes a lot of cognitive energy. So making decisions on how to execute and roll out learning initiatives that still need to get done should take this into consideration.   

What else is going on in the organization that will need people’s cognitive energy?  

Are people navigating and adjusting to hybrid working conditions?  

These are just some of the things that are going to be taking up people’s cognitive and emotional energy.   

Slowing down, to take a greater look at the landscape of what’s going on across the organization, will help in making decisions on how much more you can add to someone’s plate without deteriorating their energy entirely. Don’t forget, people are also being consumed with managing their personal lives, which for many have now merged with their working lives.  

This doesn’t mean that learning has to stop, but it does mean that the way we go about it has to be much more strategic and intentional. So let me offer you some practical suggestions on how you can navigate that. 

Things you can take into consideration:  

Short-term training vs long-term learning: Do people need to know or be able to do something for a short period of time or do they need to learn something more permanently? It’s the difference between cramming for an exam the night before then forgetting everything a few days later vs taking the time to encode the learning into a long-term memory to transfer for future use. (The latter is going to take more time.) 

Environment: Where does the learning need to take place? And more importantly where does the transfer of that learning need to take place. When you ask yourself those questions you may find that the two don’t match up.     

If you’re learning something remotely that needs to be transferred into a specific environment, you’re going to want to consider the additional time and transfer activities that will be needed to do so. Just because I’m amazing at Mario Kart, doesn’t mean you should let me behind the wheel of a real car (yes, I know, an exaggerated example but it makes the point nicely doesn’t it?) 

And last in order, but certainly not in importance… 

Design of the learning itself: I realise that this consideration is completely blurred by my own professional bias, but it still stands as true. The beauty of understanding how the brain operates, even at a foundational level, is that you can be better informed on how to design to work with the operational system as opposed to against it. This allows us to manage the cognitive resources in more effective and efficient ways for our learners.  

Needless to say, there are several more things to share about this topic and many more things to consider, but allow me to save your cognitive energy for the next part of our journey.     

All great learning begins with awareness and if I’ve accomplished that then I’d say we’re well on our way to continuing the adventure. 

Take care of those brains, minds and bodies.  

YARR for now... (You Are Really Ready!) 

Keen to hear more insights from the webinar? Watch the full session.  

You may also like to read Lauren's article on how joining forces with our brains can help us to be more emotionally intelligent and empathetic in the workplace. 

Focused learning takes a lot of cognitive energy. Therefore, the way we go about learning has to be much more strategic and intentional. Learning Scientist Lauren Waldman offers practical suggestions on how learning leaders can navigate that moving forward. 

Carrying the cognitive load of learning 

Happy and motivated employees are at the heart of a well-functioning and successful business.

Research shows that when people work with a positive mindset, performance on nearly every level – productivity, creativity, engagement – improves significantly.  

As the way in which we work continues to evolve, it is important that we are working towards creating a workplace where people feel connected, have a sense of purpose, and are appreciated and recognised for their contributions. 

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” 

Did you know there are scientifically proven benefits of being kind? According to the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, carrying out acts of kindness can: 

Reduce stress: kind people have 23% less cortisol (the stress hormone) and age slower than the average population. 

Reduce anxiety and depression: kindness stimulates the production of serotonin – a feel-good chemical that heals your wounds, calms you down, and boosts happiness. 

Lower blood pressure: acts of kindness create emotional warmth which releases a hormone known as oxytocin and protects the heart. 

Relieve pain: engaging in acts of kindness produces endorphins—the brain’s natural painkiller. 

Kindness is the best example of a butterfly effect. The positive effects of kindness are experienced in the brain of everyone who witnessed the act, improving their mood and thus making them more likely to “pay it forward.”  

A single act of kindness has the power to transform the world 

An act of kindness doesn't have to be a big expensive gesture. Even the smallest acts can have a great impact. Here are some easy ways you can spark a bit of joy and positivity right now: 

Find out something new about a co-worker: it can be easy to get caught in the motions of familiar conversation, especially when you see someone every day. Make an effort to learn something new about a co-worker. 

Complain less: being positive in a negative situation makes you a leader. 

Send an encouraging email: this is a sweet and simple way to boost someone’s spirits is by sending good vibes to someone’s inbox. 

Ask, "Are you okay?": This simple question can really make a real difference to anyone going through a challenging time. 

Be spontaneous: sometimes, random acts of kindness just come to you in the moment! 

Never underestimate the power of kindness 

Kindness grows in a virtuous cycle and success lies in recognising that we can influence the culture we work in by simply being kind.  

What will you do to remember kindness today? 

Kindness grows in a virtuous cycle and success lies in recognising that we can influence the culture we work in by simply being kind. What will you do to remember kindness today? 

The power of kindness in the workplace 

Have you recently felt disconnected from feeling joy at work?  

Within the context of the past two years, where organizational focus has been primarily on survival, seeking joy took a backseat for many employees. And now, as companies begin to emerge into post-pandemic life, leaders have limited time to facilitate joy again before their people start looking for more fulfilling opportunities elsewhere. 

Research has shown how vital joy is to a person’s overall wellbeing, cognitive functioning and performance at work, as well as their retention.  

To help us better understand the feeling of joy at work, and how to better facilitate it, we spoke to Thomas Cunningham-Fahie, Consultant and Psychologist at Bailey & French.  

Is it possible to lose joy in a job you love?   

Barbara Fredrickson, currently based at the University of North Carolina, is one of the world’s leading researchers into the psychology of emotions. Her ‘Broaden and Build Theory’ is based upon research showing that experiencing more positive emotions broaden our mindset and encourage us to be more creative, explore new thoughts and reach solutions more readily which overtime builds our skills and resources. 

These emotions can gain momentum, creating positive upward spirals that lead to experiencing even more positive emotions.  

In contrast, negative emotions are linked to the ‘fight or flight’ response, which narrows our cognitive capacity. Therefore, it’s near impossible to solve problems and overcome challenges when we are feeling stressed or frustrated… I’m sure this resonates with many of us! 

There are also negative spirals of emotion.  A big risk for losing joy in a job that you love, is if negative emotions caused by an event outside of work spiral and spill into how you feel at work.  

We might also lose joy in a job we love if we stop playing to our strengths. By ‘strengths’, we’re not just talking about the things that we’re good at, but also the things that we enjoy and that energise us. 

Playing to our strengths when executing tasks at work helps us to get into a state of flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term flow, defines it as: “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter”.  

Luckily, we are able to reframe most tasks and skills to use at least one of our top strengths. Therefore, if we do find ourselves losing joy in a job we previously loved, this type of reframing should be our first port of call. 

Whose responsibility is it to facilitate ‘joy’ at work? Leaders or employees? 

We’ve already discussed the Broaden and Build Theory, and how we can find ourselves on upward or downward emotional spirals. In teams and organisations, these upward spirals can spread. This is called emotional contagion, and it has an important impact of people’s wellbeing, resilience, and performance at work. 

There is an old cliché in the management consulting world that ‘culture is everyone’s responsibility’. We would add a nuance to this, and then apply the same thinking to ‘joy’ at work. Doing what you can to make a personal contribution to a positive culture, is everyone’s responsibility. 

Similarly, we are responsible for making the effort to facilitate a more positive, human experience at work. We are not, however, responsible for the emotions themselves of our colleague’s emotions.  

It is about the personal effort we make as an individual within the organization, but ultimately not the outcome.  

Since we know that emotions triggered by events outside of work are likely to spill into how we feel at work, it is not realistic to ask leaders or employees to ensure that their colleagues experience joy in the office.  

What we can, and should, request is that everybody is held responsible for their actions and their intent towards facilitating joy, with the understanding that there will be external factors outside of their control that may ultimately impede the joy their workmates feel daily. 

Taking individual responsibility for contributing to the joyful experience of others can follow two forms: 

By managing our own wellbeing and positive emotions, firstly to help ourselves but also to have a positive knock-on benefit for others through emotional contagion. 

Actively considering how you can help others to experience more positive emotions, through the way you collaborate and interact with them. 

It is everyone’s responsibility to do this, but leaders particularly need to recognise that their position increases the influence that they have over the quality of people’s experiences within an organization. 

Could seeking ‘joy at work’ be considered indulgent or selfish within the context of the last two years? 

Since we have already discussed the benefits of positive emotions for the person experiencing them for their own wellbeing and performance, and for the people around them, the simple answer here is ‘no’.  

More often than not, actively seeking joy and ‘flow’ at work is something that will benefit individuals, the team, and the wider organization, through a variety of different mechanisms. 

One way of mapping out the time we spend at work is by using a Time x Energy Grid. For every task that we perform at work, we can assess how much it benefits us and how much it benefits the organization, then plot it on a 2x2 grid. 

This grid helps us to understand that usually, it is not indulgent or selfish to seek joy at work. The activities in which we are most likely to experience joy falls into either the ‘Peak Performance’ or ‘Booster Time’ quadrants on the Time x Energy Grid. As such, there is either a direct benefit for the organization or an indirect benefit, respectively, since we are keeping our performance and productivity at its best.  

The small caveat here is that, of course, this could become detrimental if too much of our time is spent performing tasks that energize us but are not directly beneficial for the organisation. Nevertheless, these tasks are still a better use of time than those which do not energize us (we would call these ‘Wasted Time’).  

If we are working in a way that is harmful for our colleagues, either by facilitating negative emotions for them or adding to their workload, for example, then we might be considered self-indulgent. However, the antidote to this is an open feedback culture and strengths-based delegation within teams, to maximise the time that each member spends in their own version of peak performance. 

How can we apply these insights to bring more joy to our team? 

With Thomas' insights above we can begin to understand not only the nuances of experiencing joy, but how an organization can help facilitate this emotion for their people. 

Focus your delegations on not only what your team are good at, but also what they enjoy and what energizes them. Playing to these strengths can assist in bringing flow and joy to their work life.  

Rebecca Newton, Organizational and Social Psychologist, finds many of her clients link joyful moments to learning experiences at work. When employees are provided space to pursue learning in subjects that interest or energize them specifically, they can experience more joy at work. 

As Thomas noted as well, home life can easily affect the emotions of employees at work. Looking after your team as ‘whole life employees’ takes empowering levels of empathy (which we delved into in our article Learning to lead with empathy) and involves supporting their overall wellbeing, not just their job performance. 

To assist you and your team in developing a comprehensive workplace wellbeing plan, we have curated a free The search for joy at work playlist of learning resources within the Go1 platform. 

The playlist includes learning content from iAM Learning, Blinkist and Thrive Learning and other mental health providers. If you are already a Go1 customer, you can recreate this playlist in your own LMS or Go1 Platform. If you are not yet a customer, click on the link above to access the playlist. If you're interested in the Go1 Content Hub for your organization's wellbeing and L&D goals, please get in touch with us today. 

Please remember, if you are struggling with your mental health and experiencing significant distress, we encourage you to reach out for immediate support.
Australia: Lifeline 131 114 or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636 
USA: NAMI HelpLine 800-950-6264
UK: Samaritans 116 123 or Shout Crisis Text Line text ‘SHOUT’ to 85258
Global: United for Global Mental Health Regional Directory

In collaboration with Bailey & French we explore joy at work, how it might be lost and ways that leaders can facilitate more joy in their team.

Rediscovering joy at work

For many organizations, the past two years have forced a reactive look into how we work. Suddenly shifting focuses and upending workplace structures certainly helped us adapt, but the emotional wellbeing of workers has now become a priority as we look ahead.

Exacerbated by remote working, loneliness has become an increasing concern.  

Three in five working Americans considered themselves lonely in 2020, with time and social distance likely to have increased that number even more.  

Loneliness is when one perceives that they are alone, regardless of how physically close or isolated they may be. It is not the absence of social activity, but rather a lack of high-quality connection and belonging.  

Taking care to combat loneliness in your workforce will not only increase your employee's overall wellbeing but will deliver stronger performance and engagement levels. Lonely workers report being twice as likely to take a sick day and five times as likely to miss a day from stress. Loneliness (or perceived isolation) has also been shown to contribute to lower cognitive performance, executive functioning and ability to adapt to change. 

It can be increasingly difficult to recognize loneliness in our team, particularly when working remotely. Go1 content partner, Mindscaling, explore the importance of creating a calm and judgement free environment in their interactive course Recognize Loneliness at Work (available in our playlist below).

To proactively address the risk of loneliness, let’s focus on quality connection and creating a culture of belonging within our team.  

Much of the responsibility for high-quality connection, based on empathy and interdependence, sits with leaders and direct managers.  

Now, while social isolation has certainly played a role in how widespread loneliness is, the answer is not to simply increase the amount of social zoom calls, team building events or hours spent in check-ins. This can actually have the opposite effect, with low-quality connection proven to increase an employee's loneliness susceptibility.

Prioritizing one-on-one check-ins with your employees, that divert from ‘work-chat' and demonstrate genuine care, can make just as much impact on their connection to the team as achieving measurable KPIs. These lighthearted and compassionate conversations with your team should be seen as a driving force of performance and engagement. 

Consider as well how your distributed or isolated workers are managed and supported. They require a different approach to any centrally based teams. Within our free Loneliness and Isolation content playlist below are two specifically useful courses (Managing Remote Teams Inclusively and The Adventures of the Lone Worker) to assist leaders in managing and connecting with each worker. 

While 85% of employees worldwide report feeling disengaged at work, organizations are beginning to see the impact a lack of belonging can have.  

Hybrid teams in particular can struggle with isolation and a lack of belonging and require an increase in proactive measures to mitigate loneliness. With 52% of workers wanting hybrid work options to continue, fostering belonging and combatting loneliness will continue to remain a workplace priority.

Employee expectations and priorities have also drastically shifted, with happiness becoming up to 12% more dependent upon the feeling of belonging than before.  High levels of belonging are linked to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover and a 75% drop in days taken off sick.  

In short, belonging mitigates loneliness, increases happiness and empowers workplace performance.

Thrive Learning note the link between belonging, trust and freedom to express your opinions. When a worker is empowered with not only purpose in their role, but the ability to bring about change when it’s needed, they find belonging. 

Lauren Romansky, Managing Vice President at Gartner, recently noted how belonging is a key component of inclusion, also saying, “when employees are truly included, they perceive that the organization cares for them as individuals, their authentic selves.” 

Establishing a foundation of care and inclusion for your workers will allow for increased belonging. This in turn, when paired with high-quality connection, will support your efforts in proactively reducing the risk of loneliness. 

For the month of October, we will continue providing insight and content around mental health subjects and struggles within the workplace. Our articles on burnout and empathetic leadership are also available in this series. 

To assist you and your team in developing a comprehensive workplace mental health plan, we have curated a free Loneliness and Isolation playlist of learning resources within the Go1 platform.  

The playlist includes learning content from Blisspot Wellbeing, Emberin, iAM Learning and other Go1  partners. If you are already a Go1 customer, you can recreate this playlist in your own LMS or Go1 Platform. If you are not yet a customer, click on the link above to access the playlist. If you're interested in the Go1 Content Hub for your organization's wellbeing and L&D goals, please get in touch with us today.  

Please remember, if you are struggling with your mental health and experiencing significant distress, we encourage you to reach out for immediate support. 
Australia: Lifeline 131 114 or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636  
USA: NAMI HelpLine 800-950-6264 
UK: Samaritans 116 123 or Shout Crisis Text Line text ‘SHOUT’ to 85258 
Global: United for Global Mental Health Regional Directory 

To proactively address the risk of loneliness, let’s focus on quality connection and creating a culture of belonging.

The lonely workforce. Using connection and belonging to combat loneliness in your team

To continue our Mental Health Month series we have partnered with Go1 content provider Thrive Learning to explore empathetic leadership, how it impacts organizational performance and the complexities of learning to lead with empathy.  

Catalyst, a global nonprofit that drives workplace inclusivity for women, describes an empathetic leader as someone who demonstrates care, concern and understanding for their employee’s life circumstances.  

We recently discussed the prevalence of burnout at work, and its risk to the performance and retention of employees (you can read that article here). More than ever, staff are re-prioritizing their needs from work and focusing more on balance, support and flexibility.  

Equipping leaders with empathetic skills is increasingly imperative to an organization's performance. 

Strategic importance of empathy at work 

Recently heralded by Forbes as a leader’s most important skill, empathy has long progressed from being underestimated at work. When a team is being led empathetically, they are more adaptable, innovative, inclusive, resilient and likely to stick around. 

No organization is immune to change or challenges, and the ability to adapt has become even more crucial over the last two years. Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella recently called out empathy a necessary for leaders to discern flexibility, particularly when navigating hybrid ways to work.  

Empathy also heavily influences engagement levels. A recent survey by Catalyst found when employees have highly empathetic senior leaders, 76% of them report being engaged at work often or always. This number plummets to 32% when senior leaders demonstrate low levels of empathy. 

Ensuring leaders are trained efficiently in leading with empathy, including having difficult conversations, negotiation, respect, inclusion and flexibility; empowers the workplace for both stronger performance and more effective change. 

To begin with, let’s appreciate that 'increasing empathy’ needs to go hand in hand with a wider focus on any required culture changes. There is limited point in up-skilling empathy if toxic conditions or relationships are not simultaneously tackled. Negative work relationships will impact an employee's work performance up to 4-7 times more than any positive, enthusing ones. 

Open and respectful communication is one of the driving forces of empathetic leadership. This communication must go both ways. A Tiny Pulse survey found that employees who feel uncomfortable giving feedback to their managers are 16% less likely to stay at the company.  

Thrive Learning focus on the importance of not only active listening but responding with empathy in their training course, Listening with Empathy. They describe empathetic listening as: 

Listening without judging, and the intention of fully understanding where the other person is coming from. It isn’t about listening so you can reply, it’s stepping into the other person’s shoes to better understand how they might be feeling too. 

Communications Consultant Patti Sanchez has found that during times of change, employees are impacted more by how information is communicated than what the information actually is. She notes that a lack of audience empathy when conveying the news of an organizational change can cause it to fail.

Thrive Learning’s course Leading through Change within the Go1 Content Hub (teaser video below) equips learners with compassionate management skills to help teams respond and adapt to change. They focus strongly on communicating effectively with teams, alongside interactive scenarios.

Helping your team through change

Learning how to lead empathetically is not as simple as reading an article and ticking a box. There are no ‘quick fixes’ to leading empathetically. Brene Brown, in a recent podcast with Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant, stated that, “there is no hack to becoming an authentic or empathetic leader, it's about understanding and seeing people." 

When leaders embrace practical learning to increase their empathy skills, and pair this with authentic curiosity, care and compassion for their team, they will see organizational results. 

A workplace full of empathetic leaders will not only foster respectful workplace relationships, but will drive an innovative, resilient, inclusive and adaptable culture. 

For the month of October, we will continue providing insight and content around mental health subjects and struggles within the workplace. To assist you and your team in developing a comprehensive workplace mental health plan, we have curated a free Leading with Empathy playlist of learning resources within the Go1 platform. 

The playlist includes learning content from Thrive Learning, Mind Tools, Blinkist and other mental health providers. If you are already a Go1 customer, you can recreate this playlist in your own LMS or Go1 Platform. If you are not yet a customer, click on the link above to access the playlist. If you're interested in the Go1 Content Hub for your organization's wellbeing and L&D goals, please get in touch with us today. 

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

We look into how empathetic leaders can transform organizational performance and the complexities of learning empathy as a leadership skill.  

Learning to lead with empathy

In 2019, the World Health Organization reclassified burnout as an occupational phenomenon, describing the syndrome as ‘resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.’

Workplace stress is something we all experience, whether it's in the form of heavy workloads, tight deadlines or workplace culture, which can all contribute to us feeling pressured at work.

But when this stress becomes long term, and pointedly, unsuccessfully managed, we can arrive at the point of burnout. This point will look different individually, but commonly is identified with:

In a recent TED talk, Dr. Emily Nagoski and Dr. Amelia Nagoski simplified this by describing burnout as, ‘where you can show up for work, but you spend your whole day fantasizing about being at a different job.’

When burnt out, your work performance will often take a considerable hit, but along with your ability to care much about it. 

Concerning figures show how prevalent burnout has recently become. A Gallup study of 7,500 full-time employees found 23% of them felt burnt out at work either very often or always, and an additional 44% reporting the feeling sometimes. That’s a staggering 67% of workers experiencing burnout at work. 

With burnout comes detachment, or mental distance, from the role. This may be one of the strongest triggers for what’s been dubbed globally as The Great Resignation. 95% of Human Resource leaders are admitting that employee burnout is sabotaging workforce retention. 

So with such high prevalence, what can we actually do to tackle burnout, as employees and leaders? 

In collaboration with Beyond Blue, we look at how to better understand, prevent and recover from this occupational phenomenon.