Rethinking Your Work

Author Will Marré says yes. In his book “Save the World and Still be Home for Dinner,” Marré explains how to work, live, and love in extraordinary ways by finding a work-life harmony rather than living life as a constant balancing act. I think you will enjoy the World Business Academy’s review of “Save the World and Still be Home for Dinner” that follows.

“The model is a tapestry, rather than a scale.” It is a mistake to attack one’s triple bottom line—relationships, lifestyle, and career—sequentially. Marré writes: “Our quest is nothing less than sustainable abundance … an abundance of everything that really matters in life, both material and spiritual.” 

He calls on people “to uncover your greatest gifts of talent, energy, and passion and to start using them so the rest of us can benefit. This is your authentic mission. This is how you were designed to ‘save the world’”. 

To create a life of sustainable abundance, we must begin “with understanding our Drive, Design, and Desires in the here and now.” When we do that, “we feel both deeply content and constantly energized. We are living our Promise.” 

Marré offers practical steps for defining our greatness and delivering it, as well as questions to determine whether we’re headed in the right direction. His book will help us all “integrate being a force for good and living our good life.”

Far too often, we accept that we must be consumed in order to make a contribution. Then we struggle with work-life balance.

I fully agree with Marré s advice to uncover our greatest gifts of talent, energy, and passion and use them so that others can benefit. We are all gifted. We all have something to contribute. And when we are offering our gifts and feeling good about our contribution, we start to experience spirit at work. Then everything changes. We can save the world and be home for dinner.

Are you living your promise?

Start rethinking your work today for a better tomorrow.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail.

Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) research on how we use our time highlights the fact that more and more of us are caught in a time crunch. The trends suggest that we are increasingly sacrificing satisfying and meaningful relaxation and leisure time in order to attend to the more pressing demands of work, childcare and looking after dependent seniors. There is considerable research demonstrating the strong connection between time use, leisure and culture on the one hand, and wellbeing on the other.

Here are some questions to ponder before you read the research:

1. Are you spending excessive time at work?
2. Do you work standard or non-standard work hours?
3. Do you have permanent or precarious work?
4. How far do you commute to work? And how do you get there?
5. How much do you feel the pressure of time?

Now here are the research findings:

Working in the labour force is strongly and positively associated with individual and family wellbeing. But there is compelling evidence that excessive time spent in paid labour leads to poorer health. The risks are believed to come from having less time to recover from work, longer exposure to workplace hazards, and less time to attend to non-work responsibilities. Long hours have a significantly negative impact on life satisfaction and time-related stress, which in turn, have a negative effect on wellbeing.

Non-standard work hours are associated with lower self-reported health, higher levels of stress, psychological distress, greater depressive symptoms, greater relationship conflict for dual-earner couples, and lower life satisfaction. Evening work is particularly bad for the children of evening workers since the lessened contact reduces the parent’s ability to support the child’s development and to secure childcare.

Workers in precarious employment have poorer health and experience higher levels of stress, mental illness, and substance abuse. Precarious work also tends to have lower pay than permanent work and often does not offer access to training, paid vacations, paid sick leave, employment insurance, pension and other benefits.

Long commuting hours are associated with self and medically reported sickness and absences, sleep problems and elevated risk factors for heart disease. Long commutes also disrupt family life by reducing time together. Car travel is more detrimental to wellbeing than train travel, since in the latter case commuters tend to walk to and from the train station. There is consistent evidence that individuals who use cars more tend to have higher rates of obesity related illnesses, elevated heart rate, and reports of anxiety. Car travel also harms community wellbeing by contributing to air pollution and climate change. By contrast, time spent in active commuting (e.g., walking or biking) is associated with improved mental and physical health outcomes, such as reduced risk of stroke.

People experiencing time pressure have lower levels of satisfaction, higher levels of stress, lower self-reported physical and emotional wellbeing, and greater insomnia. Work-life conflict can lead to higher levels of anxiety and depression; sleep disturbances; infectious disease and suppressed immune functioning; poor dietary habits, a lack of physical exercise and obesity; increased dependence on cigarettes, alcohol, medications and drugs; hypertension, high cholesterol, coronary, musculoskeletal and digestive problems; allergies and migraine headaches; burnout; and increased costs for medical consultations and prescription drugs.

It is difficult to experience spirit at work when we feel caught in a time crunch. What are some things that you might do to reduce the pressing demands of time and refill your cup?

Want to learn more? Sign up for our newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

Many organizations are managing generational differences and conflict in the workplace by following what Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak, co-authors of Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace, call the ACORN Imperatives.

Successful companies use these five operating ideas to build organizations that accommodate differences, exhibit flexibility, emphasize respectful relations and focus on retaining talented and gifted employees. Here are some strategies to get you started:

Accommodate employees’ differences. Treat your employees as you treat your customers. Get to know your employees and what is important to them. Make an effort to accommodate their personal scheduling needs, work-life balance issues and non-traditional lifestyles.

Create workplace choices. Allow the workplace to be shaped around the work being done, the customers being served and the people who work there. Shorten the chain of command and reduce bureaucracy. Create a relaxed and informal work environment with lots of humor and playfulness.

Operate from a sophisticated management style. Give those who report to you the big picture, specific goals and measures, and then they turn them loose. Give them feedback, reward and recognition as appropriate, but don’t micro-manage. Be flexible: practice situational leadership, match individuals to a team and individuals and teams to an assignment. Strive to be perceived as fair, inclusive, and as a good communicator. Be competent.

Respect competence and initiative. Assume the best of your employees. Treat everyone, from the newest recruit to the most seasoned employee, as if they have great things to offer. Take time to hire the right people. Then motivate them to do their best.

Nourish retention. Improve employee retention. Make your workplace a magnet for excellence. Offer lots of training, from one-on-one coaching opportunities to interactive computer-based training to an extensive and varied menu of classroom courses. Encourage regular lateral movement within the organizations and broaden assignments.

The ACORN Imperatives are simple and straightforward. Yet managers and leaders find it difficult to incorporate in their daily work. Perhaps they get blinded by their own generational values. Implementing the ACORN principles takes work and a different way of looking at how to manage multiple generations. But the rewards are immense.

Read the complete newsletter where I examine the profiles of each generation, look at the similarities, comment about the relationship between spirit at work and the multi-generations, and focus on strategies to bridge the gap.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

I recently completed a national study for an organization where, in addition to assessing member spirit at work and how to increase it, we considered the impact of the generations. While dissimilarities were noted, I was taken aback by the similarities.

Diversity at work has been a longstanding concern. Religion, ethnicity, gender. And now generations. Never before have we seen four generations working alongside with each other or employees of older generations reporting to employees of younger generations in such numbers.

Managing this mixture of ages, values, and views has become increasingly difficult. In their book Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace, Zemke, Raines, and Filipczak describe it as “diversity management at its most challenging.”

A quote from the Harvard Business School “Working Knowledge” Newsletter: “Can you manage generational differences?” describes the dilemma.

“Managing multigenerational workforces is an art in itself. Young workers want to make a quick impact, the middle generation needs to believe in the mission, and older employees don’t like ambivalence.”

Successful management of the multigenerational workforce demands a rethinking of work. Unfortunately, most attention is placed on the differences between the generations. Understanding these dissimilarities will go a long way to bringing out the best in all employees. By gaining such clarity we can appreciate how these differences influence our view of work, our preferred work environment, how we approach work and what we expect from work.

What we seldom hear about are the similarities or positive outcomes resulting from multiple generations in the workforce. One positive outcome of generational blending is creativity. Any time people with different perspectives are brought together, creativity is a possibility. Knowledge exchange occurs. History informs the project. The advantages of technology are tapped. New ideas are generated. Yet, we focus on the differences and conflict.

Read the complete newsletter where I examine the profiles of each generation, look at the similarities, comment about the relationship between spirit at work and the multi-generations, and focus on strategies to bridge the gap.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

How would our workplaces be impacted if we made it easier for employees to gather over a cup of tea? If we created an environment for colleagues to come together for conversation and a sense of community? Like the CommuniTea Infusion van is doing for community residents?

The City of Edmonton and the non-profit Edmonton Learning Community have just made it easier for residents to come together for a cup of tea. Residents are encouraged to invite the CommuniTea Infusion van – a mobile tea house – to their community. All they have to do is let their neighbours know when it is coming.

At the predetermined time, the CommuniTea Infusion van drives to the established location and creates a town square where neighbours can gather, listen to music and share a cup of tea and conversation.

Ben Weinlick, a director with the learning community says the van “is a catalyst for people to come together. It is the simple idea that conversations can sow the seeds of stronger, more connected neighbourhoods.”

The CommuniTea Infusion concept is based on Portland’s T-Horse and Jim Diers, a Seattle-based community engagement expert. What if we used a similar notion to engage the community at work?

My research has shown that belonging and feeling that we are part of a community is a key dimension of spirit at work – that sense that we are fully engaged and that our work is meaningful and fulfilling. It is a matter of rethinking our work.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work. Chapter two delves into the dimensions of spirit at work - a sense of community is one.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

Effective health programs extend beyond the physical and mental health of employees and occupational health and safety. They focus on creating organizational cultures and conditions that inspire a highly engaged and effective workforce.  Companies that develop and promote comprehensive strategies that include health programs and engagement strategies can expect to reap the rewards through more engaged employees, lower costs, improved productivity and financial performance.

The National Quality Institute (NQI) provides twelve questions for organizations to see how they measure up to the NQI Healthy Workplace Criteria. These questions provide a great starting point for organizations interested in becoming healthier. 

1. Is a strategic approach in place for developing and sustaining a healthy workplace and is it based on employee needs?

2. Do your leaders demonstrate, through their comments and action, a commitment to the management of a healthy workplace?

3. Is there an overall health policy in place stating your organization’s intent to protect and promote the health of all employees by providing as healthy an environment as possible?

4. Do you have a formal assessment process to determine employee needs, attitudes and preferences in regard to healthy workplace programs?

5. Are the workplace health assessment results analyzed and are improvement goals set out in a Healthy Workplace Plan?

6. Does the Healthy Workplace Plan lead to improvement of all the key elements of a healthy workplace – the Physical Environment, Health Practices and the Social Environment and Personal Resources?

7. Do you have a mechanism in place to review relevant occupational health and safety legislation and are you in compliance with such legislation/regulations?

8. Do you have methods in place that make it easy for people to provide ongoing input on healthy workplace and organizational issues and to seek assistance?

9. Do you measure employee satisfaction levels (and I would add employee engagement and spirit at work) in order to improve the workplace?

10. Do you identify the contributions of your employees and provide appropriate recognition and rewards?

11. Are there good levels and trends in employee satisfaction (and I would add employee engagement and spirit at work) and morale?

12. Do you train your employees in healthy workplace principles and methods?

At Kaizen Solutions, we work with organizations and employees to create positive, healthy workplaces that foster well-being and spirit at work. We know that the factors that contribute to a healthy workplace also contribute to employee spirit at work.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

Proactive employers have adopted a broad definition of workplace wellness. Acknowledging workplaces as a key determinant of health, these employers go beyond the traditional occupational health and safety initiatives and health promotion programs. They consider how the culture of the organization impacts employee wellbeing and thus, productivity.
 
Comprehensive workplace health initiatives focus on three areas:
 
1.Creating a safe and physically healthy work environment. The emphasis is on preventing injuries or illness and eliminating hazards. Examples are workplace design and ergonomics, safety guidelines, air quality and elimination of hazards.
 
2. Promoting and supporting healthy lifestyles. These are the traditional health promotion activities at work which address lifestyle practices of employees. Examples are: stress management programs, smoking cessation programs, fitness programs or subsidies, and healthy food choices in workplace cafeterias.
 
3. Creating a healthy organizational culture that fosters employee wellbeing, engagement and spirit at work. These are the management practices and strategies that focus on culture, leadership, relationships, and working conditions. Key factors include attitudes, values, respect, inclusion, recognition, meaningful work, communication and work-life balance or what some refer to as work-life fit.
 
Proactive organizations know that they can maximize their business performance by improving their work environment and investing in health programs for their employees.

At Kaizen Solutions, we work with organizations and employees to create positive, healthy workplaces that foster well-being and spirit at work. We know that the factors that contribute to a healthy workplace also contribute to employee spirit at work.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

Healthy employees are absent less often, have higher morale, are more productive, and have lower healthcare costs. The result: happier employees, a better bottom line for the business and a higher level of customer satisfaction.  These positive effects also have a ripple effect on employees’ families, their communities, and the healthcare system.

Addressing employee health and well being has always been a strategy to contain costs. Now it has become a key strategy for attracting and retaining employees. Towers Watson argues that keeping their workforce healthy, productive and engaged will be the most critical issue for employers over the next few years.

Proactive organizations are aware of the benefits of health and productivity programs to both employees and employers, thus, are going beyond the typical employee safety programs and healthy lifestyles promotion. They are also looking at the organizational culture such as leadership, meaningful work, morale, relationships, social support, and balance between job demands and resources – all of which have a dramatic impact on employee health and sense of well being, and spirit at work.

Need more convincing?

In a meta-analysis of the literature on costs and savings associated with wellness programs, Katherine Baicker and colleagues from Harvard found that medical costs fall by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs and that absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73 for every dollar spent.

The companies with the most effective health and productivity programs (in the Towers Watson study) report a financial advantage. Look at the outcomes:

• 11% higher revenue per employee
• lower medical trends by 1.2 percentage points
• 1.8 fewer days absent per employee per year and
• 28% higher shareholder returns

At first glance, it might seem that 1.8 days less absenteeism per year isn’t much. But if your company has 100 employees, 1.8 days translates to 180 workdays lost per year. That is 36 weeks. Where else can you get that kind return on your investment?

Towers Watson also found that high health and productivity effectiveness companies are also more likely to have:

• lower health care costs
• lower levels of presenteeism
• fewer lost days due to disabilities and
• lower levels of turnover relative to their industry peers.

How do they get these results?

The most effective health and productivity organizations didn’t focus only on the physical and mental health of employees. Emphasis was also placed on the organizational conditions which contribute to employee spirit at work and productivity such as:

• recognition and rewards
• organizational leadership and
• effective communication.

What are you doing to create a healthy workplace?

At Kaizen Solutions, we work with organizations and employees to create positive, healthy workplaces that foster well-being and spirit at work. We know that the factors that contribute to a healthy workplace also contribute to employee spirit at work.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

Healthy employees are absent less often, have higher morale, are more productive, and have lower healthcare costs. The result: happier more engaged employees, a better bottom line for the business and a higher level of customer satisfaction. 

Recent newspaper headlines paint an unhealthy picture for both employees and their employers. Take a look:

Health costs linked to overwork and stress. Stress and illness caused by work overload is adding an extra $6 billion a year to Canadian health-care costs.  The biggest pressure is role overload—the overwhelming feeling that there’s never enough time to get things done.  About 60 % of working Canadians say they can’t balance their jobs and family lives, and this conflict is increasing physician visits by 25 % a year, in-patient hospital stays by 17 %, and use of emergency rooms by 23%.

Employers fail to respond to work-related stress concerns. Employers identify work-related stress as the biggest threat to their employees’ well-being, with more than 78% reporting it as their “top health risk concerns.”

Job strain can contribute to heart attacks. On-the-job stress can increase your blood pressure, adding to your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. 

Downsizing bad for health. Downsizing may boost company profits, but people who survive major job cuts are twice as likely to take sick leave, have a five-fold increase in backaches and muscle problems, and are five times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease within the next four years than those who lost none.    

Workaholism evenly distributed across socio-economic spectrum. Almost one-third of Canadians call themselves workaholics. Workaholics are more likely to report fair or poor health, trouble sleeping, and less satisfaction in life in general. 

35-50 per cent of disability insurance claims are stress-related. The link between overall health and workplace stress is clear. This trend has pushed more alternative work arrangements into business culture, such as remote work, contract workers and job sharing. 

At any one time between 8 and 10 per cent of the workforce is off work on stress leave. Between 30-40 per cent of short-term disability leaves are related to stress and mental health. 

Pessimism associated with heart health. People who constantly blame themselves for things that go wrong and believe that nothing good will come their way are more likely to develop heart disease than people with a positive attitude.  Optimistic men are half as likely to develop heart disease as pessimistic men. 

Electronic dependence divorces us from family and society. Family breakdown and deteriorating civility have been blamed on fragmented and stressed lifestyles. As we increase our dependence on technology, there is a crisis of “meaning and accountability” that threatens to paralyze society.   

Employees struggling with work-life balance. We’re going faster and faster and there are no boundaries; even if your work is intoxicating in the best sense, it takes over as the meaning in one’s life, and that leads to… feelings of guilt that you’re not getting to your family or to other things.

• 47% reported they participated in “family time” (sharing a meal, doing things with your kids around the house, or going out) only once a week; 27 % said they “rarely” engaged in these activities.
• American parents spend an average of 5.5 minutes a day (38.5 min. per week) in “meaningful conversation” with their kids. 

Do you see yourself in any of these messages? I suspect that you do. We are going faster and faster; in many cases, working harder; and our cup is getting emptier. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to feel fired up about our work when we are running on empty. Even those of us who love our work will feel depleted if we don’t take the time for replenishment.

Some of you might be asking, “What about the company’s or the organization’s responsibility? And you are absolutely right. Just like with the creation of spirit at work, employee health and wellbeing is a shared responsibility – shared between the employer and the employee. But what are you going to do if your company is not upholding their part of the deal? In the survey where more than 78% of employers identified work-related stress as their “top health risk concerns,” only 32.3 per cent of organizations surveyed offered stress management programs to employees. So yes, do what you can to make your employer accountable. At the same time, make self-care a priority. After all, you and your loved ones have the most to gain. So what can you do?

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.

How do people get to have spirit at work? And why do they have spirit at work and others don’t? Although we tend to experience spirit at work in a similar way, my research shows that we get there in different ways. Here is an excerpt from my book: Rethinking Your Work: Get to the Heart of What Matters.

Some people have always had spirit at work. For others, spirit at work develops over time, and at some point — often at midlife — it comes together. For a third group, spirit at work occurs as a response to a crisis or personal event — a response that, for many, becomes transformative.

Finally, there is a group of people who, shall we say, wear their spirit at work on their sleeves. Their experience of spirit at work is in direct relationship with their experience at work. If things are going well at work, they have spirit at work. If things are not going so well, they don’t have spirit at work.

I call these the four paths to spirit at work. I now want to introduce you to Larry, Noreen, Ben and Sheila, and briefly discuss the paths they took. Larry’s path was always there. Noreen took the coming together path. Ben experienced the path of transformative events and Sheila is on the contextual sensitivity path.

Always there. Larry has been a dentist for more than thirty years. He has always had spirit at work, has always loved his work. He describes himself as a people person who helps out, cares for others, and is simply dedicated to what he does. That was how he grew up; that is what his family did. For him, the experience of spirit at work was constant, with peaks but never valleys along the way. When I asked how he developed spirit at work, he credited “gifts I have been given.”

“It’s in me,” he added. Unlike people who believe everyone is born with spirit and each of us chooses whether to develop it or not, Larry believes we either have it or don’t. “You have to come into the world at least half-cocked,” he joked.

Coming together. Noreen, an educator, feels that while it is possible to experience fleeting moments of spirit at work as a young adult, she is more typical in coming across it later in life. Only in midlife had she acquired enough diverse experiences in life to make the connections. She describes her skills, faith and passion coming together such that she suddenly felt “at home.” All previous roles — as a mother, wife and teacher — worked to prepare her for the experience. Noreen believes that, “Spirit at work is related to midlife, a time when you are pulling everything together.”

Transformative events. Ben is a physiotherapist whose work has changed over time. The more experienced he became, the more his skill level increased, resulting in constant improvement. His transformation occurred when he took an acupuncture course where he learned about holistic medicine. This precipitated the biggest change in his life, both personally and professionally. He says that, “It was life-transforming. It changed everything.” Transformative events can relate to spiritual growth or a personal crisis. Later in this chapter, I will talk about the path of transformative events as a result of a personal crisis.

Contextual sensitivity. Sheila loves her work as a graduate coordinator and administrative assistant but experiences spirit at work only when her work setting allows it. For her, it’s up to how the leaders run the organization, how well they promote teamwork, and how they recognize and treat each employee. When her boss is supportive and inclusive, she has spirit at work. But when the organization casts a negative influence, she has seen herself change from a committed to a bitter employee. She was only able to regain her spirit at work by moving to a new organization. Sheila is on the contextually sensitive path to spirit at work, one that is dependent on the work environment.

These brief profiles illustrate the four distinct paths to spirit at work.

Can you identify the path you are on?

Want to learn more? Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will explore this topic in more detail. Read the book Rethinking Your Work and learn how to create spirit at work.

Val Kinjerski, PhD, is a leading authority in the field of employee engagement and on the topic of “spirit at work.” A consultant, agent of change and professional speaker, she helps companies and organizations increase employee retention and boost productivity by reigniting employees’ love for their work. Check out her Spirit at Work Program and Inspired Leadership training at www.kaizensolutions.org. Val is the author of Rethinking Your Work and Rethinking Your Work Guidebook. Available now at www.rethinkingyourwork.com.