Your Energy at Work

Your energy varies day to day.

Your emotions vary day to day.

Your creativity, drive, social needs, and physical needs all vary.

Not only do the above things vary day to day but they vary WITHIN any given day.

So why should we have the same rigid schedule, the same rigid place to work, and the same tasks in the same rigid pattern?

Can we design a workplace, a work schedule, and work plans which facilitate performance instead of making the humans match the conditions which are familiar, cheap, and easy for leaders?

What Isn't Working?

How does it feel to:

• Sit at the same desk for 8 hours straight
• Sit at the same desk for all 250 ish days you work each year?
• Be alone all day, if you work remotely?
• Have the same level of sunlight exposure all day?
• Have no movement in your body all day?
• Have no breaks from the workflow?
• Sit in a cube farm with small/no walls separating you from other people talking -- sometimes constantly?
• Fight traffic for 30 to 60 minutes while sitting in one place, all by yourself, and doing nothing productive but move your foot from the gas to the brake back and forth?

How present and aware will you be for your family after 9+ hours of this in a given day?

My guess is that these things don't feel good to you. They don't feel good to me.

Humans are best designed for the following work conditions:

• Movement
• Variety in work location
• Exposure to sunlight
• Face to face human contact -- at least occasionally during the day.
• Quiet sounds -- or at least a variety that allows for times of quiet to break up the constant noise.
• Changes in work tasks.
• The opportunity to do focus-time work with no distractions.

Intuitively, and research into some of these topics proves, that these work conditions can benefit us and our productivity.

Like running a car on oil that is 10 years old, I have seen employers regularly ignore these human needs. The result is similar = a gradual wearing down of the asset, whether it be a car, or a human worker.

Change What You Can for Yourself

You may not be able to change the tasks coming at you and the order they need to be addressed. But you MAY be able to change

• your work location - even changing it multiple times per day
• your number of breaks
• what you DO on your breaks
• whether you get up and move during the day
• the time of day you work on certain tasks
• the amount of exercise you get each day
• the level of constant noise or disruptions in your environment

Change What You Can For Your Team

If you're a leader, could you offer flexibility to your team? Can you help make the work and the conditions more conducive to productivity and well being (they go hand-in-hand):

• Set clear expectations of outcomes and monitor results.
• Assign a person to intercept distracting calls so the others can focus.
• Build work spaces that allow for minimal noise exposure.
• Give employees headphones that minimize noise.
• Allow workers to commute during low-traffic times of day.
• Encourage walk breaks during the day.
• Allow workers to adjust work conditions to their preferred styles (e.g., maybe someone prefers four 10-hour days each week).
• Ensure work spaces have natural light.
• Make standing desks standard.

The above work and workplace design features will help employees listen to their natural rhythms. You can help them move with the flow of their internal energy.

I have a theory - the benefits of trust and flexibility outweigh the benefits of rigid work plans. Consider these benefits:

• Capturing human performance when energy is at the peak.
• You know the stress you need to blow off and adjustment period you need after finishing a long, stressful commute? Poof - it's gone.
• Remote workers have less opportunity to emotionally "bump into" each other at work -- resulting in more focus time.
• Allowing people to refuel themselves during the day with breaks that help them raise their energy up all week long. Instead of slowly draining the tank until nerves are frayed by Friday morning.
• Eliminating interruptions lowers the mental (and actual) cost of cognitively task switching throughout the day.

Financial Benefits of Energy Management

Some of the financial benefits of energy management come from:

• Better human performance
• Better employee retention
• Fewer interpersonal conflicts due to emotional overload
• Better creativity and independent judgment
• Lower medical and mental healthcare expenses
• Better attendance / less absenteeism
• Less fire-fighting on the part of managers due to improvements in the areas listed above -- more time to lead productively

Conclusion

Managing your energy at work -- and the energy of your team -- doesn't happen on accident. But there are real benefits. At any scale, these benefits are expected to be significant.

A good HR partner can help you assess the environment for proper energy management.

Mike Lyons is an HR professional and consultant in the Austin, TX area. He can be found at TXHRGuy.com and on LinkedIn.