4 Essential Elements for Fueling a High-Performance Workforce

Today’s workplace energy crisis isn’t caused by stress, but how we face the state of overwhelming demand in our lives. “Today’s main threat is ourselves; the way we’re working isn’t working,” said The Energy Project  Vice President of Business Development and Senior Facilitator Andrew Deutscher earlier this month at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s second Signature Speaker event of 2014.Deutscher joined Albemarle CEO Luke Kissam at BRAC’s Monthly Lunch series to discuss “A Scientific Approach to Helping Companies Design a Better Way of Working” and the workplace energy crisis his company helped Albemarle overcome, which I wrote about last week.The fact is, “we take capacity for granted,” said Deutscher. “Most organizations are interested in developing new skills and talents, but what about the energy required for the new skills and talents?”To develop new talents and skills requires the capacity to do so, and “infinite capacity is a myth,” he said. Organizations and employees need to acknowledge they have a limited energy capacity and that in order to have sustainable work performance they must find a balance between spending and renewing their internal energy reserves.“By focusing on four energy needs – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual – employees can build capacity,” said Deutscher.

Meeting Employees’ 4 Energy Needs

“The better our needs are met, the more we’re able to add value to the world,” said Deutscher. But, majority of “workplaces don’t support their employees’ needs, they support their own.”

Unmet Physical Need: Regular Renewal

For employees to perform their best, they must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal, suggests Deutscher. For organizations, that means allowing employees to invest in real recovery and renewal.“Employees who take a break every 90 minutes report 48 percent greater ability to think creatively,” said Deutsher. “Renewal fuels high performance – it serves you workwise to do that. Employees get a positive performance boost from each additional break they take during the day.”

Unmet Emotional Need: Sense of Value

“People don’t want to feel under appreciated,” said Deutscher. But in today’s organization, employees feel seriously undervalued, which decreases their performance and increases the chances of turnover. Conversely, “employees who feel respected by leaders are twice as likely to stay at their organization.For organizations, “building and nurturing a safe, valuing community isn’t expensive, but it’s necessary to meet this need.”

Unmet Mental Need: Reflection and Focus

Deutscher shared a quote from multitasking expert David E. Meyer:“Training can help overcome some of the inefficiencies by giving you more optimal strategies for multitasking until you’re blue in the face and you’ll never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time. Period. That’s the bottom line.”To maintain high performance, employees need time to focus and should “balance short-term execution with strategic thinking,” said Deutscher. “Being able to allocate regular time to thinking creatively and strategically increased employee engagement by 68 percent.”

Unmet Spiritual Need: Purpose

Research by The Energy Project has found the most important need employees have is purpose, or “serving something larger than themselves and feeling that what they do matters,” said Deutscher. But, “the sad news is only 25 percent of respondents felt a connection to their company’s mission.”On the other hand, “employees with the highest level of meaning and significance are four times more likely to stay with their organization,” said Deutscher.For organizations to meet this need, they should “define a vivid, compelling, motivation mission,” suggested Deutscher. Leaders and organizations should ask themselves:

• What makes me worth following?
• What’s going to fuel employees' energy to follow me?

Remember: Stress Isn’t the Enemy

Again, “stress is not the enemy; stress is the means through which we create functional growth,” said Deutscher, “the enemy is the absence of renewal and recovery in the middle of the stress.” “It’s not about getting more out of people, but investing more in them through the 4 key principles.”Organizations that want to fuel a high-performance workforce must remember and prioritize these energy needs by:

1. Structuring, encouraging and modeling strategic renewal.
2. Building a culture of value, respect and appreciation.
3. Balancing short-term execution with strategic thinking.
4. Defining a vivid, compelling and motivational mission.

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