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At Leanmote, we believe all efforts towards increasing well-being at work should start at the employee level: a team won’t be at its best until all its members are. After all, employees who are self-aware can leverage their strengths, work on their weaknesses, and better define their career path. That’s why our platform is designed on an employee-first basis. We focus on preserving mental health, preventing stress peaks, and enhancing performance at a company-wide level—but we do so in a way that is useful for employees, managers, and HR teams alike. 

Well-being is at the heart of what we do. The fact that the United Nations has devoted one of its Sustainable Development Goals to this cause reinforces the importance of securing employee’s mental health. At the same time, it proves that there’s still a lot that companies can do in terms of increasing well-being at work.

In this article, we analyse the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 3, its importance, and how our platform can help companies work towards this objective.

What is the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 3?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as Global Goals, are a series of 17 goals established by the United Nations in 2015. These goals represent “a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”, and are intended to be met by the year 2030. 

The third Global Goal, regarding “Good Health and Well-being”, aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.“ This SDG has 13 targets and 28 indicators to track the progress towards achieving the main goal. Some of these targets include providing universal health coverage, strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, and ensuring universal access to reproductive healthcare services. 

Why are the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) important for your business?

Many companies are aligning their OKRs with the Sustainable Development Goals so as to make their business goals match their peoples’ development goals. SDGs constitute a universal “golden standard” for building the company of the future; a role model known by a variety of stakeholders at a global level that helps identify and prevent risks. 

At the same time, these goals are the perfect starting point for building innovative solutions. This is especially relevant in the current scenario, where the pandemic has led many businesses to reinvent themselves and find new ways to grow on a remote, in-person, or hybrid work basis.

SDGs answer employees’ everyday pain points and challenges, and many workers identify with the values these goals promote. A company that is aligned with SDGs is a company that embodies the right values, and a company people will want to be a part of. 

How is Leanmote related to SDG 3?

At Leanmote, we focus on encouraging honest conversations, generating ongoing feedback, tracking stress levels, and detecting burnout symptoms early on. All these efforts combine to nurture your team’s well-being. SDG 3 states that “promoting well-being is important to building prosperous societies”. We believe starting by changing how we work and how we interact with our co-workers is key.

Our platform is designed to provide the necessary tools for companies to track, monitor, and understand well-being both at the employee and at the team level—as well as how to leverage this data to make meaningful decisions that boost employee performance. 

We provide a unique integration between science and technology with a human-centred design. Don’t just take our word for it: we have an in-house team of experts in organisational psychology and well-being with 100+ years of combined experience who support us with our market research efforts and the implementation of evidence-based tools. 

How our platform helps you track and monitor employee well-being

#1 Mood & well-being assessment

Our mood assessment feature works for all the different roles within a company: employees get to self-monitor their well-being evolution over time, managers see whether their assessment of employees’ mood is accurate, and HR leaders can analyze whether there are any mismatches between the data reported by employees and managers. 

#2 Stress monitoring

Our stress monitoring tool can detect whether your team is working at its peak performance or not, which allows managers to take the necessary actions to prevent employee burnout. 

#3 Team 1:1s

Our one-on-one meetings help employees connect with their managers and co-workers. Our platform allows you to set discussion topics as well as short and long-term goals in advance to keep syncs organized. 

#4 Goal tracking

Employees need to be recognized for their hard work, so it’s key to keep a record of their achievements. Our goal tracking feature allows employees to add goals to each one-on-one meeting. Goals that have a direct impact on a person’s career path can be moved to the Achievements section. Employees can later leverage this section to apply for a promotion or provide proof of past success.   

#5 Comprehensive results

Our data dashboards and heatmaps help record and compare constructive feedback to keep your team aligned at all times. We help you easily understand how each team and individual is performing, what their challenges are, and how to better overcome them.

Try Leanmote today!

Try our employee-first, human-centred platform to boost your team’s well-being and performance. Sign up today to start testing our platform for free. 

What is coaching culture?

A coaching culture is the combination of behaviours, customs, symbols, language, values, and beliefs used by a company to help develop, train, and motivate employees. It can be easily understood as a growth plan where coaching plays a central role. 

First, managers are coached to be assigned responsibilities and lead a team. Both managers and their teams then work together to achieve the goals of the company, functioning on a trial-and-error learning basis:

1. If the outcomes are not positive, it’s considered to be an opportunity for improvement as part of the learning curve
2. If the outcomes are successful, the team is recognized for its hard work

Once the coaching culture starts taking root across teams and the complete company, it becomes a virtuous cycle.

• Upon bettering themselves, employees build confidence
• Confident employees become increasingly motivated
• Highly motivated employees have better ideas
• These ideas ultimately lead to enhanced employee performance
• When employees’ performance improves, they further better themselves
• And thus the cycle begins again

Who can benefit from coaching culture?

In their book Making Coaching Work, David Megginson and David Clutterbuck, co-founders of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), make a fundamental statement about coaching culture.

With a commitment to improving both the organization and its people, it’s clear that everyone can benefit from being part of a coaching culture, including:

• Employees: as we’ve just mentioned, one of the main goals of a coaching culture is making employees gain more ownership and feel more confident when doing their job. As part of this learning curve, constant feedback is encouraged; and employees grow to be more proactive in coming up with and implementing new initiatives because they know their ideas will be welcomed.  

• Managers: coached by upper-management, coaching skills turn supervisors into authentic leaders that employees respect and value. People who “supervise” instead of “leading” a team fail to efficiently delegate tasks often end up in burnout and poor results. With a coaching culture, managers learn how to divide and conquer instead of micromanaging and struggling. 

• HR leaders: in a coaching culture, employee well-being increases, managers further strengthen their relationship with their team, and collaboration grows naturally. Employees soon start sharing their positive experiences with colleagues and through social media—and news travel fast. As a consequence, companies see higher talent retention rates and reach potential new hires.

What are some common leadership challenges that can be solved by establishing a coaching culture at work?

Managers who aren’t leaders 

As stated in a recent Gallup article: “the selection criteria for supervisors generally relates to their success or tenure in a front-line role, not their capacity for people management”. Simply put, supervisors manage tasks, leaders influence people. Untrained managers tend to focus on completing to-do lists, and as result, they fail to help workers meet their OKRs, build a career path, or feel motivated.  

How can a coaching culture help? In a coaching culture, managers become the primary coaches. As part of their training, managers will learn to understand the importance of nurturing well-being and how to provide all the tools workers need to thrive. 

At the employee level, managers will consider each person’s future at the company, be proactive in discussing key areas of interest, and create objectives that help achieve those expectations. At the team level, they will focus on encouraging constant feedback to make sure everyone feels free to communicate their thoughts and ideas. 

Inefficient task delegation

Many leaders struggle with micromanaging without even noticing. But the truth is employees DO notice. 

Some of the symptoms of micromanaging include:

• Failing to effectively delegate tasks, which leads the manager to suffer from burnout as a result of dealing with a greater workload than its direct reports. This usually happens when leaders don’t put enough trust in their team to handle certain projects, or when they simply don’t understand how to split ongoing initiatives with other people.
• Failing to effectively monitor the completion of a task. When micromanaging, managers tend to be on top of employees 24/7, continuously asking about the status of each project as if they lacked faith in their performance. 

How can a coaching culture help? In a coaching culture, managers stop giving orders and start setting goals instead. Coached leaders learn to manage expectations rather than tasks, so instead of asking “what’s the status of this?”, a manager will say “we need to finish this by EOD”; instead of saying “I’m sure I can handle all of this”, a manager will ask “could you give me a hand?”

The result? Happier employees who get to solve projects their own way instead of receiving commands; and managers who trust their team enough to delegate. 

Remote work

The feeling of disconnection. Not knowing how your people feel. Having video calls where all cameras are off. All companies consider remote work to be challenging, but businesses that are experiencing fast growth and constant changes are the ones who struggle the most. 

How can a coaching culture help? One of the aims of a coaching culture is going beyond the company vision to also consider its people. But to know how to improve well-being, you need to track it. Using online platforms that allow managers to have regular 1:1s with employees and conducting mood assessments can help you understand how everyone is coping with their work, how they are feeling, and what can be improved. 

Lack of employee engagement

Employees lack motivation as a result of failing to feel comfortable in their work environment, not being acknowledged for their efforts, or feeling uncertain as regards their future at the company. As employees feel less motivated, their performance will start to deteriorate, and they might even start looking for a new job.

How can a coaching culture help? By nurturing gratitude and recognition in tandem with improving communication and well-being. 

First, get to truly know employees. Become a great listener, ask and give feedback, always be helpful and never be judgemental: don’t say “why did it take you so long to finish this project?”, ask “how can we work together to overcome this?”. Once you have a clear understanding of everybody’s pain points and you have provided the necessary tools to solve these problems, the virtuous cycle will start. 

Don’t forget that, at the end of the day, each person is different. Take some time to understand how to best help your team thrive and how to recognize the hard work of every employee.  

How can you get started with coaching culture at work?

• Start with simple initiatives, think of it more as a smooth transition than as an overnight change. Find how companies you admire are building a coaching culture and put their knowledge into practice. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.   
• Foster emotional literacy, where people can express themselves and talk about creating a safe environment. Conduct regular mood assessments and analyze the results against managers’ 1:1 coaching meetings. 
• Encourage feedback and honest conversations. Set weekly 1:1 syncs with each team member. Ask them relevant questions like “do you like your job? in which areas would you like to grow?”
• Help managers become leaders. If you’re part of the HR department, focus on training your managers. If you’re a manager, start learning about coaching. There are lots of training programs, courses, and valuable resources out there.
• Track well-being. Find a tool that works for you even on a remote basis. This tool should ideally help you keep track of how employees are feeling and access actionable insights on how to help them improve. For example, if during a mood assessment a person states they are feeling highly stressed, the manager will be able to reduce the employee’s workload. After conducting these mood tests over a significant period of time, the manager will also be able to identify mood trends both at the employee and team level.
• Give praise and recognition. Don’t forget to let employees know you value their dedication. We recommend implementing a rewards system in which managers can send employees a special present to say “thank you” and “well done”. 
• Use “we” instead of “I”. The perfect team is one where everyone is aligned: all co-workers are familiar with every ongoing project and they all work towards achieving the same goal. Showcasing teamwork is key, so start thinking at a collective level. Instead of sending an email that says “I’ve reviewed the article. It looks ok”, try “we’ve reviewed your article together with the team. We think this is ready to go”. 

Start building your coaching culture with Leanmote
Want to start working on your coaching culture? Sign up for a free trial on our platform, a unique solution where you will find all the tools you need to create a coaching culture, from 1:1 coaching meetings, mood assessments and workload tracking to a point-based recognition system where employees can redeem special gifts.

Great job! Happy first year at the company! Keep it up! As an employer, how often do you say these words? As an employee, when was the last time you received recognition for your hard work? Employee appreciation and recognition play a vital role in motivating your team, but how can you foster gratitude at the workplace? 

What we talk about when we talk about recognition, gratitude, and appreciation at work

Recognition stands for acknowledging the outstanding performance of an employee or team—but nurturing a culture of appreciation goes beyond saying “thank you”. 

As the neuroscientist Alex Korb states in one of his articles: “Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle.” Effective and long-term recognition initiatives can help boost your team’s performance by making employees feel relevant. Once employees receive a reward, they’ll look forward to getting another one—and to start praising the work of their co-workers.

• The virtuous cycle: certain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin are released in your bloodstream. Simply put, gratitude makes you feel positive and optimistic, and your body will seek to experience that effect again. For example, let’s say an employee nails his OKRs for the quarter and the manager decides to reward him with a present. The employee will most likely keep up with his performance to get another present in the future.

• The pay-it-forward effect: also known as Upstream Reciprocity, this behaviour is based on the premise that one act of kindness leads to another. In other words, a person that receives praise or an act of kindness will “pay it forward” to someone else: you help someone because someone helped you. 

Fostering Upstream Reciprocity in the workplace encourages employees to be kinder and more considerate with their co-workers. At the same time, people who are praised for their exceptional performance will also look forward to “giving back” to the company.  

Why are gratitude and recognition so important at work?

Short answer: because it shows your employees that their work matters. Long answer: because employees who don’t receive any kind of feedback or recognition are more likely to think their managers don’t value their work, which leads them to lose interest in their job and ultimately leave the company. 

Developing a culture of gratitude and recognition at work is mutually beneficial for employees and companies, after all, employees who feel valued are happier and work better. Here’s how gratitude can help your team:

• Boost employee performance: when managers foster gratitude, they are improving employee well-being. A thriving and mentally healthy employee looks forward to helping out more and always raising the bar. 

• Build up trust and respect: gratitude strengthens social relationships, encouraging Upstream Reciprocity and collaboration both community and work-wise. 

• Increase employee retention & attract new talent: happy employees stay longer at the company and share their success stories with friends, colleagues, and social media. As an example, let’s consider people who share pictures of their “welcome or kits” when they join a new company. News travels fast, and that post pops up in the feed of many candidates who could be a great fit for the company. 

• Set ‘the golden’ standard: giving praise and recognition is an efficient way to show other employees what success looks like. This will set the right role model for users to collaborate towards achieving the company’s goals. 

• Motivate your team: gratitude and praise are contagious. Seeing someone being recognized is inspiring for the rest of the team, and it also brings further visibility into the hard work of others. 

The 3 key steps to foster gratitude at work

When it comes to building a culture of gratitude, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Each employee has unique motivations and preferences: some prefer daily feedback while others prefer to discuss their performance on a weekly or monthly basis, some people like to keep their feedback private while others enjoy sharing with their team. However, there’s a simple formula to foster gratitude that you can adapt to any team: give praise, share, repeat.

#1 Give praise

Provide private feedback, give public recognition, award a certificate, gift custom presents, consider work promotions–there are multiple ways to recognize outstanding performance. 

The Leanmote platform allows employers to award employees with points they can exchange for a variety of special gifts previously selected by themselves. Here’s how it works:

1. Michael (the employee) has reached and exceeded his OKRs, so Erica (the employer) decides to recognise him for his work. Erica awards Michael with Quokka Points on the Leanmote platform. 

2. Michael thanks Erica for the recognition and heads to the “Marketplace” section to see the available voucher options and selects the one he likes the most. 

3. Directly from the platform, Michael exchanges his points for the chosen box or voucher. All he has to do now is wait for his present to arrive, or start using his voucher right away!

#2 Spread the news

Let employees share your company’s gratitude-focused culture with their team and colleagues. You can congratulate workers publicly on a group meeting with their team, via the company’s comms channels, or let them tell their followers on LinkedIn and other work communities.

Leanmote’s platform is integrated with LinkedIn, allowing employees to easily share their manager’s or co-workers’ positive feedback on social media. Here’s how it works:

When employees receive praise, a “share on LinkedIn” option is displayed. 

When the employee clicks on “Share on LinkedIn”, they are redirected to a pop-up where they can choose to share the good news publicly in a post, or privately through a direct message. 

#3 Give praise on a regular basis

When giving praise, find a healthy balance as regards timing: not too often, but often enough. If positive feedback is given too frequently, it won’t feel natural, and it will start to lose relevance. If employees do not receive positive feedback or encouragement often enough (despite working hard and achieving great results), their morale and performance are likely to be affected. 

The key to keeping this process consistent and balanced is to rely on a platform that allows employers to identify and record important milestones in the work-life of employees on a regular basis. This will allow employers to access the necessary tools to grant rewards at the right time and track the response of each worker throughout their time at the company.

Start fostering appreciation and recognition in your company

Leanmote is an independent channel to recognize employee dedication and hard work. Our platform enables managers to award points based on performance that employees can later redeem in exchange for special presents. With Leanmote’s Linkedin integration, employees can also share their success in their social media channels, driving awareness of company culture and attracting potential new hires. To start fostering gratitude in your workplace, register on our platform for a free trial. 

The evolution from wellness to well-being

Both wellness and well-being have been gaining momentum over the past years, especially as companies focus on creating great places to work for their employees. 

However, while these terms are often used interchangeably, they refer to different aspects of health. In fact, when it comes to fueling employee engagement, productivity, and happiness, well-being can be considered the evolution of wellness. 

So, what’s the difference between wellness and well-being? Which one should you be focusing on? And, more importantly, how can they help you boost employee performance? Let’s find out.

What is wellness?

According to Merriam-Webster, wellness generally refers to “the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal”. This term is associated with healthy practices that can range from physical activity and balanced diets to disease prevention. 

Companies have historically fostered employee wellness through workplace programs involving initiatives such as health assessments, flu vaccinations, or yoga classes. The idea behind these programs was that the healthier an employee was, the better their work performance would be. 

However, being in a good physical state is not enough for employees to perform at the peak of their capabilities. Employees who have a balanced diet, sleep 8 hours a day, and practice yoga regularly might still be unwell at an emotional level. This unhappiness translates to burnout and low productivity, taking a toll on their performance as well. 

That’s why the industry has gradually shifted from wellness to well-being. 

What is well-being?

Well-being is a more comprehensive concept, encompassing employee’s mental health across different aspects of life. We can therefore talk about emotional, physical, social, environmental, financial, and occupational well-being. By combining these different elements, you get a thriving, prosperous life. 

Wellness is a part of well-being, and it’s the key to boost employee performance: a thriving employee is highly engaged, productive, and resilient. Along the same lines, workplace well-being programs are more inclusive than wellness programs, going beyond nutrition and fitness to also cover stress management, workload assessment, and mental health awareness, among others.

What are the benefits of improving employee well-being?

According to a recent Gallup study, employees who only thrive physically are less satisfied with their work because they feel unaccomplished and lack motivation. 

Improving well-being leads to an overall balance in employees’ lives, bringing a variety of benefits, from boosting employee performance to ultimately improving a company’s bottom line. 

Here are some of the top advantages of fostering employee well-being:

• Higher engagement and productivity: employees are more committed to their work. By better assessing their stress and time management skills, they are able to further gain ownership and participate more actively. 
• Increased retention: happy employees are more loyal to the company, and are therefore more likely to stay longer at their position. 
• Improved company culture: employees who feel supported are more open to collaborating with their teammates, connecting with company values, and generating a better work environment.
• Reduced absenteeism: mentally and physically healthy employees are less likely to miss work.
• Higher job satisfaction: the sum of all of the above.An engaged employee takes pride in every project, enjoying their time at the company. 

How can you boost employee well-being?

1. Conduct regular mood assessments: mood tracking helps to identify employee burnout or stress at an early stage. By understanding these patterns, employers can assess whether a mood trend is happening at an individual or collective level—and take action to offer effective solutions.
2. Encourage team connectivity: create a work environment that makes your team eager to come to work every day: schedule weekly syncs or plan team-building initiatives—whether offline or online! Employees who feel comfortable with their team will work better together.
3. Promote honest conversations about well-being: don’t let mental health become taboo. It’s ok to mix well-being data with performance. After all, mental health is intrinsically connected to productivity and engagement. 
4. Foster trust and transparency: in line with the previous point, keeping an open mind and being an active listener will help you increase trust and transparency within the team. The aim is to get employees to actively provide feedback and ask for help when necessary.
5. Track your team’s workload and stress level: let your team know that it’s ok to take breaks. Focusing for 5 hours straight doesn’t make you more productive, it makes you closer to burnout. Make sure to manage employees’ workload by defining which are the top priorities they should be focusing on. 
6. Give recognition/praise for important dates & achievements: recognize employees for their effort and contribution. These initiatives not only let your team know how much you value their work, but can also help drive self-confidence and motivation.
7. Keep it consistent: don’t let your efforts towards employee well-being be a one-off. While hosting a well-being program is definitely a step in the right direction, it’s not a solution to the problem. Company well-being needs to be measured continually to provide a dynamic and comprehensive view of the state of your team’s health and how satisfied they are with the company. 

Start tracking employee well-being today

If you want to know how Leanmote can help you track and improve your company’s performance, register for a free trial and start testing our platform with your team!

Leanmote enables performance by tracking wellbeing in modern, agile workforces. Grounded on scientific research.