How work is organizaed affects mental health,

The conversation about mental health and employee productivity continues to evolve in Canada, it is one that more organizational leaders are having. However, one factor that may not be getting enough attention is how employers organize employees' work.

In my book, TalOp: Taking the Guesswork Out of Management, I referred to three types of work: planned, project and ad hoc. The premise is that most job descriptions highlight the tasks an employee is to do in their day-to-day job, which is ultimately the planned work they're expected to do. Most job descriptions fail to set clear expectations on workload, worktime and potential for additional tasks.

In TalOp, how work is organized is described by the percentage of time each employee spends doing their planned work (assigned core functions), how much they're involved in project work where the goal is to improve an established core function or to create a new function, and ad hoc work, which includes the overflow of activities that get delegated but are outside an employee's core scope of work.

Many leaders are more focused on outcomes than the effort to achieve them. The percentage of time an employee spends in each of the three types of work can predict how overwhelmed they feel and their potential risk for issues like burnout.

Every employee has only so many hours and energy to perform their roles. What many leaders don't consider when organizing work is the amount of effort, energy and time it takes to complete those tasks.

Some examples of how different employees are affected by work assignments:

Employee One spends

60 per cent of their time on planned work, 10 per cent on projects and 30 per cent on ad hoc assignments.

Employee Two spends

85 per cent of their time on planned work, five per cent on projects and 10 per cent on ad hoc assignments.

Which of the two is likely feeling more overwhelmed?

In most cases, it's Employee One, because they often feel they have two or three jobs. They feel overwhelmed at the pace and level of expectations put on them. You don't need to be a management consultant to know that the way Employee One's work is being organized puts them at risk for increased fatigue, burnout and chronic stress over the long term.

Could the way work is organized be a contributing factor for the increase in mental health claims in today's workplaces?

As you reflect on this question, I'll share that I've been in rooms where senior leaders have suggested they need to hire employees who are mentally tough.

This logic is flawed. Employees' resiliency is dependent on their environmental support (e.g., how their work is organized and managed), their resiliency levels and coping skills.

Humans are a finite resource with a defined capacity that requires time to recharge, rest and fuel to perform to their full potential. Leaders who want to improve productivity and mitigate human failure accept this fact and take proactive actions to influence the employee experience.

How to organize employees’ work:

Move from task job descriptions to function job descriptions. The function job description breaks the job up into three buckets: percentage of time expected to be spent on each work core function (e.g., 20 per cent on customer service auditing), percentage to be assigned each year to new projects, and percentage employees can expect to be engaged in ad hoc work. This creates a framework that can be monitored, audited and tracked to ensure work is being organized and assigned to the designated percentages. For example, if an employee is assigned 85 per cent of their effort to core functions with deliverables and metrics but is spending 40 per cent of their effort on ad hoc and project work, they could be at risk. This indicates that the manager should work with the employee to re-evaluate how their work is being organized.

Set expectations for when employees are to plug in and plug out of work. Notice that this line doesn't refer to hours of work. In today's 24-7 world of communications, setting clear expectations for when employees are expected to be plugged in each day can help monitor workload and the employee experience with respect to how their work is being organized. Leaders who pay attention to when their employees are plugging in and plugging out can reinforce expectations and encourage employees to come forward if they're feeling overwhelmed.

Focus on what's critical and important and stop doing the nice-to-have tasks. There are often many tasks done daily in many organizations that really don't add any incremental value to the corporate mission. They're done because of legacy. One way to reduce work demands is to eliminate tasks that don't add value and which if stopped would have no real impact on the customer or employee experience or the organization's results.

Create a safe place for employees to share their perceptions around workload. Too many employees fear that if they talk about their workload they'll be looked at as weak or even putting their job at risk. To effectively organize work requires input from employees around their perceptions. Whether they're right doesn't matter, because if they don't feel safe to share their perceptions, there's no opportunity for offering coaching or support.