BRIEFINGS PODCAST: A WORKPLACE ON FIRE

A Workplace on Fire

NOTE: While this transcript has been reviewed, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.

Jill Wiltfong:

Chronic inflammation. Researchers say today's workplace environment may be a root cause.

Parneet Pal:

What those triggers might be in the workplace, lack of fairness or transparency. The place matters less. It's the culture that is more important.

Jill Wiltfong:

Do companies need to go through extremes to raise awareness around inflammation in the workplace?

Amelia Haynes:

Companies by and large haven't even entered the conversation yet.

[Employee]:

Yeah, I am just taking it easy before I clock out for vacation going to Aruba. You ever been? Hang on a sec, I got to take this other call. Hey, what's up?

[Employee’s colleague]:

Hey, I've got bad news. The machinery on the shop floor is acting up and the technician says it's going to take three days to fix.

[Employee]:

What? That's terrible. Can we get another technician to help out? Hold on, I have another call I have to take. Hey there.

[Client]:

Hey, it's your not so happy client here. Listen, I just heard about the product delay, and you need to know, I expect at least a 40% discount for the business I'll be losing.

[Employee]:

40% for a three-day delay. Come on.

[Secretary]:

The CEO is here to see you. We just lost our biggest client and he's not happy.

Jill Wiltfong:

Hi, this is Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer for Korn Ferry, and this is Briefings: our deep dive into leadership. It's a silent health issue and now science says that it may be a significant productivity killer smoldering right beneath the skin of your workforce. I’m talking about chronic inflammation. That's right, inflammation. Research shows roughly half of all people are currently dealing with a chronic disease, which can lead to many cancers, diabetes, heart disease, and even depression and anxiety. But what does all this have to do with the workplace? Turns out a whole lot, depression as just one example is the leading cause of worker disability across the globe. New research also shows that inflammation can trigger poor decision making. So clearly, it's a widespread ailment that's keeping workers from performing at their best. Interesting because researchers say today's workplace environment may be a root cause of inflammation. So, let's get into it. I'm very excited to talk about this. Didn't think I'd be talking about inflammation today, but here we are as we look to understand the causes and cures for a workplace on fire.

Before we start, if you're watching us on YouTube, please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on this topic.

We're joined now by Parneet Pal, a Physician Educator and Founder of Systematically Well Advisory. As someone who has both a medical background as well as years of experience working within the corporate wellness space, she has a unique vantage point from which to speak on this one. So, Parneet, thank you for joining me.

Parneet Pal:

Thank you for having me, Jill.

Jill Wiltfong:

Tapping into your medical background, I guess a little bit here, can you describe what inflammation is for people?

Parneet Pal:

Inflammation very simply is just the body's natural immune response to any kind of injury. So, if you think about what happens, maybe if you scrape your hand, you know there's going to be a little bit of swelling, there's going to be a little bit of bleeding, redness, and then the bleeding stops and then maybe you'll get a scab and then eventually your skin heals. So that is acute inflammation, the body's response to any kind of injury, but it could also be a biological injury. So, exposure to bacteria or viruses and our body's response to that. But then injury can also be mental or emotional or environmental stress.

Jill Wiltfong:

Can you talk a little bit about the workplace and specifically how workplaces might be triggering all of this?

Parneet Pal:

One good framework to think about, what those triggers might be in the workplace. We can lean into think the causes of burnout at work. And so, the first factor at work that contributes to burnout is of course workload. There's too much to do and too few resources to get the work done. Another cause, and this is a big one at work, is where there's a lack of fairness or transparency in the way that the company conducts its business. And often, we know that the terminology we typically use is a lack of psychological safety or trust in an organization.

[Meryl Streep – Devil Wears Prada movie]:

And you have no style or sense of fashion.

[Anne Hathaway – Devil Wears Prada movie]:

Well, I think that depends on what your-

[Meryl Streep – Devil Wears Prada movie]:

No, no. That wasn't a question.

[Anne Hathaway – Devil Wears Prada movie]:

I was editor in Chief of the Daily Northwestern. I also won a national competition for a college journalist with my series On The Janitor's Union, which explodes the exploitation of.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's Meryl Streep playing an anxiety inducing leader to Anne Hathaway in the film "The Devil Wears Prada." Parneet, this scene makes me think there's still pressure on employees to return to the office and amongst other things but is working from home and maybe even playing an occasional round of midday golf or taking a break to just relax with your family without having your boss kind of breathing down your neck. Is that a good thing when it comes to reducing inflammation or not? Does it help?

Parneet Pal:

The place matters less, it's the culture that is more important. So, I could be working from home and not have that boss breathing down my neck physically necessarily, but they could be breathing down my neck in a very mental and emotional way because of how they are showing up and whether or not I feel safe to do the work that I'm doing.

Jill Wiltfong:

When we do talk about kind of the downstream effects of inflammation, there are of course, that headline diseases like diabetes and cancer that we hear about often. But in your work as a corporate kind of physician and educator, you've also talked about how it can impact leaders' decision-making abilities. So, some of those softer skills, which I find really fascinating and also not an intuitive connection to make. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Parneet Pal:

Biologically inflammation is perceived by the body as a threat to its survival, right? So, in that moment, it's going to do all it can to protect itself. And so, what ends up happening is that in that state of chronic inflammation, we are, we have this tendency to indulge in short term thinking. In the workplace, this shows up in terms of the decisions that leaders make, for instance, their employee wellbeing. You know, what are the, is it going to be part of the core strategy or can we put this off and just sort of navigate the immediate next quarter profits and results.

[Robert Bilder]:

Why do we care about behavior change in the first place? Well, I think we're increasingly recognizing throughout medicine that most medical illnesses are preventable, and that prevention involves behavior. So, you may wonder why if we so clearly recognize the need for behavior change, why is it hard to change? And I think that the bottom line is that repetition of behavior leads to encoding and brain systems that only change very slowly.

Jill Wiltfong:

That's UCLA neuropsychologist, Robert Bilder speaking about the difficulty for individuals to change their behavior even when they know it's good for them. And I see this every day. Parneet, you've talked about a more holistic approach to behavior change, which involves changing the environment rather than just focusing on the individual. Can you elaborate on what that means as it relates to the workplace?

Parneet Pal:

I can simplify the most effective things around behavior change down to three buckets. The first one is just to get really clear about your motivation for making the change. The second bucket consists of doing the right things. And then the third bucket, which I think is one of the most important, is to surround yourself with the people and things that are going to support you in that change. And that is what I refer to as the environment that you surround yourself with.

Jill Wiltfong:

Parneet, it's been a pleasure having you on today. Thank you so much for sharing all your insight with us.

Parneet Pal:

Thank you for having me, Jill.

Jill Wiltfong:

When we come back from the break, we'll dive into what companies should be doing when it comes to addressing the poor social connection, motivation, and productivity that results from inflammation. So, stick around.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

Hi and welcome to the break. I'm Rupak Bhattacharya and here's a quick look at what else is happening in business from Korn Ferry's this week in leadership.

[Narrator]:

We've also seen the number of Americans working part-time voluntarily rise over the last year. 

Rupak Bhattacharya:

The percentage of Americans working part-time by choice is at an all-time high of around 14%. It's part of a broader push from employees for better work-life balance, but leaders are still not fully on board as they weigh concerns around productivity.

[Announcer]:

And when it comes to artificial intelligence, oh boy, there's been hype.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

Despite all the hoopla around AI last year, a recent survey found that just 5.4% of companies use AI to produce goods or deliver services. The main roadblocks are concerns over interactions with customers, data security risks, and cost.

[Announcer]:

Cash is king right now.

Rupak Bhattacharya:

S&P (Standard & Poor’s) 500 firms today hold a record high, $2.6 trillion in cash on their balance sheets. Experts say it's the result of company's reluctance to commit large sums of capital to new projects amid so much economic uncertainty.

For more insights on business and leadership, head to kornferry.com/insights. Now, back to Jill in our episode, A Workplace on Fire.

[William Hurt – The Doctor movie]:

So, for the next 72 hours, you'll each be allocated a particular disease. You'll sleep in hospital beds, eat hospital food, be given all the appropriate tests, a test you will one day prescribe, unbelievable. You are no longer doctors; you are hospital patients.

Jill Wiltfong:

With us now is Amelia Haynes, a research manager at the Korn Ferry Institute who specializes in neuroscience research. Amelia, great to have you on.

Amelia Haynes:

Hi Jill, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jill Wiltfong:

You bet, that last clip was from the movie "The Doctor" starring William Hurt in a scene where he goes to some pretty extreme measures to get his medical students to have more empathy for their patients. Do companies need to go through similar extremes to raise awareness around inflammation in the workplace?

Amelia Haynes:

Yeah, I'm not sure we're actually at the point yet where companies really need to go to some of those extreme measures, mostly because I think that companies by and large haven't even entered the conversation yet. My perception is actually that the way that we've treated inflammation culturally, historically is that we've sort of relegated it as an issue for the doctor's office, not the corporate office. And so, I think we're really just starting to get to the point where companies are entering that dialogue.

Jill Wiltfong:

It's so tricky because the causes of inflammation can also be non-physical. You've spoken about how our bodies respond to social pain, including witnessing someone else's social pain as if we're physically hurt, which I can relate to when you're even watching movies and that sort of thing, you can kind of feel for those characters. What is experiencing or witnessing social pain look like in a workplace setting, what are you seeing there?

Amelia Haynes:

Things like being put up for what feels like a glass cliff assignment where it's either make it or break it for your career where you almost feel like you're being set up to take the fall for something that people expect to fail. Having your work be taken credit for by somebody else, or having it plagiarized by somebody else, being left out of a meeting that you feel like might be really relevant to you or your work. Things like that can feel really socially painful and isolating.

[Dr. Mikhail Varshavski]:

Taking a vacation can be a stress buster. A study done on 900 attorneys in Canada found lower stress levels upon returning from vacation. These stress benefits are actually long lasting. A study done in Vienna found that those who took a vacation had a decrease in stress related complaints like headaches and back aches, and those benefits lasted five weeks upon returning from vacation.

Jill Wiltfong:

That was a clip from Dr. Mikhail Varshavski or Dr. Mike as he's known on YouTube sharing some data on how a vacation can have a meaningful impact on our stress levels. When it comes to inflammation, research is beginning to identify a vicious doom spiral where work-related stress worsens employee inflammation and inflammation worsens employee productivity, which creates even more stress. Amelia, aside from encouraging workers to use their vacation days, which we know is really important, what are some other ways that leaders can reduce the stress on their workforce? What have you seen?

Amelia Haynes:

I would say the first one is don't only encourage your employees to use their vacation days, but make it possible for them to actually have the vacation that they take, leave them alone, create support systems both before and after they leave and come back so that it doesn't become an additional burden to try to take that time or return from it. If you're coming back into a system that is massively stress and inflammation inducing, it's almost like putting a cold compress on somebody's head when what they really need is like a major course of antibiotics.

Jill Wiltfong:

Here's something fun. Rather than doing the standard New Year's weight loss challenge that so many people will do, a psychiatry professor at Emory at their school of medicine and his team actually compete to see who can reduce their inflammation the most by using a simple blood test, which I find really fascinating. Do you think companies one day should follow a similar suit or are there perhaps other kinds of creative intriguing ways that leaders can motivate workers to tackle this particular health issue?

Amelia Haynes:

One challenge that I find people coming up against over and over again in the context of these like New Year's diet challenges is that it's a yo-yo diet, so an incentivization program is great, but how can that incentivization kind of be a little bit more long term? I think that's where companies really need to start getting creative is not just what do we do in January, but what do we do all year.

Jill Wiltfong:

Thank you so much for talking with me today. I appreciate you being here.

Amelia Haynes:

It's been a pleasure.

Jill Wiltfong:

The Executive Producer of "Briefings" is Jonathan Dahl. Today's episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharya, Nadira Putri, and Teresa Allan, and edited by Jaron Henrie-McCrea. It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Arianne Cohen, and Peter Lauria.

Our video segment contains original artwork by Frazer Milton, Hayley Kennell, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kostyuk.

Don't forget to read our magazine, available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings. That's it for Korn Ferry's "Briefings". I'm Jill Wiltfong. We'll see you next time.

Your roses are not orange, they are yellow. Sorry.