Last issue I talked about there being a light at the end of our dark economic tunnel—and that it wasn’t a freight train. I’d like to add to that idea in that you also need to know where to look in the tunnel for the light that does get through. What I mean to say is that it’s easy to feel depressed about the economy when all you watch is CNN, and it’s easy to be a little downcast about your job when all you listen to are those colleagues who gripe about layoffs and the extra work they’re performing.
What gets us to the end of the tunnel without being hit by a freight train is looking for the light along the way. Light is always there—somewhere—if you know where to look.
To illustrate, let’s pretend that your company’s wellness budget just got slashed in half. Instead of wallowing in the dark tunnel of “un-wellness” that is about to enslave your employees, why not use your existing resources more effectively. At the recent Who’s Who in Workplace Health Roundtable Discussion (Page 26), workplace health strategist Allan Smofsky provided the example of four employers who partnered with the same food provider to get the meal plans they wanted at an affordable price. That’s looking for the light.
Then there’s our cover story about oil and gas workers dealing with substance abuse (Page 8). A bit of a dark topic, you could say. Dark-tunnel thinking might have you simply dismissing those employees with problems, or you could do something positive by tackling the issue head-on and using your resources to help those individuals with problems through your existing employee assistance program and creating policies that aim at preventing addiction in the first place. That’s looking for the light.
There’s also our employer portrait (Page 13). Trillium Health Centre is one of Canada’s largest community hospitals. In the words of the president and CEO Janet Davidson, working in the healthcare industry is a challenge. Faced with long shifts, an aging workforce that is seeing increased injuries related to lifting patients, manpower shortages and the fact that you’re constantly exposed to illness and infection, you would think there was no hope for a wellness program in this type of setting. Not so. Trillium recently received the Gold Award and the Progress Excellence Program Level 4 Award from the National Quality Institute. I won’t spoil the story, but suffice it to say that massage therapy and coffee carts were part of the solution.
Looking for the light does have its payoffs.
For a PDF version of this article, click here.
© Copyright 2009 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the December 2009 edition of WORKING WELL magazine.