Hi Lea, everyone is currently talking about "new work" - you are now talking about "healthy companies". What do you mean by that?
A holistic approach. We do not focus on either the company or the employees, but clearly on both perspectives. A company with excellent processes and structures but without motivated employees will be just as unsuccessful as a highly qualified employee without a good team or company. People shape organizations and organizations shape people - that is our basic conviction.
The topic of "health" is not really a core competence of offstandards, is it?
I must clearly disagree! Of course, we are not doctors or therapists, but we understand a great deal about how corporate cultures shape people and vice versa. And this imprint is sometimes sick in the true sense of the word. This can be seen in indicators such as staff turnover or sick leave, or in the results of employee surveys. That's why we proceed in a similar way as we do with our core topic "culture development": we really take time at the beginning to understand the context - what do the framework conditions look like in the company, the structures, the values. What is the "case for action" in the first place? How are the employees doing - what is perhaps preventing them from approaching their work with joy? It's always completely different. And what makes us successful is that we don't come up with one-off measures to stick a band-aid here and there, but that we develop a holistic concept. With the goal of making the company "healthy," i.e. competitive, and giving employees an environment that is healthy for them in terms of their job satisfaction and development.
That sounds like a high standard for companies ... and also a bit like social romanticism, doesn't it?
I am convinced that the standard is high, but that the result also represents a sustainable improvement - and quite clearly at the performance level. And that is not just social romanticism, because a healthy company is a competitive, effective and responsive company. It is often the fallacy that health is not measurable, although there are very hard indicators such as sick leave or fluctuation, from which you can read off the improvement wonderfully. And, incidentally, they also have a direct impact on productivity and thus on the company's results. For me, it is then rather a waste to set up the famous fruit basket or to build the ball pool, but not to work on the values and unwritten rules in the company. In a company where it is still considered an important indicator how much overtime one accumulates and how much pressure one can endure, such measures are pure waste and are then mostly not used at all.
But surely you are also thinking about concrete measures - what could they look like?
We certainly need concrete measures. After all, nothing has changed with the analysis and concept building alone. But these measures are always put together individually, revised and adapted to the context. We like to start with a joint kick-off, where, for example, certain typical rather toxic everyday company scenes are presented in the actual state in a playful way. This opens up and at the same time we can create a common understanding of why we want to work on what. The next step is to hold sessions with the managers, for example on topics such as resilience, growth mindset, and mindfulness - in each case in relation to their own person as well as to the employees they are leading. And we like to work a lot with existing teams so that we can be very specific here. On an individual level, we can then supplement this with seminars, self-learning units and our reminder app. This has proven very successful, because it is one thing to make certain commitments, but it is another thing to actually implement them. And we also like to get active, for example by establishing running groups and/or joint yoga sessions. We have an endless number of ideas and suggestions - but it just has to fit.
You just mentioned the managers - should they now become therapists for their employees?
Oh no, that's really not what I mean! But with the new forms of work organization such as home offices, workation and often very flexible working hours, it's not really getting any easier for managers to know how their people are doing. It's different when I lead virtually than when I experience people in person every day. And for "healthy leadership" it is enormously important to know how to observe, perceive and question well, even at a distance. Only then will I be able to intervene coherently and create a climate in which employees feel psychologically safe and seen, but also motivated and challenged.
Which people at offstandards do that?
If we really believe in our claim "standard is not enough" - and we do! - then it goes without saying that we also rely on the expertise and experience of our consultants. After a well-founded clarification of the assignment and clarity of the goals and framework conditions, we therefore select from our wonderful team the people with the best fit and the highest motivation for exactly this assignment. We now have around 80 experts working with us. That's an incredible asset in terms of know-how, creativity and implementation power. And depending on the focus and volume of the assignment, we put together a team of experts from the new work/future work context, for example, or experts from health management and systemic consultants. Supplemented by our trainers in different topics, such as "healthy leadership", "resilience", and many more. - depending on what the specific situation requires.
Is there a scientific foundation on which you base this "healthy company" product field?
Of course! The basis for us here is salutogenesis according to Aaron Antonovsky, who developed the concept in the 70s. What we like about it is that he understands health not as a state or simply as the absence of illness, but as a process. This allows for an active view and avoids adopting a victim attitude. At the center is the question of how health develops and the goal of strengthening the healthy parts and resources in people. Antonovsky summarized it in the so-called feeling of coherence, which has three aspects: the feeling of understandability, the feeling of manageability and the feeling of meaningfulness. And those who know our work know that these aspects always guide us. Thanks for the interview Lea!
