This award brings forth an interesting idea – we want employees to not merely to survive in the workplace, but be driven by their passion and ambition to thrive in their work. Based on Dr. Sandy Cotton’s The 10 Principles for a Healthy Workplace, Your Workplace determined the five most important elements to making your workplace one where employees thrive. Here’s the list as expressed in the words of Dr. Cotton:
Collaborative Dialogue
“Those in formal leadership positions have a responsibility to raise issues and questions for wider dialogue. The emphasis here is on community conversation: not direction or manipulation from one individual or a small group. People in the leadership core can start the process, but it’s critical to have the widest possible participation.
Trust
When trust is present, we can relate to each other as confident and affirmed members of a workplace community. In the end, trust is generated by ongoing honest communication, often modeled by leaders. Words and actions literally have integrity–the world becomes predictable.
Outcomes
We need to focus on workplace wellness and productivity as shared outcomes. Of course, we are held accountable for meeting our formal goals–serving clients, producing widgets, and generating sales. But we also need to see the quality of the work environment as a significant and enduring goal. Meeting production goals in an environment that corrodes morale and wellness is like strip mining. It works for while, but in the end, it leaves desolation and despair.
Tolerance
There are scores of useful tools for exploring differences in personal style(s) and beliefs. Don’t be afraid to incorporate them into professional development sessions. This is one area in which leaders can really model the way: by sharing their own gifts and vulnerabilities non-defensively, they also add another building block to the foundation of trust.
Teamwork
Teamwork, which is essentially an intentional approach to workplace collaboration, is wonderful in the abstract but challenging in reality. It is absolutely critical that people learn about their personal approaches to handling conflict; otherwise they are at the mercy of their own vulnerabilities time and again.”
Winners of the Top 10 Places Where Employees Thrive include:
Habañero Consulting Group
I Love Rewards
Environics Communications Inc
Limestone Community Education
Homewood Health Centre
Ceridian Canada
Nytric Ltd.
Xerox Research Centre of Canada
Ontario Hospital Association
Amherstview Family Chiropractic & Massage
