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Recently I’ve been back doing in-person workshops, and the thing that has struck me the most about the team away-days I’ve been facilitating is the amazing power and energy in the room. 

With most of us having mainly worked from home in the last 48months, we have been working in isolation, by ourselves, and so the only energy in the room is US. So if we are a bit flat or our fuel tanks are running on empty, then there’s no-one around to pick us up or give us a boost, it’s all down to us (which is why I’ve talked extensively about how important it is for us to look after ourselves when working from home). 

However, now most of us are heading back to the office (at least for part of our working week), and although the office is likely to have far fewer staff than it would usually, have you noticed the difference in the energy when you’re there? Has it picked you up and made you smile to see your colleagues and once again be able to chat together as you make a cuppa? 

All this talk of energy might sound a bit WOO-WOO, but I promise you it’s real science. We have been stuck by ourselves at home in front of our laptops or computer screens and so all our interactions with people have been through a screen. However, your technology only takes your energy, whereas when you meet someone in-person there is an energy exchange – you literally feed off each other at an energetic level. So, when you like someone and you’ve not seen them for a while, you always get a buzz, a little energy boost from being with them. It picks you up when you’re feeling down or feel that you’re running on empty. 

Now, the thing is you probably never really noticed that before. But now we’ve been away from others, when you get back with them you will notice it much more readily. 

When consultants talk about ‘harnessing the power of your team’ I’m sure you’d normally have switched off at that point, as you felt it was a real business jargon thing, just consultants making up stuff to get you to cough up some more money and give them more work (and I’m sure in many cases it was!) However, there is something real to it – there is a literal power in your teams that hasn’t been tapped into or properly utilised for a while. 

At Meta we have researched extensively over the last 20 years into what makes an excellent team, and how we describe an excellent team in its simplest terms is as being ‘more than the sum of its parts’. Now, in order to be ‘more than the sum of your parts’ you need to be getting the best from everyone and finding synergies between you that enable you, as a team, to deliver even more than you think possible, given the number of people in your team. 

Most teams have been working individually for most of the last year and have only just started coming back together in person in the office. So actually, the power, the energy of your team has been dependent on individuals as you’ll have mostly been working at home. Even now that you are coming back to the office, it’s unlikely that your whole team will be together on any given day so, although it’s definitely better than it was and you’ll be getting energised by being with some of your teammates again, it’s still not harnessing the potential power and creative energy that exists within your team. 

The other thing to raise here is that many teams will have new members who have joined in the last 24months, team members who have done their best to integrate into the team, but who you won’t know as well as if you’d have been spending this time working with them at the office, day in day out. Do you know what their strengths are? Do they know what yours are? 

Now, more than ever, as we try to get our businesses out of the Covid tunnel and back on track, we need to be harnessing the potential held within our workforce, within our teams. The likelihood is that most teams will have not met properly together in person in the last 24 months, and that’s a heck of a long time to not get together! 

We are, at the end of the day, social animals, but much more than that we thrive off each other’s company and, when we get together, it’s amazing what we can achieve – we fire off each other and can come up with amazing stuff if we just get together and have space and time to think and reflect. It’s also important for us to re-connect as teams, to jointly re-commit to one another, look forward to the year ahead and co-create our future plans together. 

We’ve all tried our best to make virtual working work, and I know from personal conversations with leaders how hard you’ve been trying to keep the team spirit going and keeping the flame alive. However, it’s inevitable that after 24months the team’s spirit is flagging a little and so that’s why it’s time, now that we can get back together, to get some of that team magic back. 

Now it doesn’t have to be much, you don’t need some grand gesture, but it does need to be AWAY from the office, and it needs to be ALL OF YOU in a room somewhere. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been facilitating team away-days all through January and February, and every team I’ve worked with has been astounded and delighted with what they came up with within their away-days. I also have to say that the energy in the room was palpable, it was ELECTRIC! 

Have a think now, when was the last time you had an in-person team away-day? 

I’m betting that, for most of you, it was most likely over two years ago. And during that time, you’ll have been mostly working virtually so not even working WITH your teammates in an office. And even if you are back at the office now, your team probably isn’t at full strength, you’ll take it in turns to come into the office so are rarely, if at all, together in the office at the same time. 

At Meta we really truly believe that people are amazing. Your people are amazing, your team is amazing – you’ve seen your people step up in the last two years, and you’ve seen your team do amazingly well considering the circumstances we’ve all been through. So NOW is the time to re-commit to your team, now is the time to get together and harness the power in your team.

Now is the time to: 

1. RE-VIEW – put the Covid chapter to bed and celebrate what you’ve achieved.
2. RE-SET – start thinking about how you’d like your next chapter to be as a team.
3. RE-FOCUS – getting perspective on what’s important, making sure that you’re setting the right priorities for your team in the coming year and beyond.
4. RE-COMMIT – to each other and to making your team the best it can be.
5. RE-CONNECT – making sure that you’re rebuilding your relationships and re-establishing your team connection, your team spirit.

The best way to do all of these things? 

Simple, take your team away from the office, get them in a room together. 

There is a tremendous untapped energy and power in your team. Right now, there is more potential in teams than there ever has been. People are hungry for connection and want to get back to working together as a team, they want to give of their best and be their best. 

As a leader, NOW is the time (if you haven’t already) to plan and organise your team away-day. Seriously, it’s time to invest in a little time away from the office, to help review, re-set and get some perspective. To re-calibrate and figure out how best to tap into the power that is held within your team. 

If you’re not a leader, you can still make the suggestion that it might be nice for the team to have an away-day and encourage other team colleagues to do the same. You’ll find that many will be feeling like you, and the more who ask, the better your chances of making it happen. 

The likelihood is that you’ll have team targets which are a real stretch this year, that will require the team to really work well together in order to deliver what needs to be delivered for your business plans. You need your team to be firing on all cylinders, you need your team to be more than the sum of its parts – a facilitated team away-day can really help with that. 

At Meta we have facilitated hundreds, if not thousands, of team away-days over the 20 years we’ve been in business, and there is a real value in getting someone in who is independent, outside of your organisation, to help you facilitate your away-day. 

We love doing away-days, it’s absolutely our ‘bread and butter’ and, if we do say so ourselves, we’ve got rather good at it over all these years. We are great at re-energising the team spirit, capturing the wisdom that is held within your team, and ensuring the team goes away enthused, engaged and re-invigorated. Combine that energy with new Meta tools in the team toolkits, and after a team away-day with us your team will be ready to take on the world! We know how to access the potential in your team, and we are really good at helping you to harness the energy and power in your team, so you can do what needs to get done this year. 

So, if you decide to plan a team away-day this year, all we ask is that you bear us in mind, we’d love to help make your team away-day one to remember, the one that re-energised and re-inspired your team post-Covid and got your team feeling REALLY GOOD again. 

And even if you don’t use us, please do make the time in the coming months to really focus on your team and get them together, if at all possible, we promise you, you’ll be so glad that you did! 

As many of you will know I’ve always been a glass half-full type of person. I’ve always had a spring in my step (a Tigger bounce some might say) and a positive outlook in life. Our website was originally called ‘metapositive’ and many people still think that’s our actual company name! 

I, like many of you I’m sure, have found the last 16 months testing my resilience and my positivity to its limits. At first I could deal with the adversity, the challenges that life was throwing me but, gradually over time, I found it harder to bounce back, harder to find as many positives. 

So last week I sat myself down and gave myself a bit of a stern talking to (you know, like the one your dad or your mum used to give you as a teenager when you’d crossed a line or needed picking up and motivating because you were a bit flat). I reminded myself that I am naturally a positive little soul and part of my purpose was to spread that positivity and look for the good in the world. It was time to pick myself up, dust myself down, pick myself up by my bootstraps, and give myself a good metaphorical kick up the bum to get myself up and going again. 

It’s amazing that when we talk to ourselves kindly but seriously, how motivated we can get. You see we always have CHOICE – no-one can tell us how to be, no-one or no-thing can influence us unless we allow them to. I realised that I’d been making some passive choices, choices that made me feel like things were being ‘done to me’ and so I decided it was time to make some different choices. Why? Because the passive choices I was making weren’t making me happy! 

I made an agreement with myself that I’d start looking for reasons to be cheerful, and do you know what? Since I’ve made that agreement, it’s amazing how many reasons there are to be cheerful! The fog of fear seems to have dispersed, and although I can’t claim to feel great all the time, I am definitely feeling a lot better than I did. I’m making different, more active choices, and if I find myself feeling a bit down I cheer myself up by finding some reasons to be cheerful. 

At Meta we’ve always talked about being careful about what you look for in life – if you look for what’s wrong, you’ll find it. If you look for what’s right, you’ll find that too. Now I’m not advocating being positive for positive’s sake, I’m just saying that actually, right now, there are lots of reasons to be cheerful. 

Almost all of you reading this will be at least single-jabbed with one of the Covid vaccines and many of you will be double-jabbed. That will be leading to more and more freedoms for us all, and a release of perhaps our biggest fear in the last year and a half – getting Covid. As I write this I’m self-isolating (yes, I got ‘pinged’ from NHS Test and Trace) because my daughter has Covid. Now it’s annoying, not gonna lie, but I also have no doubt that the fact I’m double jabbed has protected me and today, a few days in, I’m still Covid negative. Now that’s a reason to be cheerful right there! As is the fact that my daughter has pretty much no symptoms even though she’s not been jabbed (she’s only 15). 

Being at home I’ve got slightly addicted to watching the Olympics – wow, what incredible feats of athleticism have I been witness to. So many medals, so many brave and moving Olympic stories – having the Olympics on while you’re self-isolating? Yep, another reason to be cheerful! 

I have a concert coming up with a band I found just before lockdown, who I absolutely LOVE (Another Sky… check them out, they are amazing!). I’d managed to get tickets for a tiny gig in Bristol (just 100 capacity venue), then of course Covid struck, and the concert was postponed. However, a week Friday I shall be dad dancing without a care in the world to their music, my first live concert in two years+ and yes, that’s another reason to be cheerful! 

Once you start actively looking, there are so many reasons to be cheerful, so many little positive wins to each day, and in each week – you just have to start looking.

The world is a place of abundance, the world is full of lovely things all waiting to fill your fuel tanks and give you a positive energy boost. It’s easy to get caught by the fog of fear, easy to feel isolated, get a bit negative and lose your bounce-back ability like I did. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been feeling like this. But with a bit of re-framing, a bit of conscious choosing what we look for, we can reconnect with the abundance and beauty that’s all around us. 

There was an interesting piece of research done by the University of California, looking at mental health and well-being, that I overheard on Radio 4’s ‘All in the mind’ programme – about what they called ‘awe-walks’. 

We all know that a walk in nature is good for you, we all found that out when we had our government prescribed ‘hour of exercise’ each day during the first lockdown. So many people in the workshops I’ve been running around resilience have talked about one of the positives to come out of this Covid experience is that they’ve reconnected with nature and found so many green spots in their local communities that they didn’t even realise were there! 

The research took three groups of people. One group went about their day normally, they were given no extra tasks to do – this group was the control group. The second group got to walk for 30 minutes every day; and the third group were told to find something beautiful, something that made them go WOW on their walks (these were the ‘awe-walkers’). What the researchers were exploring was the wow effect that we get when we are in awe of something. Now, they were keen to highlight that, actually, you can find something awe-some anywhere! It didn’t mean you had to be half-way up the Himalayas, or on a rugged beach, or deep in a wild forest. They were essentially talking about noticing, on a deeper level, the beauty that was all around you. So, for example, maybe taking the time to look at a leaf, look in real detail, then hold it up to the sun see its intricate design and perfect beauty. Maybe to watch the rain as it dances upon a river, allowing yourself the time to get lost in its ripples and dancing droplets. To watch a bee as it happily hums and moves from flower to flower, buzzing its own happy buzz! 

What they found was that those who went for the 30minute walk expressed a greater sense of well-being than the control group, and those that went on the ‘awe-walks’ expressed an even higher sense of well-being.

As you know, at Meta we’ve talked for many years about how important it is to fill your fuel tanks, and to me an awe-walk is an ultimate fuel tank filler. 

I’ve started making most of my most of my walks ‘awe-walks’ (although not every one). The other day as I was out it started to rain, but rather than run for cover, I decided to turn my face to the sky and feel the rain gently pitter-patter onto my face. It felt like a blessing from the sky, and after all the intense heat we’ve been having recently – a blessed relief! 

I didn’t worry about getting wet and I watched the rain as it fell from the sky, dancing on the pavement and creating little puddles that I could jump in and splash around in. I’m sure there were a few raised eyebrows at this 6’7” tall adult splashing in puddles, but you know what? I’m sure there were a few smiles too. 

Right now we all need a bit of picking up, a bit of positivity and oomph. So, I’ve decided that now there is no better time to find happiness, no better time to choose to be happy. I saw a brilliant sign in a café in India – it was so simple and yet so profound. 

“If you choose to be happy no-one can stop you” it said. And you know what? It’s absolutely right. 

When we find our reasons to be cheerful, when we count our blessings, or just choose to look at the world differently – it’s amazing what we can find, it’s amazing what a difference it can make. 

I’m choosing to be more positive; I’m choosing that the world is a place of abundance, I’m choosing to pick myself back up and find plenty of reasons to be cheerful. 

What do you choose? 

I hope today’s blog was useful to you, and I’d like to finish by saying that it’d be lovely to hear what reasons have you found to be cheerful. Send them to me direct at jo@metapositive.com if you’d like to – I’d love to hear them! 

Have a wonderful summer, 

In peace and love – Jo xxx

In last months’ blog we talked about working from home and how our own empirical evidence collated from those we’ve worked with in the past year, suggests that it’s become something which is less heavenly and more hellish during the last 12 months. Many of us feel that work has now fully invaded our home life and it’s difficult to switch off, we feel we must be permanently switched on. Of course, this isn’t the case for all of us, some of us have done a pretty good job of making the reality of working from home WORK for us, but here at Meta, we felt it would be useful to share what WE have learned over the years about working from home.

Meta has always been a virtual company. 20 years ago, that was VERY unusual but now, especially during Covid, it’s become more normal to be working from home. We’ve essentially been a living experiment in home working since our inception, and so we’ve probably experienced most of the things that you’ve experienced in the last 12 months. However, NOW you have the extra dimension that is the technology which comes into your home too, with the advent of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and data collection programmes that can measure how often you’re on your screen; now there IS no escape from the office (even though you’re at home!).

Over the years we have not only been virtual workers, that living experiment, but we’ve also spent a lot of our time researching smarter working techniques and have been developing simple but practical tools that enable everyone to work at their best and maximise their personal performance to allow them to get through the increased workloads without extending their working hours. There is SO MUCH research and scientific data now that highlights the effectiveness of smarter working, and so we felt it was time to share what we’ve researched, experimented with, and learnt about creating a working from home routine that works for you.

We did the hard work, we did the research, so you don’t have to. We can promise you, that if you implement even just five or six of these simple and practically applicable tips, you will have a significant improvement in how working from home feels for you.

And of course, the likelihood is that we will be managing a hybrid model of working in the future (probably by the end of this year for most of you), where we work sometime in the office and sometime at home. But if you can implement these smarter working techniques, you will you improve your home working practice and also your office working practice too. It’s a WIN-WIN scenario.

Here are our 15 TOP TIPS for making working from home, work for you:

NUMBER 1: FIND A WORK SPACE THAT WORKS FOR YOU – Ideally you want a separate space just for work. We understand that, for those of you in smaller homes, this may not be possible; however, you can still organise a smaller working space where you are comfortable and which fits our recommendations, even if this is just a temporary set-up at your dining table. You will still be able to ensure that the other tick box list is implemented too. Make sure that the desk (or table), if at all possible, is by a window, lit well, and has a comfy chair (i.e not the kitchen stool – ask your organisation about possibility of buying you a chair). Your computer/laptop should be at head height (my computer has been, for years, on top of four encyclopaedias of art books – thank you Britannica); and do make sure, if possible, you ‘put away’ your laptop/computer/work phone at end of day – this is especially true for those of you working in a shared space. Remember the old axiom “Out of sight, out of mind” – if you can’t see the flashy lights or hear the email notices you don’t tend to go back to your technology.

NUMBER 2: KEEP SET WORKING TIMES – We all feel that work has creeped into our homelife and, according to recent research done in the USA, during the first six months of lockdown the average working day had increased by 48.5minutes (that’s over four extra hours a week!) The best way to peg it back is to create realistic ‘work-day’ times and stick to them. Use your technology to help remind you, until it becomes a habit, by setting an alarm one hour, 30 minutes and 15 minutes before your agreed end time.

NUMBER 3: CHECK YOUR ENERGY LEVELS EACH AND EVERY MORNING – How is your energy fuel tank this morning? Make sure that, if you’re not in the right state, you give yourself either a boost of light (and caffeine!) in your garden or even on your doorstep if you don’t have a garden, or have yourself some treats BEFORE you start work. Also, don’t forget the most important meal of the day is your BREAKFAST, your brain just doesn’t work without it (seriously! see note on EATING and BREAKS).

NUMBER 4: HAVE SET BREAKS DURING THE DAY AND MAKE SURE YOU DIARY THEM IN – So much research says that taking breaks increases productivity – our brain gets saturated very quickly and it struggles to work effectively beyond a two-hour window of constant focus. So, make sure you keep your breaks (use your online diary to make sure they are blocked out), doing so will help you get more done, not less. Remember the saying, “Move your body, move your mind”. Once you’ve gone past your peak working time in your day, you’ll find you can get easily stuck on stuff and this is why taking breaks is important. Even micro-breaks have been proven to work, so get up move around, get a breath of fresh air and a cuppa, as it helps the brain to ‘clear capacity and re-set.’

NUMBER 5: MAKE A CLEAR DISTINCTION BETWEEN ‘WORK YOU’ AND ‘HOME YOU’ – Wear work clothes for work (sounds daft but it WILL help you to distinguish between work you and home you when you’re at home), and have a routine at the end of the day: take a shower, change your clothes, read a paper or listen to a podcast. If you’re working at home the likelihood is you’ve lost your commute home time, so ‘reclaim your commute time’ and go walk the dog or exercise at the end of your working day to re-create your commute.

NUMBER 6: MAKE SURE YOUR’RE GETTING AT LEAST 45 MINUTES OF DAYLIGHT EACH DAY – The more I research I do into daylight, the more importance I have given it in my working day. Daylight helps you stay alert and helps you to get into a natural circadian rhythm essential for good sleep. Just 45minutes of daylight each day will help you sleep that night; morning light, especially, can help you produce melatonin later in the day and this promotes a natural tiredness and better-quality sleep.

NUMBER 7: MAKE SURE YOU ARE EXERCISING EVERY DAY – Our bodies are not designed to be as sedentary as we have become. We’re not meant to spend eight hours in front of a computer screen, we’ve still got the same bodies as when we were hunter gatherers, so we need to make sure that it’s not just our minds which are worn out, but our physical bodies too. You don’t have to be a gym bunny, or a fitness freak, but you can combine your exercise with your 45 minutes of daylight, or re-create your commute, or walk the dog. You don’t have to do a whole one-hour workout but, especially if you are feeling stressed, a good intensive interval training type of workout can be very beneficial, to not only tire you out, but also dissipate your stress hormones in your body and close down your stress factory (which is essential for getting a good night’s sleep). We were much better at this in the first lockdown but we’ve let it slip. Now is the time to get it back INTO your working from home routine, it’s good for you!

NUMBER 8: EAT!! YOUR BRAIN NEEDS FUEL TO PERFORM AT ITS BEST – This might sound basic, but so many people are not fuelling themselves enough in their working day. As we’ve heard previously, it’s important to take your breaks, but taking breaks without re-fuelling is performance suicide. Your brain uses 20% of your calorific intake just to FUNCTION normally – 20% of nothing = frankly, a rather useless brain. Eating the right things helps too – LOW GI food stuffs are better to avoid sugar spikes (as you get sugar dips after which can make us lethargic); nuts, seeds, protein, wholefoods, fruits are good, and avoid high fat or sugar foods.

NUMBER 9: MAKE USE OF YOUR PEAK PERFORMANCE TIMES (AND DEAD TIMES) – We all have peak and dead working times in our average working day. Our peak working time is a consistent three-hour window where our brain is performing at its absolute peak. It’s the same three-hours every day, so if you can identify that peak working time you can maximise your performance. Put the more complex, challenging tasks that require real processing power in that three-hour window. You can get up-to-twice as much done in that three-hour window than you can in the entirety of the rest of the day. Your dead working time is a two-hour window, normally towards the end of your working day, when your brain has an inability to function at a high level. That’s the time for admin and simple tasks that don’t require a lot of brain power. Now we’re working from home this is a great time to experiment and collect your own evidence about your optimum working times, so you can organise your workload accordingly. Block out the diary and assign your work tasks (or types of tasks) to each performance category – this is our most powerful smarter working tool.

NUMBER 10: CLAIM BACK CONTROL OF YOUR ONLINE DIARY – Your online diary IS YOUR ONLINE DIARY, not everyone else’s! You own it, and so it’s really OK to say no sometimes. Online diaries have meant that we can end up, if we’re not careful, being at everyone else’s’ beck and call. Back-to-back meetings just DON’T WORK – especially now we’re doing things over virtual technology. We need time to recover BETWEEN meetings, so make sure you have at least ten-minutes to do a re-set between meetings. And don’t be afraid to say NO – if you don’t think you should be at a meeting, it’s OK to ask why you’ve been invited.

NUMBER 11: RE-SET YOUR HARD (AND SOFT) BOUNDARIES – There is no doubt that the tide of work has now fully invaded our home life too. It’s not our fault, it’s just gradually seeped in over time. So now is as good a time as any to re-set your boundaries. There are two types of boundaries: HARD boundaries (these are your non-negotiables, the boundaries you won’t change unless it’s an emergency), and your SOFT boundaries (these are the boundaries that have a little flexibility or give and take in them). Everyone’s boundaries will be different: for one it might be to not work at all on the weekends, for another to not answer emails in the evenings, for me it’s being able to tuck my daughter into bed at night and read her a story. Whatever they are for you, make sure your team/bosses know. You’ll find that, when you dare to re-claim your boundaries, people will respect you for doing so, not judge you.

NUMBER 12: IN THE LAST HOUR/HALF-HOUR OF YOUR WORKING DAY, START TO WIND DOWN – At the end of our working day, our brain’s performance is at best 50% (and for many people less than 20%) to where it was at its peak earlier in the day. To put that into simple terms, a task that might take 15minutes in the morning might take a whole hour at the end of your day. So, make sure the last 60minutes, or at least the last 30 minutes, of your working day are spent on less meaningful tasks that require less processing power. Or you could celebrate your successes from the day, or prepare your to-do list for the next day. Set an alarm (or multiple alarms if you’re not good at stopping!) to make sure you DO actually stop on time.

NUMBER 13: UNWIND TIME AT THE END OF YOUR DAY – According to research done at the University of Surrey, we have lost a very important time in our day, gradually, over the last ten or so years – it’s called our UNWIND TIME. Work can be stressful and can get us ‘wound up’, so make sure that, at the end of your working day, you take time to unwind and de-stress BEFORE you start on your home chores (see note on ‘creating a restorative space’ below). Our body and mind need time to recover after a busy day; our system needs to shut down the stress factory and get back to its normal biochemistry. It’ll make your evenings much more pleasant and enjoyable, and you will be much more enjoyable and pleasant to be around too – so it’s not just you that will notice the difference from this, but your partner and children too!

NUMBER 14: DO CREATE A RESTORATIVE SPACE – We all need a sanctuary to unwind, a restorative space to recover ourselves. It could be in the garden or a study, your bedroom, or just a comfy chair you love. Spend at least 30 minutes there ‘unwinding’ before you launch into the ‘what next’ – be that looking after the kids, starting cooking, or doing some household chores. It’s a great excuse to get yourself some new comfy cushions or buying some new garden furniture. Creating your restorative space is almost as much fun as being in it! Use the 30minutes or so doing non-work-related things: do a hobby, read a paper, listen to a podcast or your favourite music. In my household I call it my “wine down” time (as I’ll go outside into my garden restorative space, listen to some music and have a glass of wine!).

NUMBER 15: GET A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP – The most important thing you can do when it comes to your working routine isn’t actually found in any of the above, it’s something more fundamental than that, it’s getting a good night’s sleep. So, if you’re someone who suffers with your sleep (you’re not alone by the way, there is a real ‘sleeplessness epidemic’ going on right now in this country), it really is something worth focussing on, because put very simply, SLEEP is your greatest resource of all. With a good night’s sleep, you can be your amazing, brilliant best; without a good night’s sleep, everything is just harder work! If you want some tips on getting a good night’s sleep, then just get in touch as we’ve been researching and delivering workshops on #performance sleeping for years!

At Meta, we’re passionate about helping YOU to be the best you can be, and helping organisations to support their staff to be the best they can be. So, we hope these 15 top tips help you to create a working from home regime that works for YOU (and if it works for you, it’ll work for your organisation too!)

Have a wonderful month!
In peace,
Jo xx

I’ve been talking to a number of leaders and friends in our Meta network and it seems to me that virtual working, especially now most of us are working from home, isn’t working.

We’ve talked before here about how, actually, since we went into lockdown in March 2020, we’re ALL working longer hours. About 48minutes more every day on average according to a massive piece of research done in the USA. Combine that with a 12.5% rise in virtual meetings and the fact that many of us are also home schooling our kids – is it any wonder that we’re all running on empty?

I’ve heard many organisations say how happy they are with the productivity of their staff as they work from home and that some employees even use glass moveable walls to create a workspace in their homes. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that they will get rid of offices in favour of virtual working and ‘collaborative spaces’ – but that happiness is not necessarily shared by those who are doing the virtual working. There’s a reason why productivity has stayed the same or even improved, it’s because most of us are working longer hours to get it all done, and that’s why people like offices and use things like perforated shutters to keep their offices secure and looking great for all the work necessary.

I have yet to talk to someone who says that working from home really works for them. I think it’s time to admit that the working from home experiment isn’t the overwhelming success some organisations think it is – far from it – it definitely needs some tweaking and improving if it’s how we’ll all be working in the future.

That said, there are some GREAT benefits in working from home if we utilise them. The problem is that many of us feel guilt around using the flexibility of working from home and end up working more to ‘make up’ for the time we may have taken putting the washing out, grabbing a cuppa outside in the garden, or taking a walk or exercising during the day. Sure, we’ll do those things (because instinctively we know they work for us) but then we’ll come back to work later on in the evening perhaps, after we’ve put the children to bed, or after we’ve had dinner. The vast majority of people want to do a good job and do their best to get everything done on their to-do lists and, as a result, they tend to work longer than the time they actually took out during the day.

I’ve been working from home for 20 years now – Meta has always been a virtual organisation from its outset, we have always had home offices and consequently worked from home. Our working has always been flexible, with no set hours, as we felt it important to give ourselves free rein to work when worked best for us. Yet I know from my own experience that it’s hard to stop working when you’re working at home – I have a fierce ‘protestant work ethic’ that it’s taken me years to tame and overcome!

The first thing we need to do is take away the GUILT. It’s time to say that FLEXIBLE WORKING, or AGILE WORKING (for those of you in the world of agile) means that we work when WE ARE AT OUR BEST, not that we work longer hours, so that we can have the flexibility we need when we are working from home AND home schooling for example.

Flexibility is a TWO-WAY street. If you’re answering emails on a Sunday evening, you absolutely should be able to go for a long restorative walk on Wednesday morning! It’s not just about putting in the extra hours, it’s also about being able to exercise at lunchtime, being able to pick up the kids from a minder or from school (when they return to school) and spending quality time with the family.

I’ve heard many people, in the resilience workshops that we’ve been running during the pandemic, say how much they’ve appreciated having more time with their family. That has been a real boon of working from home. I also hear how people have enjoyed the freedom of going for a walk at lunchtime, or going to the park with their kids after work – but I’ve also heard from almost everyone that they now feel that work has fully invaded their home life. It’s hard for them to SWITCH OFF, because they feel they must be ALWAYS ON.

It’s time to make our working from home routines work for us. We need to re-evaluate and analyse what really works for US. Most organisations are genuinely trying to do the right thing, and understand they must be much more flexible, the 9-5pm work-day just no longer exists. But we must also play our part and feedback to them our experiences, so they can tailor their future plans to reflect the real needs of the home worker. Your organisation will be happy as long as you get the tasks done, and it’s up to US to figure out how best to do that, how working from home works best for us.

It’s been a virtual trial by fire, a massive global experiment in virtual working. As with all experiments, we need to analyse what did and didn’t work, so that we can improve the experience and refine the practice to make it easier for us to give of our best.

So why not spend a few moments now to figure out what WORKS for you and what DOESN’T in your current working from home routine? Have you slipped into the habit of just working harder? If you have, don’t worry, don’t beat yourself up because you’re certainly not alone! However, DO look back over the past year – maybe you started off well, you DID take your breaks, you did get some exercise, and some daylight! What did you do that WORKED and what have you ended up doing that perhaps doesn’t work so well? Now is the time to re-evaluate and get into some good habits again.

The likelihood is that we’ll all be mainly working from home for at least the next two-three months, that’s plenty of time to get into a WFH routine that really works for you. And here’s the brilliant thing, if it works for you, it will absolutely work for your organisation. Because if you feel good, you are much more productive, you are less stressed, you sleep better, and you’ll produce higher quality work. Smarter working is one of those things that is a REAL WIN – WIN!

If you’re not sure HOW to improve your working from home routine, or you just need some proven practical tips on smarter working (when home working), then please feel free to get in touch and ask us! At Meta we’ve been researching smarter working techniques for 10 years+ now and, in the last year, we have been specifically focussing on how to use those smarter working tools to ensure we all can perform at our best when working from home. We’ll happily help you or, indeed, you and your team or your organisation to get the best out of the virtual working experience.

We love sharing our research and it’s part of our purpose, our mission at Meta to help change the way we work to a more sustainable way of working. We want to help inspire workplace and working practices which enable everyone to give of their best and work smarter not harder. This pandemic has forced us to re-evaluate the way we work, and we want to ensure that as many people and organisations as possible make the right changes, so please do call on us and we’ll do what we can to help you.

Have a wonderful month everyone,

In peace,
Jo xxx

Jo Clarkson, Meta CEO

The new year is upon us, and yet it feels very much like just a continuation of 2020 doesn’t it? Back in lockdown, back having our lives dictated to us, our freedoms suppressed, change forced upon us, things feeling out of our control.

It may be a bit depressing, but there is good reason for it: there is no doubt that we are at a very challenging time in this COVID crisis. We’re near the top of the mountain, we can see the top but it’s often that last stretch which can be the most difficult and demanding. We’ve done the hard work; we can see the end in sight and that’s when our guard can slip and the last few steps can become a real struggle.

I remember being with my dad on one of our many trips together to climb Snowdon in North Wales. He was a youth leader and a keen mountain-walker. He was always prepared for every eventuality as he climbed a mountain. In his backpack he had a tent, sleeping bag, emergency supplies of food, waterproofs, a little stove and a first aid kit. He never underestimated the mountain, and there is no doubt that, as a 9 or 10 year old, there was a point in the climb where a handful of nuts and raisins or a dextrose tablet (magic energy booster) were like manna from heaven, the little extra boost needed to get to the top.

It’s a strange story to share it might seem, but a valid one, I think – we’re near the (COVID) mountain top, but it’s not yet in reach and we’ve run out of gas, we’re running on empty. It’s been one heck of a climb to get to where we have, it’s been a struggle – let’s be honest here, it’s been so challenging to get up to this point, so how do we get ourselves to the top? How do we keep ourselves driving onwards and upwards when our legs have had enough of climbing? How do we catch our breath and fuel ourselves to continue this arduous journey to the summit?

I think it’s time to say THANK YOU.

Odd thing to say – but actually a THANK YOU goes a very long way. Back it up with action, and a thank you can be transformatory, it can be healing and it can be energising.

It can be a PERSONAL thank you, to those who have helped you through this year. Who do you need to thank? A friend? A work colleague? A family member? A loved one? Who has been the rock to you? Who has been there for you during this last year? One of the loveliest things to receive (and I know this from my own experience) is a little note or card or email or text or WhatsApp message that says:

“THANK YOU for being you”, or “THANK YOU for being my friend”.

It’s not hard, but right now there is someone who is in need of a thank you, of your thanks, of your GRATITUDE – so why not use this prompt to send them that little something?

We all have things to be grateful for, and when things are bleak, when things are tough, it’s important to remind yourself of just how much you have to be grateful for, and to thank those who have been gracious, kind and supportive to you. As I’ve mentioned in the last posted blog, kindness is infectious, so spread a little kindness and give a little thank you to someone who you are grateful to.

That’s the personal thank you – but this is a business blog, written by a business consultancy, it’s about business best practice, it’s about excellence in action, in organisations. So now let’s talk to you organisational leaders out there, those who have teams and line manage people.

We have a very diverse Meta family – we are unusual in that we work in all sectors (corporate, public and third non-profit/charity) and with all kinds of sizes of organisations (from 10s-1000s of staff). We work with all levels of managers and leaders, from team leaders, to shift managers, to directors, executive directors, CFOs and CEOs. So, over the last year we’ve heard many different approaches to the pandemic and working practices. There’s been some AMAZING practice (I’d like especially single out CRISIS, SQUARED and BDHT here as organisations who have been AMAZINGLY supportive and appreciative of their staff and that it’s been our pleasure to work with).

We’ve also heard of organisations (mostly in the corporate sector if we’re honest here) who have carried on pretty much as though it’s business as usual, treating staff (who have been home-working, home-schooling and coping with the rather large challenges we’ve all been facing during this crisis) as resources rather than human beings. Restructuring, putting people at risk of redundancy, carrying on major projects that maybe could have been put on hold.

Now we understand that business must carry on. It doesn’t stop because there’s a pandemic going on and, at the same time, an acknowledgement of the human side of things is incredibly important, and will ensure the loyalty, and dedication of your staff. We’re ALL struggling, whatever your level within an organisation – we see an end in sight, but how do we get there when we’re running on empty?

The good news is that it’s not too late. As leaders we have tremendous power and a little can go a long way indeed. Remember that handful of nuts and raisins my dad would dish out as I thought the mountain path would never end? The dextrose tablet for those last 100 yards to the top of the mountain? Well, the organisational equivalent is a THANK YOU – a heartfelt thank you can make all the difference.

Has your organisation THANKED its staff? I mean REALLY THANKED its staff for helping the organisation to make it through last year? Even if your organisation hasn’t been particularly vocal about it, YOU can, as a manager or leader of people.

The new year is a great time to hit refresh, to start again, to set the tone for what is to come. It’s a great time to put behind us things that need to be put behind us and focus on the what next, what is to come. It’s a great time to say THANK YOU and to help lift the spirits of your staff to cope with the coming 3-6 months of uncertainty.

Right now your staff will be struggling, like the 10 year old me near the top of Snowdon. They need a boost, some motivation to keep doing the work that they need to do. So now is the time to really THANK them for all that they have done – and do it in a way that will stick in their memory, will really energise and delight them.

So spend time TODAY to think about how you can THANK your staff. Be you someone who has one person in their team, a whole directorate or a whole organisation – how can you really say a BIG THANK YOU?

Most people just want to be appreciated and valued for the work they do. They don’t need big gestures, small ones will do, but it needs to be genuine and heartfelt.

Let’s be honest here, there is no doubt that, without your staff doing what needs to be done, your organisation would not have got through the year as well as it has. This pandemic has been an unprecedented event – no-one leading an organisation has ever been through something like this, and so there has been extra pressure, extra demands put on both leaders and staff to just get through this as safely and securely as possible. It’s been a mountain to climb and, if we’re honest, many of us have been winging it as we go along, but now we’re through the worst of it (hopefully) so this is a good time to stop and say THANK YOU.

Have a think – get creative with your THANK YOUs, make your THANK YOU memorable and fun. Perhaps it’s time to do a silly awards ceremony, or to break out the virtual coffee and doughnuts. Is it time to give everyone a voucher as an appreciation of their efforts? Or how about this? If your organisation or team has had to work all the way through this pandemic, how about giving them a long weekend? Or an extra holiday day? If you can’t give it now, then give it in lieu to be used when work schedules allow? How about doing a Friday afternoon virtual pub quiz with real awards? How about having a virtual lunch? Or giving everyone an extra-long lunch break one day?

I remember, many years ago, I worked in the West End (of London) for NEXT. I was a deputy manager of the menswear floor in the Regent Street store. I don’t know if you remember, but NEXT was famous for its Boxing Day sales. All the stock would be 50% off or more – everyone went to the NEXT SALES.

I can remember sitting on the number 30 bus going into work at 4:30am on the first day of sales, and knowing that the people who were on the bus with me were probably headed to one of our NEXT stores to start queueing!

The downside of having a sale so quickly after Christmas was that all the SALES preparations had to happen in the run up to Christmas (as if Christmas wasn’t busy enough!). As a manager I was expected to stay behind to finish up the prep. It was Christmas Eve, and I’d been working all day – it’s fair to say that I was pretty annoyed by the time it was dinner time. I’d been working for hours and, although the end was in sight, I’d lost all motivation and was getting rather irritable and grumpy. To top it all off, our manager had buggered off somewhere – he hadn’t been seen for nearly an hour, and the ‘minions’ had been left to do the hard graft – that’s how it felt anyway.

Then there was a knock on the stockroom door. We could see our manager’s face through the small window. As we opened the door, the waft of fresh cooked takeaway pizza hit our nostrils, and from behind his back he pulled out a plastic bag full of cans of beer.

Our manager sat us all down in a circle, and said a heartfelt personalised ‘THANK YOU’ to each one of us that was left. As we sat and scoffed the pizza, and drank our well-earned beer, all grumpiness had disappeared. We laughed, we shared jokes, turned the music up in the stockroom and cracked on with the remaining sale stock prep. I didn’t get home until about 10pm that Christmas Eve, but I didn’t go home angry, I went home happy, content at a good job well done, and knowing that all my hard work was appreciated and valued.

My manager wasn’t an amazing manager, but he did something that I never forgot that day. He reminded me how important, healing, restorative and transformative a simple THANK YOU, followed up with ACTION (the pizza and beer) can be.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR US ALL TO SAY THANK YOU – and follow that up with an ACTION. How you do that is up to you, but it’s important to start 2021 with an acknowledgement of just how much you value and appreciate your people.

Let me start us all off – I want to say THANK YOU, to all of you in our Meta family. Thanks for being there, thanks for doing the wonderful work that so many of you do.

It’s been a tough year for us here at Meta, but there are many of you (you know who you are) who have offered me personal support and words of encouragement this year, and I want to say a HEARTFELT THANK YOU to you all – it has been so appreciated and often just what I needed when you gave it.

And, every one of you who is reading this deserves to be THANKED just for getting through this last year – it’s been a bugger to put it mildly, but you made it, and that is something to be celebrated too!

Together I believe we will make the top of the mountain, and get down safely again. TOGETHER we are ALWAYS STRONGER – TOGETHER WE CAN ACHIEVE ALMOST ANYTHING.

Wishing you all a much better 2021!

In peace and love,

Jo xxx

I don’t know about you, but I definitely need to recharge and top up my batteries and I definitely am missing being with friends, family and loved ones.

I MISS HUGS. I MISS THE PHYSICAL TOUCH OF OTHERS.

I know I’m not the only one.

As we get into the eighth month of this pandemic, and are entering into another enforced lockdown, we’re all feeling the strain. We’ve been amazingly resourceful. I think we’ve been amazing to get this far and not gone completely nuts! It’s safe to say that almost everyone I come into contact with right now is running on empty. We’ve just run out of juice and that’s to be expected when we’ve had so long in isolation with all the COVID-19 stuff happening all around us.

I thought I’d use this Meta blog, to remind you of the POWER OF KINDNESS, how kindness is a gift that keeps on giving.

During this pandemic we’ve seen the best of behaviours in people and we’ve seen the worst. I think many of us have just run out of positivity or optimism and now, more than ever, we need something that helps us feel good, helps us feel better than we are feeling just now.

There is no better FEEL GOOD thing to do, than to BE KIND. Kindness spreads, it’s infectious (in a good way) and right now I think it’s something that we can all be doing more of. Kindness not only benefits those who we are kind to (it literally increases the happy chemicals in their body and brain), but also benefits us too (we get a good chemical hit too!). And here’s the nuts thing, it also benefits people who observe us giving that kindness to another.

So surely that’s the definition of a GIFT that keeps on GIVING?

Three gifts in one, a triple whammy from a single act of kindness – BOOM – *drops the mic*

The other thing about being kind is that it’s really, really easy. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture; it doesn’t have to be big – it’s about the small kindnesses too.

It’s about making sure that you smile and say hello to someone on the street as you are having your daily exercise. It can be about engaging with the lady at the checkout at your supermarket or saying thank you to your postie next time you see them. How about sending a ‘thanks for being my friend’ type of card to one of your friends you’ve not seen in a while (or who lives in another country?)

And let’s not limit kindness to just our friends and family! Many of us are working from home now, and we miss the contact and comradery of our team-mates. So many of the people in organisations I’ve been doing resilience workshops with say it’s the simple things that they miss – the informal chat in the staff kitchen as they make a cup of tea, the office banter amongst the team, sharing a joke or meme, being able to laugh with your work colleagues and just the buzz, the noise of the office! So make sure that those of you who are working from home check in with your work colleagues, make sure you’re showing you care, to those in your team – maybe set up a WhatsApp group for your team, or just randomly check in once a week with someone in your team.

How about a virtual lunch break? Or a virtual cuppa and catch up? Friday team quiz anyone? There are plenty of ways of making sure that no-one feels alone or isolated in this next lockdown period and plenty of ways to show kindness to those we work with.

I went down to my local foodbank last week to offer to volunteer and the lovely manager there told me that they’d been inundated with offers of help, so much help that they were overflowing with volunteers and they had to create a rota to ensure that everyone who wanted to volunteer got to! It reminded me that, as human beings, we want to help those who are less fortunate than us, and it really re-established my faith in our common humanity. I think that when we are struggling, we tend to think of others – I know I personally have been thinking to myself that, if I’m struggling with all the tools I have in my personal toolkit, then my word how must it be for others?

I’ve also been running quite a few resilience workshops and, of the many themes that come through, one of them is the fact that CARING for ourselves and others really MATTERS. Caring and kindness are sense-siblings to show we care. It is in itself an act of kindness to show that we are thinking beyond ourselves and our own self-interest, to reach out to others and show our willingness to help and support them any way we can.

The thing about showing we care is that it’s not hard to do. It’s about reaching out and saying, “Hey I’m here should you need me”, it’s about sending an email that checks in with someone you’ve not heard from in a while. It’s about taking time on your weekend or evening to go through your phone contacts and send a random text to a friend to say, “Hello and how are you doing?” It’s about sharing that YouTube clip that brought a smile to your face, or the meme that a friend shared with you on WhatsApp.

Whatever the format, whatever the platform you use, whatever the technology, every contact DOES matter. In times when we are all struggling to be positive, receiving a text, an email, a WhatsApp message, or indeed a phone call or Skype/Zoom call from a loved one or friend (or, let’s face it, from pretty much anyone!) is always something that touches us, and more importantly something that helps us FEEL GOOD. And we all need to feel good now – especially now we’re going back into the hibernation and isolation that lockdown brings.

There is so much research that highlights how important our social network is (no not THAT online Facebook type social network, but our actual friends and family network). Our social network is our support network, and those who have more a more ACTIVE social and support network with more connections tend to feel significantly more positive and have much better mental health than those who don’t.

So now is the time to be reaching out, to be reconnecting and re-enforcing our social and support networks. Let’s reach out not just to our nearest and dearest, those in our inner circles, but to those who are further out, those that we know may be by themselves or in an ‘at-risk category’, or just someone we’ve not spoken to in a while. What I can GUARANTEE is that the simple act of kindness of just reaching out to say hello and check in WILL give them a boost to their day. It’ll take you just five or ten minutes, but it might just make someone’s day.

In the coming months on the run up to Christmas, let’s ALL make a concerted effort to be KIND, to show that WE CARE, to as many people as we can.

I know from my own doing of this as an exercise, that it’s good not just for those who I write to or contact, but it’s good for me too! Just recently I got in touch with my first ever best friend – Gary McCausland. When I first went to infant school, Gary gave up his place on the cool kids table (the orange table) to be with me at the back of the class on the black table. We became great friends and shared a love of the Beatles, playing guitar together and were in our first ever band together (the Bulrushes – I still have an audio tape somewhere :D), but sadly we had lost touch over the years.

I wrote to him near a couple of months back, as I’d found an old email address for him. Then just a few weeks back I got a response out of the blue… and it delighted me so much to hear from him. It was a real GIFT just to get that email and, although we’ve not quite got together yet, just hearing from Gary was like having a piece of who you are returned to you. He was the one friend I thought I’d lost that truly mattered to me – and now he’s not lost, he’s re-found – and in these uncertain and challenging times, that makes me very happy indeed.

So, do what you can this month to be a positive ripple – kindness is a gift that keeps on giving, so give what you can, when you can.

Please do remember that if you’re receiving or reading this blog, that you are a part of the Meta family, part of our network, so feel free to reach out to me or to Di – we’d love to hear from you!

In peace and love

Jo xxx

As I write this, Boris Johnson’s government has just imposed some new restrictions that limit our ability to socialise and, again, we find ourselves in a position where control and our social freedoms are taken away from us. It’s understandable: no-one wants a second wave of Coronavirus, and at the same time it throws us into new uncertainty and it is another change that is out of our control – which has a profound psychological effect on us.

I wanted to talk today about something that has become increasingly clear to me over the last five or so years: the fact that unless we start to look after ourselves better, unless we actively tackle the insidious triple danger of sleeplessness, stress and overwork in our own lives (and in those of our staff and teams, for you leaders reading this) then life (and work) is only ever going to get slowly but surely more difficult and challenging.

I think it’s safe to say that all of you reading this would say we’ve had a rough year. That’s putting it mildly and yet here we are, making it work despite everything! We are truly amazingly flexible and adaptable and we should all be patting ourselves on the back for what we’ve managed to do and the obstacles we’ve overcome within this crisis period. But we can’t do that forever, and from my own empirical research, I’m already seeing the warning signs that say we’re coming close to breaking point. Now I don’t want to be all doom and gloom here, I want to just emphasise how important it is that we take this existential threat seriously and do what we can to tackle and ultimately defeat what I call: THE UNHOLY TRINITY.

The UNHOLY TRINITY sounds like something from a dodgy 1970s Hammer Horror movie doesn’t it? But actually it’s a very modern phenomenon.

I think it really kicked in after the recession of 2008/9 when our stress levels significantly increased as a working nation. Job security went out of the window, and we were all fearful of losing our jobs and income. In return for keeping our jobs, we agreed to work that bit extra to help out, and when organisations did inevitably flatten structures, reduce headcount, and cut costs (which many have been doing ever since incidentally) we worked that bit harder to ensure that we got everything done and weren’t one of the ones ‘restructured out’.

Meta has been in business since the beginning of the millennium, and since 2000 research by the OECD and Eurostat database shows that we work now on average 1.5 hours longer than we did in 2000 (40.5 hours a week in 2000, 42 hours a week by 2019). I was once challenged by a senior director within an organisation as to whether we really did work longer and harder than we used to, that’s why I did the research, and what’s interesting is that the more you research, the more you realise that working harder and longer hours just doesn’t work.

I know it seems like an oxymoron. Surely if you work longer you’ll get more done right?? But all the research seems to say that if you work longer, especially whilst working through breaks (which many of us do now), then you get less not more done, and at a lower quality too! It also affects our ability to be creative – organisations that are famed for their innovation spend a lot of time and resources making sure their staff’s well-being is looked after to maintain their creativity.

What’s fascinating is when you look into the productivity per hour (check out the OECD’s fascinating research on this) the longer your average working day/week, the less productive per hour you become.

We are not alone in this upwards trend of working hours. However we are 2 hours above the EU average and amongst the worst in productivity. To spotlight one example: in Denmark workers work on average 37.7 hours a week and yet it is 23.5% higher in its productivity per hour. To put that into a context you’ll get, that’s two weeks extra holiday they’d have a year and they still get more done. This is a trend that is repeated not just through the EU but across the world.

So working longer hours doesn’t work! Not only does it not lead to increased productivity, but it also increases our stress levels (more on that in a moment).

This was all happening before the Covid crisis hit, but let’s update that research to the very latest during the last six months – you know how many of us are working from home now? You’d think that would lead to a better work-life balance, but actually we’re working even longer hours now we’re working from home more. Research done just last month by the National Bureau for Economic Research in the USA, using data from over three million American workers, found that the average workday in the USA had gone up by 8.2% (that’s a whopping 48 minutes per day). OK we’re not the USA, but we’re not far behind it, and what I find fascinating is that figure – 48 minutes.

I reckon that’s almost precisely the AVERAGE COMMUTE TIME for most people to and from the office. So now we are working from home, not only are we working 1.5 hours longer than we were 20 years ago, but in just six months we’ve upped that again by 48 minutes, using that commute time to work longer. No wonder we’re tired, no wonder we’re stressed!

No longer do we have that commute home to unwind and get our work day out of our system and get back to some semblance of normal. Now we open the door to our home office and we’re immediately launched into the stresses of home – kids, dinner and the stuff to be done around the house.

The body never gets a chance to calm itself down and get back to its normal state after the stresses of the day, and as a result that longer working day increases our stress and ensures that it carries on into our home life.

Which leads me on to introduce you to the second member of the UNHOLY TRINITY: STRESS.

Now I’ve talked a lot about stress so I won’t go into too much detail here, other than to say that, in our opinion at Meta, now more than ever we need to be actively doing what we can to tackle stress. As individuals we need to take the threat of stress more seriously, we need to be making sure that we understand it, that we’ve analysed what stresses us out and have tools in our toolkits to reduce its impact on us.

As leaders in organisations you need to be getting the conversations going about stress with your staff and ensuring you have a coherent strategy for tackling it within your organisations. This is not just because it’s the right thing to do, or a mental health tick box exercise, it’s because if you don’t face up to the tsunami wave of stress and mental health issues that will inevitably come as a result of the Covid crisis, then you’ll face serious capacity and performance issues within your businesses. Quality, creativity and ability to innovate will suffer too.

In short – it makes sound business sense to right now be investing (significantly) in the well-being (physical and mental) of your staff and tackling the silent killer called stress in your workplace and organisation. Think of it as a preventative medicine, to stop it before things get significantly worse.

Stress affects our ability to make good decisions and think things through, it makes complex tasks more difficult – we literally can’t think straight when we’re under stress. It tends to make us snappy, uptight and not very pleasant to be around. It makes us defensive, aggressive, emotional, and makes us react in ways out of character with our normal lovely selves. We make impulsive decisions, we say inappropriate things, we can feel helpless, out of control and struggle to get even simple tasks done. When we’re under stress we become more susceptible to illness as it suppresses our immune system, which is something nothing of us want when the danger of Covid is all around us!

Stress is something that was already a problem before Covid, but the latest research shows that we are all now facing even more elevated levels of anxiety and stress since the pandemic began. According to research done by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), when the Covid pandemic struck and we went into lockdown, there was a significant spike in our stress and anxiety levels to 5.2/10 on average (with 49.8% of people registering 6-10/10).  To put this into perspective, in the whole of 2019 (I think we’d all probably agree that was quite a stressful year too) we were on average at 2.8/10. Now because we’re amazingly adaptable human beings we’ve had a bit of a bounce back, but we’re still at 4.2/10 – a significant rise in stress in all of us.

So stress is very real and here right now and that’s causing many of us to have sleepless nights.

Which brings me along to the THIRD VILLAIN in the UNHOLY TRINITY – SLEEPLESSNESS.

There is a real sleeplessness epidemic going on in the UK, and this is not just because of the extra stresses of the pandemic, it’s been gradually getting worse for years. I started researching into sleep about 10 years ago, when I noticed just how many leaders I was working with were struggling to get a good night’s sleep. The fact is that getting a good night’s sleep is essential to have a healthy body and mind. Simply put, SLEEP is your greatest resource of all.

With a good night’s sleep, you can be your creative, fun loving, brilliant best, whereas with interrupted or reduced amounts of sleep, you can guarantee a more difficult and challenging day ahead.

The problem is that many of us are struggling to sleep right now. According to research done by Phillips in early 2020, the average sleep time in the UK is just six hours 32 minutes, which is considerably worse than the six hours 48 minutes average across the world.

So what?? I hear you say. What’s 16 minutes a night? Well, actually over the course of a year that’s an extra four whole days’ worth of sleep – and seven-to-eight hours are the minimum we all need to get per night to ensure that all that our body needs to do to repair, recover, regenerate, recharge and download actually gets done.

If we don’t sleep for long enough or have fitful sleep, then essentially we interrupt the programme of works that our body and mind has for us that enables us to function at our best. We can’t fully download or process the content from our brain, which means we can’t retain or absorb information in the same way the next day, we just don’t have the internal capacity or processing power to do what needs to be done. We don’t repair all the cells that need to be repaired, we don’t grow enough new cells to replace the old ones and as a result our physical health suffers. On top of that, our immune system will be compromised and we increase our risk of high blood pressure. Without sleep we tend to be more grumpy and irritable and our ability to see the world in a positive light becomes harder and harder. To put it bluntly, after a few nights of bad sleep, we’re barely able to function at all!

It also means we are more likely to start up our own internal stress factories, and we are more susceptible to STRESS. And STRESS is the number one cause of SLEEPLESSNESS, and WORK (especially now we’re working harder and longer) is the number one cause of that STRESS.

So now I hope you can see that these three members of the UNHOLY TRINITY not only cause each other but feed into each other and aggravate one another. It leads to an inevitable downward spiral, each feeding the next. They are truly an UNHOLY TRINITY and it’s time we all took notice of them and frankly did something to take them on and knock them down to size.

You see the thing is that when they are all together in their unholy union, then it’s difficult to disentangle them and tackle them. However, tackle each individually and they are relatively easy to do something about.

That’s what we’ve been doing here at Meta, working with frontline organisations to help tackle that UNHOLY TRINITY. We’ve combined the workshops that we provide on the BIO-CHEMISTRY OF STRESS, WORKING SMARTER NOT HARDER and #HAPPYSLEEPING, to create our RESILIENCE TOOLKIT programme. It’s a three-day programme that not only gives those who attend the understanding and the tools that will enable them to fight back and recover their health and well-being, but ensures that this is fed into the teams they work in too, in a way that builds resilience within the organisation.

At the end of the day Meta is a business consultancy. We understand the demands and pressures of work, and we understand the dynamics of organisations. This means that the RESILIENCE TOOLKIT programme is practical and easy to apply back in the workplace, and as a part of the programme we’ll work with your leaders to ensure that your organisation acts on the feedback and becomes a more resilient place as a result.

I personally have been researching the BIO-CHEMISTRY OF STRESS, SLEEP and SMARTER WORKING PRACTICES for years and years now, and what I’ve come to realise is that, although IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, these are things that most of us don’t know enough about and, as a result, we are unsure how best to tackle them. I’ve done the research so you don’t have to, and now I want to share that research to enable you to get the best from your people in these challenging and unprecedented times.

So if you’d like to find out more about how Meta can help you, your team, your leaders, or indeed your whole organisation to combat STRESS, WORK SMARTER, SLEEP better and increase RESILIENCE, then please DO get in touch. We want to do what we can to ensure that we all get through these unprecedented and challenging times.

Have a great month all of you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us should any of the UNHOLY TRINITY be affecting you.

Jo xxx