Natasha Jones, Chief Habit Officer, Mandemic

In this episode, Engage's CEO Phil Wedgwood talks to Natasha Jones, lawyer, entrepreneur and author, about her book Mandemic and what led her to focus on mental health and wellbeing based on her experiences in the legal sector. The book talks about 32 good habits to improve mental health and wellbeing.

For over 20 years Natasha has helped organisations achieve success through their people as an employment lawyer and business owner.

Transcript

00;00;01;03 - 00;00;18;08
Narration
Welcome to Engaged in Conversation. The podcast from Engage Solutions Group in this episode as CEO Phil Wedgwood talks to Natasha Jones, lawyer, entrepreneur and author, about her book Pandemic and what led her to focus on mental health and wellbeing based on her experiences in the legal sector.

00;00;19;10 - 00;00;39;19
Phil
Natasha, good morning to you and thank you for coming in to visit us today. I would describe you as a lawyer, an entrepreneur and most recently, an author. We've been working together for about two years now. I think you work with our team here, engage on a routine basis, helping us with our employment related matters in the

00;00;39;19 - 00;00;52;16
Phil
name. And you've been a really valuable and engaged part of our team. So thank you for that. I thought it'd be really great to meet today in this capacity as you have a great story to tell. And you've recently written a book as well.

00;00;52;26 - 00;01;13;18
Phil
And you've we've also worked together in the legal profession for many years, and it's still a sector we work in. And I think we have a lot of shared experiences under that banner and also shared audiences there as well, too, and some really interesting insights around engagement from our conversations that we've had and against the backdrop of

00;01;13;18 - 00;01;24;28
Phil
the pandemic. You sensed an even larger pandemic, the one you call the pandemic. So welcome, and please tell us about yourself.

00;01;25;15 - 00;01;35;13
Natasha
Thank you very much for having me here today. Lovely to see you again. So I suppose for me, COVID and the pandemic, it created time to to think.

00;01;35;24 - 00;01;36;17
Natasha
And.

00;01;37;06 - 00;01;56;03
Natasha
The time I gained during the day where I would have been following my children around coming back from meetings after spent all day to talk my furlough, which was a very long day. I just think I said to the garden and I heard a podcast which said that the high suicide rate was middle aged men, and it

00;01;56;03 - 00;02;17;28
Natasha
dawned on me that in 20 years have been an employment lawyer. The demographic of files on my desk had been middle aged men. And I began to ponder, I suppose, the Work-Life Balance how people were living. And I had a real sense that maybe the pandemic was here to show us something for us to reflect and to

00;02;17;28 - 00;02;26;11
Natasha
come out of it differently. So that's when I began to think about the role of the male. I'm a mother to a son and a daughter. I'm a sister, I'm a daughter.

00;02;27;21 - 00;02;28;10
Natasha
And.

00;02;28;11 - 00;02;53;00
Natasha
I. I saw that actually the world we live in as an employment lawyer, the category of employees with the least employment rights is the white heterosexual male. And so if in the Middle Ages they are also suffering from mental health, if they are also losing their jobs, life looks pretty tough for them.

00;02;53;14 - 00;03;03;24
Natasha
And that's what hit me that week. In the first, I think it's probably maybe about April of the pandemic and the lockdown. It occurred to me that's what we're facing in this country.

00;03;04;13 - 00;03;17;07
Phil
Wow. And you obviously, you went through the pandemic with that very unique lens in many respects because it was really hard. I mean, people, it's easy to forget going back to March and April of 2020. How stressful it was.

00;03;17;07 - 00;03;36;03
Phil
And as someone who's running a business at the time it was, it was hard. It was hard time. So you saw that from from the inside, if you like from the business community's view of that and the challenges of making people redundant and streamlining cost bases, those conversations you were very involved in.

00;03;36;18 - 00;03;51;17
Natasha
Yeah, the I think the enormity of it and that the phone call was maybe in the first couple of weeks. We didn't. We hadn't heard of the word furlough. We didn't know what the scheme meant. The government changed, actually the details about ten or twelve times.

00;03;52;02 - 00;04;09;28
Natasha
So for a few months, lawyers were trying to advise on the application of a scheme. We didn't know the full scheme, which is now the full details. But every single client of mine, from a big conglomerate to smaller businesses, had the same question How is my business going to survive?

00;04;10;06 - 00;04;28;01
Natasha
How can I look after my staff? And that I'd never seen that before of the same questions, the same concerns of all sizes of business were being asked of me, really. So that was sort of one of the I suppose it's something I'll never forget from that March, April, May 2020.

00;04;29;09 - 00;04;40;03
Phil
And are there any really, really sort of profound or impactful thoughts that have stayed with you and really maybe make you change your focus or where you see the world now given that experience?

00;04;41;01 - 00;05;01;25
Natasha
Yeah, I I honestly believe that COVID is here to teach us something and to value what you have. So one of the habits that took part in the book is gratitude. But once you begin to focus on your own life and what you have to be grateful for, then even the smallest things when you start to consider

00;05;01;25 - 00;05;23;25
Natasha
them. Can I suppose dawn upon you that not everybody has them? So whether it's a comfortable bed to sleep in, whether there's food in the fridge, whether your body does what you ask of it? So the very small pleasures and especially in how this conversation with somebody today, when a person has COVID and if they're fortunate not

00;05;23;25 - 00;05;42;21
Natasha
to really suffer as obviously some people do, then when you lose your sense of taste and smell, it really makes you focus on the days you don't have your taste and smell. It makes you feel utterly grateful for all of the foods you've sumptuous, all of the things that you've drunk.

00;05;43;00 - 00;05;53;03
Natasha
And I suppose I mean, I made a list, I made a list of things I was going to eat as soon as I could taste them, and I literally had ten days thinking, Oh, it be so good. I miss not tasting this.

00;05;53;03 - 00;05;55;03
Natasha
Delton still top of the list with the.

00;05;55;03 - 00;05;57;04
Phil
Release of Blue Cheese these days.

00;05;57;04 - 00;06;10;01
Natasha
Yes, I love it. Yeah, but it'll be a cup of tea for me. A daily pleasure is a cup of tea. But if I couldn't taste my tea, the one thing that I started the day off feeling great by I couldn't have.

00;06;10;12 - 00;06;19;26
Natasha
So I think it is here to show us the very small things that maybe we took for granted. If you start to be grateful for those and focus on them.

00;06;20;02 - 00;06;20;14
Natasha
And then.

00;06;20;14 - 00;06;23;19
Natasha
Work upwards, you have a different feeling on every day in life.

00;06;24;23 - 00;06;33;20
Phil
I agree with that. That's so good in terms of the book than what one when you were writing it, what audience did you have in mind is your sort of target audience, so to speak?

00;06;34;10 - 00;06;52;10
Natasha
I suppose that middle aged man who his father been on my desk. He'd been struggling in life for a while. I'd noticed patterns of these men. They tended to not sleep well. They were probably quite heavily reliant upon alcohol, just to numb reality, really.

00;06;52;21 - 00;06;54;24
Natasha
They weren't eating particularly well.

00;06;55;09 - 00;06;56;15
Natasha
They weren't moving their bodies.

00;06;56;22 - 00;07;09;12
Natasha
And so they'd become stuck, maybe in their personal life. And then they began to break into the office and they they didn't perform well at work and eventually were exited for work. So I suppose when I first wrote it, I wanted to help these men.

00;07;09;17 - 00;07;28;17
Natasha
The high suicide rate in this country, it saddens me deeply that some people got to the stage. They had nothing to live for. So that's where I began. But then I also realized and began to think, Well, what my friends say when they pick up this book, and that we as women often can see really clearly when

00;07;28;17 - 00;07;41;16
Natasha
somebody is in pain, somebody's struggling. But maybe when we step in and start pointing the finger and pointing out what people should do differently and start making suggestions, that's the last thing a person wants to hear you struggling.

00;07;41;29 - 00;07;53;15
Natasha
So the title of the book is a man who didn't like to be told what to do. And I very much said it in five many podcasts. I don't wish to preach to anybody or tell anybody what to do.

00;07;53;27 - 00;08;09;16
Natasha
What I simply hope is that the 32 habits, just one of them may give somebody some inclination to try it, and they're all simple and they're all free to start. Basically, service is a gentle invitation to maybe try one different thing today or tomorrow.

00;08;10;21 - 00;08;27;24
Phil
And do you think because we've both experienced the legal sector, I've worked in it for many years, so have you. And what the sort of classic working profile that sits within that sector. And now with COVID, that's potentially changed.

00;08;28;12 - 00;08;36;23
Phil
How do you see that? And that being part of one of the the root causes, if you like to this this pandemic that you talk about.

00;08;37;24 - 00;08;55;16
Natasha
I think the legal profession I talk in the book about, I can say I was working in a man's world of law and business, and I probably became more masculine as a result of that, basically. I felt that I had to talk about results.

00;08;55;16 - 00;09;13;19
Natasha
I had to be very focused, driven, very result driven, basically. So the mask analogy serves a very important purpose in this world. But if you don't balance it with looking after yourself and making sure your body is functioning OK that you get enough sleep, the wheels will fall off somehow.

00;09;14;01 - 00;09;35;22
Natasha
So in my days of starting out in law firms, people would just disappear. They would probably have a nervous breakdown, or they would just very suddenly seriously ill, but they disappear. They they didn't come back part. Time the business wasn't told as to what's wrong with the person that was almost like, let's keep quiet about it, just

00;09;35;22 - 00;09;55;22
Natasha
let's just make everybody work longer hours as possible because in law we have time recording. So the the law firms need the staff to to work the hours, and that's that's effectively what provides the profit. So in some respects, time recording and work life balance of our polar opposites.

00;09;56;07 - 00;10;12;17
Natasha
So law for me is perhaps a sector which there is a major overhaul required. Some cultural challenges are there and it will take time. I don't think it'll happen quickly.

00;10;13;02 - 00;10;24;26
Phil
Yeah, I agree. And I think they're looking at it from our lens of as technology specialists trying to foster deeper engagement through the use of the tools that we have access to in our personal life. So, so much.

00;10;25;10 - 00;10;44;24
Phil
It's it's the it's the is that is that going to help because as we're seeing audiences continually being dispersed and that's across every sector, those those challenges are deeper. If you like the harder that connectivity, you know, in the legal profession, for example, they used to have only used to see each other in the office every day

00;10;44;24 - 00;10;59;19
Phil
. So if someone was struggling, you could physically see it, whereas now it's probably harder to see that. So for us is an even greater opportunity to try and foster that almost that social media narrative to to to help engage.

00;10;59;19 - 00;11;11;08
Phil
And and yet it's a balance because we know there's a downside to that as well. And so it's fascinating time that we're in where where we're seeing this impact working both ways.

00;11;11;28 - 00;11;35;03
Natasha
I think engagement through tech is the way forward. That's how my children engage with everybody in their life, except for me. Yes, please send me a message and speak to me. But I still I still do read the messages actually come to think of it, but joking apart, I think your role and engagement is really important.

00;11;35;12 - 00;11;57;07
Natasha
And I think you're in a great position now to talk about tech hygiene because tech is here to stay. But how we use tech of awareness on the impact on our sleep, on the negative aspects or impact onto our mental health, then it's time to have these conversations because the tech giants are not having them.

00;11;57;20 - 00;12;16;25
Natasha
So to show you your team to, I suppose, educate them how to use tech in a way that doesn't damage the mental health doesn't have a negative impact on their body. Well, then there's a great conversation to be had and that many people really, really benefit from.

00;12;16;25 - 00;12;26;16
Natasha
So the more we use around tech and engage in in a sensible way, in a healthy way, I think the conversation needs to be had very soon. Hmm.

00;12;27;05 - 00;12;47;25
Phil
Yeah, I agree. And so across without stealing the thunder in your book, you have these 32 habits that you lay out as as the as the framework for coping with this and making positive change. And I really like that, and I think the three that I was drawn to were smile, optimism and kindness, which are which are

00;12;47;25 - 00;13;03;06
Phil
really good attributes for everybody to have. And the ones I think probably quite classically we would struggle with were caffeine and technology. And I think that's that's is that quite typical? Would you say of your of your the people that would read your book?

00;13;03;08 - 00;13;15;10
Natasha
It's been. It's been a lovely journey because out of 32 habits, literally every person who said back to me has had a different take on it. I've seen some of the habits that are in a different guys.

00;13;16;25 - 00;13;17;13
Natasha
And.

00;13;19;00 - 00;13;33;19
Natasha
We're all different as human beings. So I think probably some of the habits are to be applied to the physical body. Some are more to the mind, more mindfulness. So some people have more of a palate for the physical habits they'd like to be.

00;13;33;19 - 00;13;47;15
Natasha
They like to do, whereas some people are perhaps more open to mindfulness and some of the the habits that are focused on the mind. But my thinking is, is that if you work on the mind and the body, that's when you start to function well as a human being.

00;13;47;16 - 00;14;08;08
Natasha
If you just function on the body, but don't do some, I suppose some how come on, put it, give the mind a rest, really. The habits around the mental aspect is to give the mind to rest, because if the mind is busy all of the time, then it doesn't quite function at its very best.

00;14;08;29 - 00;14;12;12
Phil
Other particular demographics that you see that more prevalent in.

00;14;13;17 - 00;14;36;01
Natasha
Definitely the focus on the physical and drinks, the male lawyers that many of which are friends. So I absolutely adore and are very, very good cyclists. And so they cycle a very long way, very, very fast. Basically, but to me, it's it's also an analogy with the way the mind works, because that's how they approach life.

00;14;36;01 - 00;14;43;03
Natasha
They're always doing. They go 100 miles an hour and they're very much out doing. But they will volunteer.

00;14;43;14 - 00;14;43;19
Natasha
On.

00;14;43;19 - 00;14;59;10
Natasha
A one to one basis that they can't just sit and do nothing. They struggle to just sit and do nothing with their families, where actually the focus on doing something all of the time, you have to learn to be quiet.

00;15;00;06 - 00;15;19;18
Natasha
Just as you would teach a toddler or a primary school child to to read and write, you have to teach the mind to be quiet. And in a world where we're bombarded with nudges and notifications to focus the mind and encourage the mind to be quiet for two minutes, four minutes, ten minutes, whatever it may be, the

00;15;19;18 - 00;15;35;07
Natasha
mind doesn't like it. So that that takes a lot of practice. But usually, I suppose, that demographic of the male, very successful businessman who who cycles 100 miles on a Sunday and is top of his league on straw.

00;15;35;07 - 00;15;36;21
Natasha
Other than.

00;15;36;21 - 00;15;48;29
Natasha
Sitting, doing nothing for four minutes, doesn't feel like he's doing anything. But when he does start to sit and do nothing and try for three, four or five minutes, he does see a huge benefit. It's just uncomfortable to begin it.

00;15;49;07 - 00;16;04;24
Phil
Yeah, it is. It is. And gosh, you I feel like you're talking about me there for a bit because, as you know, I'm a passionate cyclist. And what I found fascinating, especially with the lockdown, is again, as a business technologist, insurtech is how that's got to everything.

00;16;04;25 - 00;16;20;29
Phil
I mean, we've seen the rise of Peloton and Zwift in that world. And so even when you're cycling and try to take some time out, you know you're now part of a a tech ecosystem where you're bombarded with information, notifications, data and Strava.

00;16;21;00 - 00;16;28;20
Phil
And it's just it's I love it, but equally, it's hard to turn off. Yeah, and that's that's the challenge you're alluding to, I think, isn't it? I think.

00;16;28;20 - 00;16;43;27
Natasha
So. I think so. It's I think it's probably maybe 2022 is the time to have a conversation. Hackers infiltrated all aspects of our life. Yeah, but our mental health challenges are an all time high. Insomnia is at an all time high.

00;16;44;06 - 00;17;01;27
Natasha
And so may be considering whether this slow infiltration in every aspect of our life is perhaps related to the mental health challenges and the insomnia. Because the reality is, if you're not getting 67 hours solid sleep every night, your body's not regenerate.

00;17;01;27 - 00;17;15;02
Natasha
In this new cells are not being made. You have this mental fog effectively. So it's very, very hard to function at your, I suppose, perform to your highest if you haven't got good sleep patterns, really basic stuff.

00;17;15;24 - 00;17;16;00
Natasha
And.

00;17;16;00 - 00;17;32;00
Natasha
Also something that I suppose a language around sleep. So many people tell me they're really poor sleepers. I'm a bad sleeper. They believe it, but they're not prepared to make any changes or consider even just tech alone, maybe lying in bed, scrolling social media.

00;17;32;13 - 00;17;40;28
Natasha
Perhaps that's contributing to insomnia. So huge conversations and ones that are difficult to broach in all honesty.

00;17;41;19 - 00;17;59;17
Phil
I think you're right, and we're seeing call from organizations we work with to have some help around content and guidance for for how you can share these ideas internally within within a working environment. And I think that's a really interesting challenge to look at.

00;17;59;17 - 00;18;12;26
Phil
Maybe we could even try and embed your 32 habits into our into our next release in some way, because I think you're reminding people of them. We all will. We all have a habit of a just a normal day, don't we?

00;18;12;27 - 00;18;26;19
Phil
Yeah. And probably invariably doesn't count. Doesn't cater for the habits that you've laid out in your book. You know, maybe we do three or four of them out of the 32, and it's trying to just chip away at maybe doing a couple extra.

00;18;27;13 - 00;18;44;26
Natasha
Yeah. Ultimately, habits are something that we do so often the body just to say we don't have to think about it. So I always talk about a very basic one. We've got water here on the table. But if it becomes a daily habit to fit a water bottle, first thing the morning counter right with you.

00;18;45;07 - 00;18;59;17
Natasha
And if you are drinking two little of water every day, the headaches will lessen, the brain, fog will lift and the body will detoxify at a much more efficient manner. So the way we're speaking in December, it's really tough.

00;18;59;17 - 00;19;13;00
Natasha
Drinking icy water December is a bit easier in June, but people who were really, really stuck 7:10 days later of every day getting into the habit of filling a water bottle or drinking sipping water throughout the day have reported.

00;19;13;00 - 00;19;27;06
Natasha
At my word, I cannot believe the difference. So introducing good habits and consistently doing them also breaks bad habits as well, really, because when you the body's functioning better.

00;19;27;25 - 00;19;28;00
Natasha
When.

00;19;28;00 - 00;19;47;15
Natasha
You sleep. Can better you have different eating patterns, so, you know, when you're tired and dehydrated, you just cry for carbs. The body's really clever, it creates carbs. So the best will in the world, you don't get excited about plate full of veggies, but a plate full of multicolored vegetables gives the body so much if he's the

00;19;47;15 - 00;19;54;14
Natasha
brain, if he's the body. So all of these tiny little habits begin to feed into each other, literally.

00;19;54;27 - 00;20;07;26
Phil
And may makes a lot of sense. Yes, of the tech things really, really of the moment, isn't it? We're hearing a lot about it in the mainstream media, and it is impacting our lives, as we've acknowledged in almost every single way.

00;20;08;19 - 00;20;20;29
Phil
And I think in terms of bad habits, a lot of people have slipped into those with lockdown, haven't they? Netflix has gone through the roof. Alcohol sales have gone through the roof. It doesn't paint a great picture for where a lot of people are at.

00;20;20;29 - 00;20;37;18
Phil
Okay, so it's challenging. It's hard to rebalance that as we, as we say, enter into a new normal. Boris is locking us down again by the looks of it, so let's see. But one of the things that really it was interesting to me the last couple of weeks and I wrote a blog about it recently was how

00;20;37;18 - 00;20;58;15
Phil
the CEO of Lush Cosmetics sort of said, Well, actually, my target audience are young teenage girls, that type of demographic. And actually, I'm paying a lot of money to the social media giants to advertise on those platforms, but they're the very platforms that are now harming the mental health of my customers.

00;20;58;26 - 00;21;15;23
Phil
So I'm going to be brave enough to say I'm going to sever the tie, I'm going to turn them off. And I thought that was fascinating because that's quite a bold thing to do. And and then obviously then he then said straight away that will we impact the impact of that decision could be 10 million in revenue.

00;21;16;21 - 00;21;27;03
Phil
So when when a business leader does something like that, you've got to think, Gosh, we're at really interesting tipping point here. Have you have you a take on that?

00;21;27;21 - 00;21;39;02
Natasha
Yeah. I find the absolute first. I'd like to applaud the CEO of a florist. I think it's this is what the world needs. So I suppose I see it in the workplace, people distracted.

00;21;39;23 - 00;21;40;08
Natasha
And how.

00;21;40;08 - 00;21;55;03
Natasha
We stop our staff continually looking at their phones. Being nudged to notify by social media platforms is really hard. But the loss during the working day, people not being able to be focused because they keep dipping in and out, that has massively impacted the workplace.

00;21;55;14 - 00;22;14;20
Natasha
But from, I suppose, I say morally because I'm talking as a mother here that I've got a 14 year old daughter. And so I suppose is the phrase gamification where you get these little awards. Yeah. And my daughter, the only person that was left to me was to put her on a phone ban, and she would literally

00;22;14;21 - 00;22;32;03
Natasha
share panic, say, but I'll lose my stripes. Well, what a surprise. Well, if on Snapchat, I don't get a strap or two, I'll lose them and go back. And it became obvious as well what happens when you were at school that unless you were regularly going on the platform and sending your friends something effectively and all of

00;22;32;03 - 00;22;45;13
Natasha
the same age group were involved in it, then you didn't get the reward. So the and I said, Well, what's the reward? Because I thought, you know, it's going to give and it's actually nothing other than it is just a little bit of, you know, it's some sort of badge.

00;22;45;29 - 00;23;01;24
Natasha
So this ability to shape these teenage girls and to have them, I suppose, almost hooked to their phones terrifies me because as a mother trying to have a conversation now with my daughter, I now know I need really her off her phone.

00;23;01;24 - 00;23;16;05
Natasha
I need at least ten minutes for her body to to effectively come to Earth before I can have a sensible conversation with her. But equally, as a mother asking your teenage daughter to come off a phone and to lose her stripes, you may as well be asking if you know for the world relay.

00;23;16;15 - 00;23;35;21
Natasha
So we're somehow this has taken over and it feels to me that it happened during COVID. Or maybe I just was locked down with my children and I watched and I observed effectively. But I am sure that she's come out of the pandemic much more addicted to her phone than she was beforehand.

00;23;35;21 - 00;23;50;08
Natasha
That I'm absolutely sure. So it's terrifying. And I think that generation has so many mental health problems, but equally, they are on their phone from dawn to dusk. And if you are a parent who tries to wrestle the phone from them at bedtime.

00;23;50;19 - 00;24;09;13
Natasha
Oh yeah, it is. It's impossible is virtually impossible. So I have house rules where the phones to go on sort of flight mode and the phones can't be charged and in the bedrooms because I'd read an article by one of the Silicon Valley guys who said he didn't allow his children on these apps.

00;24;09;13 - 00;24;23;10
Natasha
They did not charge the phones in their bedrooms, and these are the people that devised the very things that are part of our lives. So if these guys know better than to hand them to their own children, why do we not know this as parents?

00;24;24;23 - 00;24;47;26
Phil
It's a fantastic and really amazingly deep debate to have, isn't it is a society thing, and we talked about it because of the Social Dilemma documentary that came on Netflix a couple of years ago. Now I think it was, and because it ultimately the way we see the world is that we have access to this mobile based

00;24;47;26 - 00;25;03;25
Phil
, socially engaged tech in our personal lives, but our business lives. We don't really have the same level of engagement or opportunity, but I have the same platforms that you have. And so our sort of opportunities to level that up.

00;25;04;04 - 00;25;15;17
Phil
But at the same time, level it up in a way that's healthy and and value adding to everybody, you know, and that's the that's the that's the clever bit of it. And we've seen that usage increase a lot.

00;25;15;18 - 00;25;30;13
Phil
I would agree with you that the phone issues have heightened during the pandemic. I've seen that with my children, too. In our platform, we've seen usage go up by over 300%. Yeah. And I think that's a challenge because we've become more dispersed as a society.

00;25;30;24 - 00;25;45;23
Phil
So the audiences that we talk about are the colleague audiences and the customer audiences, and both have become more dispersed. So inherently, there's a deeper engagement challenge, isn't there? And one of the ways we do that or the way we connect, is through the phone through our phone apps.

00;25;46;09 - 00;25;55;07
Phil
And so we're giving business the same opportunity to kind of level up and connect in at that level. But you need to do it in the right way. You need to be doing it, you need to do it carefully.

00;25;55;07 - 00;26;14;16
Phil
And that's one of the things that we really enjoy. The teams enjoy working with our organizations, our customers to to do that and help map that out. We have frameworks to help map that out. But it's much more challenging in just a personal situation when you see children or people generally just on the phones all the time

00;26;15;04 - 00;26;38;00
Natasha
. I think employees are using their phones to look at their work emails. So if a business creates a culture which encourages work-life balance and has parameters of when it encourages employees to to use their phones and to have time without their phones, a classic in a disciplinary or a grievance, you'll say, is that there's a manager who

00;26;38;00 - 00;26;52;05
Natasha
emails people late at night or in the middle of the night and has a team who are so terrified that if they don't answer e-mail quickly, they will be seen as sort of a poor performance employee. So they they feel they have to reply within minutes.

00;26;53;05 - 00;27;09;15
Natasha
And so they're they're lifting fear of their phone. So if businesses begin to implement a culture where there is an agreed work in practice, which is in keeping work-life balance and is healthy for the human body and mind, well, those businesses will have teams that flourish.

00;27;09;23 - 00;27;26;15
Natasha
They'll have human beings who are happy and are healthy because we do have a real problem in this country with sickness. And you're sick, sick leave. Statistics are one, I suppose, one of the most damaging aspects to the bottom line of a business, really.

00;27;26;26 - 00;27;44;29
Natasha
So we wouldn't. I'm pleased to be healthy, want them to be happy. So a culture that encourages that and seems to me with your engagement, then it's it's time to bring governance around it, really. So employees ad hoc using their phones aren't, I suppose, saving themselves in the best way they can.

00;27;45;15 - 00;27;50;07
Natasha
So bringing in engagement, but with parameters, that's a sensible way forward, I would say.

00;27;50;11 - 00;27;59;19
Phil
Yeah, yeah. And looking back over the last couple of years, the things that you say, what are the things that companies are doing the worst that you know.

00;27;59;29 - 00;28;15;16
Natasha
I still think it's the working of ours. So I still think I think those things that I still think that the people are still people, people are sending emails late at night. So they're showing to their managers that show into nature that they're working late at night.

00;28;16;03 - 00;28;30;13
Natasha
And so therefore, if they all work into the early hours of the morning, how they've expected to log in, first thing, they can't possibly be getting enough sleep. So those two habits one. What is compassion? What is perception?

00;28;30;18 - 00;28;44;06
Natasha
And I've spoken at length to quite a few other teams in regard to the old way was to approach things through a disciplinary wave, a stick above somebody's head and say, You are doing this wrong, you are doing that wrong, improve or else.

00;28;44;25 - 00;29;06;06
Natasha
But if also you have managers who are themselves communicating to very late night, early hours with their team, and if you then have somebody struggling in the team, somebody who isn't get enough sleep because I worked in there answering emails in the early hours and then never expect to be on early teams cause they're not functioning properly

00;29;06;14 - 00;29;20;27
Natasha
within the business, perhaps could use compassion before it will as a disciplinary relay because in 20 years I've been an employment lawyer, I've not yet seen any employee who wanted to go to work and to do a bad job.

00;29;21;10 - 00;29;38;16
Natasha
If they're not performing, there is always a back story. There is always a struggle going on somewhere else, and that may be the fault of the business, or it may be somebody has something going on at home. But ultimately looking at the perception of a poor performing employee slightly differently rather than the blame culture.

00;29;38;16 - 00;30;00;22
Natasha
But what can we do to support, you know, how how ah, what does your daily life look like? You know, can we help you with some incorporating some good habits? Well, then if employees are having less time off ill, if sickness absence decreases and employees are happy than themselves and they're focused and their body and mind is

00;30;00;22 - 00;30;18;02
Natasha
functioning well, they will perform better at work. But equally, somebody who isn't sleeping well enough, who isn't eating well, who is an exercise in any way is unlikely to be your highest performer in your team. That's what I've seen over 20 years of managing, I suppose, performance of employees.

00;30;18;12 - 00;30;32;28
Phil
Thank you, Natasha. You shared some great insights with us there today. And it's been a really interesting discussion, and I really would recommend people check out your book. And they also, at the same time, put down their phones and closed their laptops and really have a good read of it.

00;30;33;20 - 00;30;45;16
Narration
Thanks for listening to engage in conversation. It was presented by our CEO Phil Wedgwood and produced by Cathy Bolden's. For more news and updates on Engage, visit our website. Engage Lesiones GeekComp.




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