A healthy workplace pays returns – LSM Insurance quoted in Insurance Journal again

When Professor Michael Leiter predicts a 10% return, he mean yield from a different investment than normally discussed by financial advisors, and when he mentions ‘resources’, he does not mean commodity investment or the mutual fund category. What he is referring to is the direct connection between a healthy workplace and efficient and motivated employees.

Prof. Leiter says his research demonstrates connections between an individual’s professional efficiency and work style. “The percentage relationship we’ve seen between healthy behaviours and experiencing exhausting is quite strong,” he says, estimating that a healthy workplace increases an individual’s efficiency by up to 10%.

As organizational psychologist, co-author of Banishing Burnout and director of Acadia University’s Centre for Organizational Research and Development, Prof. Leiter studies workplace stress and relationships between individuals and work environments.

Healthy work styles replenish physical and mental resources depleted by pressures inherent in financial planning. “There is a cost in all of that,” he says. It depletes your resources so the first piece is do you have the capacity to replenish those resources?” ho to The Insurance Journal.

He numbers exercise and health programs at work as important strategies for avoiding burnout. Spontaenous group activities are very helpful. “Particularly given that you often work with others with the same challenges – make it into a cooperative effort. Play basketball…even pickup basketball to work off tension.”

Members of LSM Insurance team may not play basketball together but find walking together pays dividends. “The daily walks have allowed us to come up with some really good idea,” they say. In one example, they discussed a new critical illness insurance sales letter used to renew contact with inactive prospects.

One of our advisors at the agency has lost between 15 and 20 pounds since resuming his gym workouts, they add. On the food side, LSM’s office includes a toaster oven, designed to provide an alternative to grabbing fast food for lunch. An assistant has become more productive since the change. “She wasn’t into eating healthy at all,” they recall. “She was a little more on the McDonald’s front…”

These measures set the tone for the agency’s office environment and its success, they believes. “We have more energy. We have more enthusiasm. We are likely to do a lot more business.”

Brokers from LSM Insurance also believe that healthy vibrations lead to positive attitudes, in turn leading to increased sales. “People are going to want to buy from people that have energy and are very upbeat about what they’re doing.”

Al Emid

Taken from the insurance journal, August 2007.