In these uncertain times, one would be forgiven for low morale in the work place. Thankfully, there are things you can do to help with that. Miguel Tovar/University of Houston

Look around you. We have a pandemic pumping paranoia into the public. We have the longest unemployment lines we've seen in 90 years. Tensions with China teetering on the brink of collapse. Sports are cancelled. Concerts are a memory. Parties are forbidden. We live in a time of suffocating anxiety. A time of uncertainty. It doesn't help that we have social media and TV relentlessly flooding us with waves of despair. Here, we'll explore how to boost employee morale.

One would be forgiven to lose a little faith. To become dispirited. It's not your fault. In fact, there has been an increase in cases of depression since March. We're all going through it.

So, now that the economy is slowly opening back up, it's no surprise that many people in the workplace will feel demoralized as they return to their offices. Luckily, there are many tried and true ways to lift the spirits of the workplace and improve employee morale.

Break the monotony

Few things crush the human spirit more than the thought of meaninglessness. A lack of motivation. It's easy to expect someone to self-motivate. It's less easy to get them to find enough reason beyond a paycheck to sit at a desk and stare at a screen for eight hours. We're human. We get tired. We get restless. People want to matter. We aren't designed to sit in a quiet room performing monotonous tasks every day until we are old enough to get those senior discounts at Luby's. Our ancestors hunted mammoths and traveled miles a day for crying out loud.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to help with this. Improving posture is one of them. "Sitting at your desk all day will eventually cause back pain. Encourage employees to use a stand-up desk for at least a little bit throughout the day. Get the blood circulating," advised Meghan Biro, founder of TalentCulture. "Listen to employees that complain about their office chairs, too. These things matter. If you want productivity, you have to provide the tools and establish the right environment for employees to produce," Biro continued.

Super happy fun land

It's also a good idea to create a small activity center in the office. A few quiet games, some puzzles, brain teasers or books. Give employees the option to take their mind off of work for just a few minutes, and they'll return the favor with increased productivity and the wind back in their sails.


"You expect energy from employees. Pep. So it's also smart to keep healthy snacks around the office when ever possible," Biro said. You don't have to stock the office with M&M's and pizza. Although you'd become the world's greatest boss immediately. But keeping trail mix, nuts, fruit cuts, pretzels and the like will go a long way in keeping your workers energized for the daily slog.

Another thing you can do improve productivity is to help relieve stress. "Within reason, listen to the mental health needs of your workers. It should be okay to take a five minute break now and then. To get a change of scenery. Some fresh air. To remind oneself that the sun still exists. Especially those that work long hours," Biro said.

So much room for activities

As mentioned before, we all have tacitly adopted the office as our second home. It almost hurts to read that sentence, but it's true. While you don't have to turn the workplace into Disney World, you should still make it a point to come up with fun ideas for the whole group.

"Maybe every Friday you treat the team to pizza or host a movie night once a month. Game days and days like Hawaiian shirt days are good ideas too," suggested Jacob Morgan, author of The Future of Work. "Allow workers to personalize their work space. Maybe a bimonthly team outing for bowling or a picnic would work too," he continued. These are all ways to infuse the workplace with enthusiasm and positivity all the while getting some team time in. You'll recharge while you get to know more about one another.

Care to care

In your best Dwight Schrute voice, read this sentence: "FACT, 75 percent of people who quit their jobs aren't actually quitting their jobs, they're quitting their bosses. Beats. Bears. Battlestar Galactica." Thank you, Dwight. It's true. The majority of people who leave their jobs voluntarily do so because they've had enough of their bosses.

That's why it's so important to do the little things to boost employee morale. "Remember birthdays, anniversaries, big milestones and acknowledge terrific performances. You do not want employees feeling like robots or machines that you turn on in the morning and shut off at night when the work is done," said Susan Heathfield, management and organizational development consultant. "Pointing out the mistakes of your employees is necessary to improve performance. But it's equally important to point out good jobs," she continued.

Gain some perspective

We've become so conditioned to the idea of the traditional work week, that we take for granted how grueling it can be. How taxing it is not just on the body, but the soul. Take a step back and look at the typical workplace. Divest yourself and look at it from the outside looking in. Observe how we're just inured to the eight-hour work day. The 40-hour work week. The hour lunches. Staring at a screen and moving our fingers about on a keyboard. Sitting in the same spot. The repetitive sound of a copy machine. The smell of coffee in the break room. The shuffling of papers in a quiet room. The occasional eruption of phone calls. The ticking hands of clocks.

Every. Day.

For some, years. For others, decades. Until retirement. This is the life for millions. In fact, the average person will work 90,000 hours in their lifetime. That's one third of a person's life.

So have a little perspective when it comes to the work your employees do. The sacrifices they make. You've likely been in their shoes. You know what it's like. It's hard to convince someone that this is how we were meant to live every day of our lives. So take it upon yourself to boost employee morale. Show how grateful you are to your employees. Grateful that they come in and do this every day to keep a company going. Show them they matter. Make the workplace come alive every now and then. Listen to their grievances. Provide them with the tools they need to keep going. And in turn, they'll keep the company going.

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This article originally appeared on the University of Houston's The Big Idea. Rene Cantu, the author of this piece, is the writer and editor at UH Division of Research.

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Houston hospital performs first fully robotic heart transplant in the U.S.

robotic surgery

A team at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, led by Dr. Kenneth Liao, successfully performed the first fully robotic heart transplant in the United States earlier this year, the Houston hospital recently shared.

Liao, a professor and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and circulatory support at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, used a surgical robot to implant a new heart in a 45-year-old male patient through preperitoneal space in the abdomen by making small incisions.

The robotic technology allowed the medical team to avoid opening the chest and breaking the breast bone, which reduces the risk of infection, blood transfusions and excessive bleeding. It also leads to an easier recovery, according to Liao.

"Opening the chest and spreading the breastbone can affect wound healing and delay rehabilitation and prolong the patient's recovery, especially in heart transplant patients who take immunosuppressants," Liao said in a news release. "With the robotic approach, we preserve the integrity of the chest wall, which reduces the risk of infection and helps with early mobility, respiratory function and overall recovery."

The patient received the heart transplant in March, after spending about four months in the hospital due to advanced heart failure. According to Baylor, he was discharged home after recovering from the surgery in the hospital for a month without complications.

"This transplant shows what is possible when innovation and surgical experience come together to improve patient care," Liao added in the release. "Our goal is to offer patients the safest, most effective and least invasive procedures, and robotic technology allows us to do that in extraordinary ways."

7 can't miss Houston business and innovation events for July

where to be

Editor's note: While many Houstonians are flocking to vacation destinations, there are still plenty of opportunities to network and learn at tech and business events for those sticking close to home this month. From an inaugural biotech summit to the 12th edition of a local pitch showcase, here are the Houston business and innovation events you can't miss in July and how to register. Please note: this article might be updated to add more events.

July 10 - Out in Tech Mixer 

Out in Tech Houston provides an inclusive networking space for LGBTQ+ people and allies working in tech. Check out this relaxed, social-mixer event, hosted on the second Thursday of every month.

This event is Thursday, July 10, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Second Draught. Register here.

July 14 – Latinas in Tech Coworking Day 

Connect with fellow Latinas in the industry at Sesh Coworking. Network or work alongside peers, board members and community leaders in a shared office environment.

This event is Monday, July 14, from 9-11:30 a.m. at Sesh Coworking. Find more information here.

July 17 – UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit

Attend the inaugural UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit, where innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers and investors will dive into the future of biotech. Expect panel discussions, fireside chats, a technology showcase and networking opportunities.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Find more information here.

July 17 – Open Project Night 

Collaborate on solutions for some of Houston’s most pressing issues at this month’s Open Project Night at Impact Hub Houston. Hear from guest speakers and listen to open mic pitches. July’s theme is Decent Work & Economic Growth.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 5:30-7:30 p.m at Impact Hub Houston. Register here.

July 24 – NASA Tech Talks

Every fourth Thursday of the month, NASA experts, including longtime engineer Montgomery Goforth, present on technology development challenges NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the larger aerospace community are facing and how they can be leveraged by Houston’s innovation community. Stick around after for drinks and networking at Second Draught.

This event is Thursday, July 24, from 6-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 30 – Ion Bike Club

Join Bike Houston at the Ion for a 45-minute guided cruise through the Ion District and Midtown. Afterward, enjoy a complimentary beer and network with like-minded riders at Second Draught.

This event is Wednesday, July 30, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 31 – Bayou Startup Showcase

Hear pitches from startups and small businesses from Rice University’s OwlSpark and the University of Houston’s RED Labs accelerators at the 12th annual Bayou Startup Showcase. Read more about this year’s teams here.

This event is Thursday, July 31, from 3:30-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

Houston researchers: Here's what it takes to spot a great new idea

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Having a “promotion focus” really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Key findings:

  • New ideas can be crucially important to businesses, driving innovation and preventing stagnation.
  • Recognizing those ideas, though, isn’t always easy.
  • Nurturing what is known as “promotion focus” can help managers spot fresh ideas.

Whenever the late surgeon Michael DeBakey opened a human chest, he drew on a lifetime of resources: the conviction that heart surgery could and should be vastly improved, the skill to venture beyond medicine’s known horizons and the vision to recognize new ideas in everyone around him, no matter how little formal training they had.

Appreciating new ideas is the heartbeat of business as well as medicine. But innovation is surprisingly hard to recognize. In a pioneering 2017 article, Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and her colleagues published their findings on the first-ever study of the traits and environments that allow leaders to recognize new ideas.

Recent decades have produced a surge of research looking at how and when employees generate fresh ideas. But almost nothing has been written on another crucial part of workplace creativity: a leader’s ability to appreciate new thinking when she sees it.

Novelty, after all, is what drives company differentiation and competitiveness. Work that springs from new concepts sparks more investigation than work based on worn, already established thought. Companies invest millions to recruit and pay star creatives.

Yet not every leader can spot a fresh idea, and not every workplace brings out that kind of discernment. In four separate studies, Zhou and her coauthors examined exactly what it takes to see a glittering new idea wherever it appears. Their work sets the stage for an entirely new field of future research.

First, though, the team had to define their key terms. “Novelty recognition” is the ability to spot a new idea when someone else presents it. “Promotion focus,” previous research has shown, is a comfort level with new experiences that evokes feelings of adventure and excitement. “Prevention focus” is the opposite trait: the tendency to associate new ideas with danger, and respond to them with caution.

But does having “promotion focus” as opposed to “prevention focus” color the ability to see novelty? To find out, Zhou’s team came up with an ingenious test, artificially inducing these two perspectives through a series of exercises. First, they told 92 undergraduate participants that they would be asked to perform a set of unrelated tasks. Then the subjects guided a fictional mouse through two pencil and paper maze exercises.

While one exercise showed a piece of cheese awaiting the mouse at the end of the maze (the promise of a reward), the other maze depicted a menacing owl nearby (motivation to flee).

Once the participants had traced their way through the mazes with pencils, they were asked to rate the novelty of 33 pictures — nine drawings of space aliens and 24 unrelated images. The students who were prepped to feel an adventurous promotion focus by seeking a reward were much better at spotting the new or different details among these images than the students who’d been cued to have a prevention focus by fleeing a threat.

The conclusion: a promotion focus really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Zhou’s team followed this study with three additional studies, including one that surveyed 44 human resource managers from a variety of companies. For this study, independent coders rated the mission statements of each firm, assessing their cultures as “innovative” or “not innovative.” The HR managers then evaluated a set of written practices — three that had been in use for years, and three new ones that relied on recent technology. The managers from the innovative companies were much better at rating the new HR practices for novelty and creativity. To recognize novelty, in other words, both interior and external environments make a difference.

The implications of the research are groundbreaking. The first ever done on this subject, it opens up a completely new research field with profound questions. Can promotion focus be created? How much of this trait is genetic, and how much based on natural temperament, culture, environment and life experience? Should promotion focus be cultivated in education? If so, what would be the impact? After all, there are important uses for prevention focus, such as corporate security and compliance. Meanwhile, how can workplaces be organized to bring out the best in both kinds of focus?

Leaders eager to put Zhou’s findings to use right away, meanwhile, might look to the real-world model of Michael DeBakey. Practice viewing new ideas as adventures, seek workplaces that actively push innovation and, above all, cultivate the view that every coworker, high or low, is a potential source of glittering new ideas.

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

Jing Zhou is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and Psychology in Organizational Behavior at the Jones Graduate School of Business of Rice University. Zhou, J., Wang, X., Song, J., & Wu, J. (2017). "Is it new? Personal and contextual influences on perceptions of novelty and creativity." Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(2): 180-202.