Are you getting the full 8 hours?

Despite popular belief that productivity is in the amount of hours we work, Huffington Post founder Arriana Huffington argues that while we’re bragging about how little sleep we got the night before, we have actually decreased our productivity by not getting the full 8 hours.

In The Harvard Business Review, Huffington discusses the direct impact sleep deprivation has on facial cues, employee safety, health and well-being, and most interestingly, can stimulate unethical behaviour in the workplace, an effect we see all too often in workplace mediation cases. This behaviour in turn can lead to a number of workplace conflict issues and a decrease in productivity.

While Huffington suggests the eventual implementation of ‘nap rooms,’ rooms especially assigned for a midday snooze, in the meantime large and small businesses can work on the health and wellbeing of employees by encouraging yoga, meditation, and stressing the importance of sleep.

We could all take a leaf out of our US counterpart’s books and make a stand for a healthier generation of workers and productivity, and according to Huffington “change the workplace culture so that what's stigmatized is not napping but walking around drained and exhausted.”

If you have encountered what you believe to be unethical behaviour in the workplace or believe your workplace is unfairly promoting an unhealthy lifestyle, contact Brisbane Mediations for a fast and inexpensive solution. 

By Katie Prowd

(07) 3839 7400

resolve@brisbanemediations.com.au

   

http://www.womensagenda.com.au/talking-about/world-of-women/awaken-your-career-success-arianna-huffington-on-the-need-for-sleep/201306192351

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/getting_naps_ahead_of_the_comp.html?nomobile=1

Mediation a good option for veteran emergency services workers

In counselling emergency service workers I have found many of the veterans of long careers feel caught in a time warp arising from massive changes in their fields over the past fifteen to twenty years.

It is common for these workers to lament times gone by when their service was run at a neighbourhood level - from the raising of funds to the dispatching of crews. They often recall feeling more supported by management who had more realistic expectations than they feel exist today.

Whilst skill levels, response times and outcomes may have improved, members of these services often report that they used to feel closer to their communities, more valued and more fulfilled in their work "in the old days" than they do now. Standards and practices have moved forward but with these changes has come inevitable depersonalization and workers often feel like little cogs in a big impersonal wheel.

The workers often blame "management" and a common cry is, "They didn't support me when I needed it and now I am on my own". Mediation before the situation becomes so critical could be the answer for some of these workers.

For others, counselling will be more effective. I often encourage these workers to liken their career experience to a successful relationship that has been mutually rewarding for a long time, but may have run its course. I help them consider all available options and look at other ways they might be able to utilise their skills and experience - perhaps even outside emergency services.

Denise Britton

Mediation Facilitates Ongoing Relationships

Mediation facilitates ongoing relationships

Mediation is less likely to harm on-going relationships than litigation – commercial arrangements between suppliers and customers; parenting relationships between separated parents with mutual parenting responsibilities to fulfil; or working relationships between co-workers / workers and managers who have clashed in the workplace.

In mediation, disputing parties enlist the assistance of a neutral person (the mediator) to help identify issues in dispute and explore options and alternatives to reach an agreement that will accommodate their respective needs.

With litigation, however, courts review opposing versions of disputes and provide a decision based on the evidence in each side’s affidavits or stories about the dispute and what they say in court. The decision almost always endorses one view of a case and rejects the other, costs often being awarded to the successful party, thereby punishing the other.

Litigation by its very nature highlights and accentuates differences, with barristers’ cross-examinations exposing weaknesses in the other side’s version of events. Mediation on the other hand, looks for common ground and strives for agreement.

Litigation encourages a winner take all approach. Mediation looks for a win/win outcome.

Considerable damage is inevitably done to ongoing personal relationships (for example, between parents or between beneficiaries under a will) when each person, in seeking to have their version accepted, tries to destroy the other’s case. Similarly, in the commercial field, time in court is highly unlikely to engender an ongoing relationship – particularly when at the end of the day one party is the victor and the other the vanquished, left to pick up the pieces.

When a result is imposed by a court, one party may leave the courtroom happy and the other disgruntled and bitter. The trial process has most likely eroded the previous relationship even more and increased the chance that these people will struggle indefinitely to relate into the future – personally or commercially, as the case may be.

At Mediation, however, seemingly warring parties often shake hands or communicate in a genial manner at the end of the day, a copy of the signed agreement in hand as they leave. A result has been reached by consensus rather than by being imposed by a stranger.

Dignity has been maintained and the vestiges of a relationship remain intact with a chance of enrichment in the future. In the commercial arena there is every chance that the parties will continue their mutually beneficial relationship, particularly where they have found a solution which ultimately accommodates the needs of both.

Mediation involves savings, not only in material costs, but also in costs to relationships.

Guide to Mediation

Brisbane Mediations has issued a new 'Guide to Mediations' specially designed to assist psychologists in their practice.

The publication is purpose driven to address the needs of psychologists and their clients and contains a cross-section of information explaining mediation and how it is practised.

Included in the publication are the following topics:

* Mediation across the Board
* Mediation Facilitates Ongoing Relationships
* Mediation in the Workplace Saves Jobs & Money
* Introduction to The Family Law Act
* Resolution of Domestic Conflict the Brisbane Mediations Way
* Mediating Prenuptial and Cohabitation Agreements Protects Relationships
* Children's Adjustment to Repartnering of Parents
* Hearing the voice of Young People at Mediation

Copies of the publication can be provided to psychologists contacting the practice manager of Brisbane Mediations on (07) 3839 7400.