If you’re interested in Positive Psychology, you might like to check out Positive Psychology News Daily, a new online publication founded by Senia Maymin (MAPP graduate, MBA and Executive Coach) at the beginning of 2007. PPND aims to provide the latest news and research into the science of happiness and Positive Psychology, covering a whole range of subjects from Learning Optimism to Using your Strengths in a Job Search.

Most of its authors are graduates of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania. Some are written by UK MAPP guest authors, of which I am one. You can read my first article, For Better or For Worse? The Marriage of Technology and Positive Psychology here.

London wins almost £10m Lottery funding to improve its citizens’ mental and physical well-being over 5 years.

I said I’d be looking at the CIPD’s approach to well-being in this post, but this piece of news got there first. One of my colleagues, Sherry Clark, who co-ordinates the mental health promotion team for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, emailed me earlier to tell me that Well London, a London Health Commission programme, has been successful in its bid for funding to improve the well-being of the citizens of London. This programme has the potential to transform the lives of 35,000 people in 20 of London’s most deprived boroughs.

It’s particularly satisfying that these will be community-led projects which involve local people, and which will leave them with the confidence and skills to continue even after the 5 year project has ended. I’m also delighted that the University of East London, where I’m currently working towards my MSc in Applied Positive Psychology, has designed the research and evaluation framework to demonstrate the programme’s success.

I’m looking forward to hearing how the programme develops, and will keep you posted!

….Is there more to Employee Well-being than healthy eating and a pedometer?

Ask most HR practitioners what employee well-being means to their organisation and they’ll probably talk about having healthy options available in the canteen, subsidised gym membership and on-site massage. Some employers provide access to physiotherapy, support to help you stop smoking or find childcare.

Whilst these are great benefits, when it comes to well-being I think they’re missing the point. Yes you need to support employees to be as physically healthy as possible, and anything that helps create a sensible work-life balance is good thing, but ask yourself what your company is doing to invest in the mental and emotional health of your employees.

Before you say ‘Ah yes, we’ve thought of that, we have an Employee Assistance Programme which provide a counselling service 24/7′, I’d say you’re still missing the point. Counselling is for people to use once they start having problems. Companies which really understand employee well-being have a culture which actively promotes mental, emotional and physical health day-to-day, as well as a system which deals with mental, emotional and physical ill-health when that occurs.

…Mental and emotional well-being? Hmmm, that sounds kind of tricky…Not sure if you should be straying into that territory? Fortunately there’s increasing research (see Lyubomirsky, King and Diener (2005) for example) which shows that employees with higher subjective well-being are more productive, creative, optimistic, resilient, better at selling and persuading, and, of course, are more fun to be around. Tons of good reasons to start thinking about an integrated approach to employee well-being which promotes mental and emotional well-being alongside the physical.

In the next post I’ll be looking at the Chartered Institute of Personnel amd Development’s perspective on employee well-being, as outlined in their 8th Annual Absence Survey which was published earlier this month.

It has been suggested that the absence of employee well-being and/or the presence of stress is often caused by the conflict between the individual’s values and beliefs and those of the organisation or system that they work within – see Fr Dermot Tredget and Barbara Wren’s comments here.

If this is the case, it must be in the employer’s best interests to minimise the source of conflict by trying to align personal and organisational values.

Sometimes, this alignment can come from unexpected sources, and happen almost by chance. Take the Corporate Responsibility initiative launched by Paul Pritchard at Royal & SunAlliance last year.

You’ve probably come across many people who say that they are different people inside and outside the workplace – when they go to the office, they might put on a suit or a uniform (armour?), leave a large chunk of their personal life at the gate and behave in a way they think fits the corporate culture. An intriguing example appeared in a survey at R&SA, which revealed that employees’ have greener behaviour at home than they do at work (e.g. 94% switch off lights at home, whereas only 66% do so at work). Feedback suggested that employees would be greener at work if R&SA led by example.

As a result Pritchard set up project which resulted in R&SA going carbon neutral in December 2006 - in fact, it was the first UK insurer to achieve carbon neutral status. Employees were so impressed by this commitment to the environment that in the follow-up survey 63% said it changed their behaviour in the office. That’s a pretty substantial move towards aligning values I think.

The company then went one step further by reviewing its relationship with the charity sector and in particular, how it could get employees more involved. Rather than dictate which charity to support, the Senior Team decided to try a more novel approach, through a National Volunteering Week, where employees were encouraged to spend one day working for the charity or community organisation (e.g. school) of their choice.

Some 750 employees participated in the scheme, and as you’d probably expect, the vast majority (83%) said they volunteered because they wanted to benefit the charity or community organisation in some way; only 23% said it was because they themselves wanted to learn new skills.

What’s fascinating about this initiative is that after the day spent volunteering, 67% of the volunteers said they learnt new skills, and 100% said they wanted to do it again and would recommend it to their colleagues.

I don’t think that R&SA conducted any research into whether employees knowingly used their strengths on this day out, but the fact that they had a choice about what voluntary work to do suggests that they probably did. That looks like a win/win to me – not only do your employees do something aligned with their own values which is of benefit to others, they have the opportunity to use their strengths, they come back to work more enthusiastic and engaged, and with some new skills too. It’s a no-brainer isn’t it?

Congratulations to Paul Pritchard, his team and the volunteers at R&SA for such a positive contribution.

The Zimmers, the UK rock band with an average age of 82, continue their bid for world domination… or at the very least some recognition that older folks can continue to play a part in society and deserve to be heard.

This is Positive Ageing at its best, and the second example I’ve come across in the past few weeks -  the other is Dr Lilli Hvingtoft -Foster, the President of the Open University Psychological Society, which she was instrumental in establishing in 1974. The Grande Dame doesn’t reveal her age, but she must be 80 if she’s a day. She opened the recent OUPS Psychology of Well-Being Conference – her passion for her subject was immediately obvious, over the three days she attended all the lectures – a brilliant example of how life-long learning can help keep you young.

The Zimmers, who created a storm a month or so ago with their recording of The Who’s My Generation, and whose next single, a cover of The Prodigy’s 1996 song Firestarter, is due out in October, have taken a much more in your face approach to Positive Ageing. I loved the first documentary that the award-winning journalist Tim Samuels made about them; firstly it showed how mistaken we are to ignore older people, or to write them off as being somehow past their prime – and more importantly how we can continue to have fun and make a difference in the world whatever our age.

In a follow-up programme tonight on the UK’s BBC 2 at 10pm , we see The Zimmers conquering America, being interviewed by the world’s media and making appearances in front of the camera as if they were all born to it. They have their own Myspace page now, as well as an entry in Wikipedia, and numerous videos on Youtube made by admiring fans, plus hundreds of mentions in blogs world-wide.

It goes without saying that in the UK’s increasingly individualistic culture we need to treat older people with more respect. And what I really hope the Zimmers achieve through this new media spotlight is to make people realise that ageing positively is not a myth: retirement can be just as enjoyable, exciting and rewarding a time as your youth or middle age. The world is still your oyster whether you’re 28 or 82.