Remember what you love about your job

Urging employees to simply rethink their jobs was enough to drop absenteeism by 60 per cent and turnover by 75 per cent, a new University of Alberta study shows.
A 'Spirit at Work' intervention program, designed to engage employees and give a sense of purpose, significantly boosted morale and job retention for a group of long-term health-care workers at the center of the study.
"We discovered that people who are able to find meaning and purpose in their work, and can see how they make a difference through that work, are healthier, happier and more productive employees," said Val Kinjerski, a University of Alberta PhD graduate who co-authored the study and now works with organizations to cultivate productive workplaces.
The results were published recently in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing.
The study focused on two groups of long-term health-care workers from two different care facilities in Canada. One group of 24 employees attended a Spirit at Work one-day workshop, followed by eight weekly booster sessions offered at shift changes. The workers were led through a variety of exercises designed to help staff create personal action plans to enhance spirit at work. They were asked to consider concepts like the deeper purpose of their work, being of service, appreciation of themselves and others, sense of community and self-care.
The second group of 34 workers was offered no support program.
The result for the intervention group was a 23 per cent increase in teamwork, a 10 per cent hike in job satisfaction and a 17 per cent jump in workplace morale. In addition, employer costs related to absenteeism were almost $12,000 less for the five months following the workshop than for the same period in the previous year. The employees also showed an increased interest in and focus on their patients, Kinjerski said.
"They really had a sense of what they were there to do, to be of service to their clients. This notion of being of service is important in all work, but in the field of long-term health care, it is of utmost importance."
Ultimately, the findings will aid employers in retaining and fostering a happier, more motivated workforce, said Berna Skrypnek, a human ecology professor at the U of A and co-author of the study. "This has become a leading concern in the long-term health-care field and for that matter, in any field, as labour markets become tighter and employees are demanding meaning and fulfillment from their work."
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Self-help groups work for addictions

New data indicate that 2.3 million people who participate in self-help groups for alcohol or illicit drug use currently abstain from use of these substances. Based on a nationwide survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the report offers other data highlighting the use and benefits of these groups.
Among the report’s notable findings:
• An annual average of 5 million persons aged 12 or older attended a self-help group in the past year because of their use of alcohol or illicit drugs
• 45.3 percent attended a group because of their alcohol use only and 21.8 percent attended a group because of their illicit drug use only, while 33.0 percent attended a group because of their use of both alcohol and illicit drugs
• 45.1 percent of past year self-help group participants did not use alcohol or illicit drugs in the past month
• Almost one third (32.7 percent) of individuals who attended a self-help group for their substance use during the past year also received specialty treatment for substance abuse in the past year. Specialty treatment refers to substance abuse treatment received at a hospital as an inpatient, at a rehabilitation facility (either inpatient or outpatient), or at a mental health center.
“This report adds to the substantial body of research indicating that participation in self-help groups can help support people battling substance abuse problems,” said SAMHSA Acting Administrator Eric Broderick, D.D.S., M.P.H. “Self-help groups often are used in conjunction with specialty treatment and to support individuals seeking help or sustaining their recovery.”
Findings for Participation in Self-Help Groups for Alcohol and Illicit Drug Use: 2006 and 2007, are drawn from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a nationwide survey of 67,500 respondents each year. This report focused on questions asked of persons aged 12 and older about their participation in a self-help group for substance use (i.e., alcohol use, illicit drug use, or both).
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Brain determines personality?

Have you got the new iPhone yet? Do you like changing jobs now and again because you get bored otherwise? Do you go on holiday to different places every year? Then maybe your neural connection between ventral striatum and hippocampus is particularly well developed. Both of them are centres in the brain. The reward system which urges us to take action is located in the striatum, whereas the hippocampus is responsible for specific memory functions.
In innovation-oriented people, both of these centres apparently interact particularly well. At least this is the supposition of the scientists from Bonn, Michael X. Cohen and Dr. Bernd Weber. If the hippocampus identifies an experience as new, it then sends the correspond-ing feedback to the striatum. There certain neurotransmitters are then released which lead to positive feelings. With people who constantly seek new experiences, striatum and hippocampus are evidently wired particularly well. The two researchers were able to show this in the survey now being published.
Up to now, it has been extremely difficult to make the individual 'wiring' of the brain visible. 'In principle this was only possible using cross sections of the brain of deceased people, which in addition had to be stained in a complex process,' Dr. Weber explains. Thanks to a new method this is now a lot easier. With modern MRI you can actually determine in which directions the water in the tissue diffuses. Nerve fibres are an impenetrable obstacle for tissue fluid. It can only flow along them. These 'directional' streams of water are visible in the tomography image. 'With this hazard-free method we can work on completely new issues related to the function of the brain,' Cohen says enthusiastically.
In the current study the Bonn scientists focused on the 'wiring' of the striatum. Moreover, the test candidates had to choose descriptions that characterised their personality best from a questionnaire, e.g. 'I like to try out new things just for fun or because it's a challenge' or alternatively 'I prefer to stay at home rather than travelling or investigating new things.'
By contrast, descriptions such as 'I want to please other people as much as possible' or 'I don't care whether other people like me or the way I do things', were about social accept-ance. Here too the researchers noticed a link. 'The stronger the connection between frontal lobe and ventral striatum, the more distinctive the desire for recognition by that person's environment,' Weber says. That is not quite unexpected. For example, it is known that people with defects of the frontal lobe violate social norms more frequently.
The Bonn scientists wish to confirm their results even more. In experiments they would like to investigate whether people actually behave differently depending on the 'wiring' of their brain.
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