Nick Richmond kicks off a new series on organisational health and it’s importance as organisations adjust to ‘living with and beyond Covid’. We will be exploring different aspects of organisational health over the coming months – sharing evidence, experience, insights, case studies and views from a range of guest contributors and our team.

Health means power!

Health means power! This is true whether you’re an animal on the plains of sub-Sahara Africa, a child in a first world country like the United Kingdom or an organisation trying to cope with survive beyond Covid. If you’re unhealthy you are less likely to respond and adapt to changing circumstances.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin

I was reflecting on organisational health recently and I realise that, without knowing what it was called at the time, organisational health has been a passion of mine since my earliest career. While working in the chemicals industry I can remember thinking there has to be a better way when I observed poor leadership behaviours, feeling the effects of toxic cultures on my wellbeing, or even the inability to work efficiently and effectively because of the unintended consequences of management decisions.

Fast forward to 2006 and I was excited to join Tricordant as #Organisational #Health has always been at the heart of Tricordants thinking and practice. If you’re still wondering why Organisational health is so important, it’s because intentionally working to becoming a healthy organisation delivers many benefits for the business, it’s people and wider society, including:

• Higher long term organisational performance
• Meaningful work and job satisfaction
• Reduced turnover of staff
• Better quality of work-life balance
• More positive climate and transformational culture
• More open to innovation
• Lower incidence of management misbehaviours
• Improved adaptability

In fact, we feel so strongly about organisational health that we continue to explore and commission research into this important topic. This includes commissioning research by The Oxford Review to explore the state of #Organisational #Health and offering a company sponsored dissertation to MSc students at University of Edinburgh Business School with a focus to “Develop a research-based organisational health assessment.”

From the amazing response we’ve had to our call for participants in this research I’m even more convinced that #Organisational #Health is a significant priority for organisations across all sectors.

One of the very first, though dare I say obvious, insights from this research is that organisational health is a strategic systems and design issue that is the product of deliberate action.

Health and wellbeing of both people and organisations has rapidly gained importance because of the impact of COVID. As your organisation adapts to ‘living with and beyond Covid’ this provides a real opportunity for you to intentionally embed organisational health into your organisation.

We will be exploring different aspects of organisational health over the coming months – sharing evidence, experience, insights and views from a range of guest contributors and our team. Do also check out our 5min briefing below.