{"id":2882,"date":"2015-08-05T16:05:17","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T21:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/for-wisconsin\/?post_type=campus_story&p=2882"},"modified":"2015-08-05T16:05:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T21:05:17","slug":"uw-madison-collaboration-promotes-well-being-in-the-workplace","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-madison-collaboration-promotes-well-being-in-the-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Madison collaboration promotes well-being in the workplace"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"workplace<\/a>
McDermott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MADISON \u2014 Standing in front of a room of business professionals, Jill McDermott shares a number: two quadrillion \u2013 the number of megabytes of information broadcast daily. She pauses to let the audience reflect on how this inundation of information contributes to distractions in the workplace that can chip away at a person\u2019s well-being and ability to respond to daily challenges, whether it\u2019s giving projects the attention they deserve or shaking off a setback or conflict with a colleague.<\/p>\n

Estimates suggest distractions in U.S. workplaces cost more than $650 billion per year. These are challenges McDermott hopes to address as program director of a new partnership between the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Inc., and the Wisconsin School of Business Center for Professional and Executive Development.<\/p>\n

A curriculum developed by the centers, Cultivating Well-Being a Neuroscientific Approach<\/em>, fits into a larger conversation about employee well-being in the workplace and how organizations are adapting to promote health among their employees, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany workplaces are shifting their focus to encompass the whole person,\u201d McDermott says. \u201cEach of us \u2013 no matter what role we play in the organization \u2013 can bring our whole person to that. Those lines between personal and professional are dissolving, if not totally gone.\u201d The skill-based program draws from scientifically derived concepts adapted from Center for Investigating Healthy Minds founder Richard Davidson\u2019s best-selling book The Emotional Life of Your Brain<\/em>. These dimensions of emotional style include attention, resilience, sensitivity to context, self-awareness, outlook and social intuition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese emotional styles are well researched in individuals, with increasing evidence pointing to the idea that well-being skills can be learned,\u201d Davidson says. \u201cWe imagine this will be the case in the workplace, but we\u2019re collecting data and studying the curriculum to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists plan to examine how the curriculum will affect well-being and emotional dimensions such as outlook, attention and resilience while gauging their impact on workplace-relevant measures such as absenteeism, productivity, cooperation and distraction.<\/p>\n

Davidson says the research component of the program will continuously shape the program\u2019s effectiveness over time. McDermott and other facilitators involved with the collaboration have traveled regionally and nationally to pilot and evaluate the program with a range of companies and organizations, including one of the Big Four accounting firms.<\/p>\n

\"Sliwinski\"<\/a>
Sliwinski<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After participating in the Cultivating Well-Being <\/em>program, Ron Sliwinski, president and CEO of UW Hospital and Clinics, says his organization plans to leverage the curriculum at the launch of UW Health at The American Center, its new health and wellness facility opening in August on Madison\u2019s east side. Rather than viewing well-being skills and mindfulness practices as a luxury in the workplace, he sees it is an investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not how we recover from the burnout, fatigue and tension; it\u2019s how we change the way we manage these stressors so the outcome isn\u2019t burnout, fatigue and tension,\u201d he says. \u201cTo me, that is the power of this message \u2013 we can approach work in a different fashion, like preventive medicine versus curative medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about the program, visit uwcultivatingwellbeing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Marianne Spoon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MADISON \u2014 Standing in front of a room of business professionals, Jill McDermott shares a number: two quadrillion \u2013 the number of megabytes of information broadcast daily. She pauses to let the audience reflect on how this inundation of information contributes to distractions in the workplace that can chip away at a person\u2019s well-being and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2893,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-2882","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}