People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 18

Research
Corner

The Healthy Mind Platter:
HR's Role
Jacqui Grey

ntonio Horta Osorio, CEO of Lloyds
Group, was forced to take a leave of
absence for "extreme fatigue," causing a 7.5 percent drop in the bank's market
value overnight (Enrich, 2011).
This is one of the most clear-cut cases of the
business value of a healthy and balanced life
and mind. But on a more common scale, the
consequences of a healthy mind are often
overlooked. Until now, many organizations
have viewed wellness and stress relief programs as "nice to have" rather than
strategically important.
However, companies that have invested in
such programs have found meaningful payoffs for business-in the forms of reduced
absenteeism, strengthened leadership,
enhanced organizational performance, and
increased savings. For example, Johnson &
Johnson reduced health care costs, attributing a saving of $250 million over six years.
The return was $2.71 for every dollar spent
(Berry, 2010). The estimated cost of sickness
absence in the U.S. is $576 billion (Japsen,
2012) and in the U.K. the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates it at £29 billion
($45.6 billion) (Stevens, 2013). Multiply this
globally and the numbers ought to be grabbing the attention of every business leader.

Achieving Mental Fitness
It is not always clear to HR leaders which
wellness programs will bring a return on
investment (ROI), nor which principles they
should follow to support a healthier and
lower stress workplace. The Healthy Mind
Platter (Rock, Siegel, Poelmans, & Payne,
2012) provides clarity, explaining why various types of mental activities matter for
health and wellbeing, from a neuroscience
perspective, pointing toward a set of actions
HR leaders can take, and revealing how those
actions can lead to extraordinary performance.
18

PEOPLE & STRATEGY

The Healthy Mind Platter proposes that there
are seven types of activities that optimize
brain health. These seven complementary
activities provide a well-balanced "mental
diet" for optimal neurocognitive functioning.
By following them, stress levels can fall and
performance improve. Rock and colleagues
derived the seven staples of a healthy mental
diet from a review of basic research in neuroscience and psychology and proposed
specific actions each person can take to leverage those lessons from research. In this article,
we take the original proposal and, drawing
on case study and practitioner experience,
apply it to the corporate context. We address
what organizations can do today to maintain
employees' peak mental performance.

focus is just one of the seven aspects of a
healthy and balanced daily mental diet. The
brain needs much more than just focus time
for it to thrive.

How the Healthy Mind
Platter Works
The Healthy Mind Platter proposes seven
daily activities for optimal brain health:
* Sleep time
* Play time
* Time in (meditation or reflective practice)
* Downtime

A Healthier Mental
Workplace
Modern work environments and pressures
are making it harder for people to take care
of their mental capacities, even while increasing the need to do so. The concept of
"downtime" is very different to what it once
was, with little time for integration of new
insights and experience. The relentless schedule of meeting after meeting leaves no time
for reflection. And even when we schedule
time away, we take our laptops and tablets
on holiday and check them 24/7, even those
of us who know from experience that it
impacts our wellbeing.
Perhaps most telling is that just about every
leader, including in HR, reports doing his or
her planning work, or tasks that require
focus, in the evenings or on weekends. This is
a smart choice, because the construct of work
in large organizations is not brain friendly. It
is probably no accident that most of us have
our best insights when we are not working, but
instead at the gym or in the shower, or somewhere besides the pressures of our work
environment.
The social pressures of most work environments demand focus all day long. However,

* Connecting time
* Physical time
* Focus time
A deficit in one or more of these essential
elements can be a significant contributor to
challenges that present themselves at work.
But sufficient time spent on each of these can
lead to a substantial benefit to performance.

Seven Essential
Neurocognitive Activities
Sleep Time: Recharges Mind and Body,
Consolidates Memory
Horta Osorio was diagnosed with extreme
fatigue. He could not sleep at night. "I'd go
to bed exhausted but could not sleep. I could
not switch off. I understand now why they
use sleep deprivation to torture prisoners"
(Grierson, 2012). His pay has been reported
at £13 million. Some would say "top executives are paid to take it" (Wachman, 2011).
Can we really have top executives underperforming due to lack of sleep, regardless of
how much they're paid? Aren't these very
people-the big decision makers-who ought
to be particularly responsible for maintaining

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1