To increase productivity, try tapping into employees’ personal values

If you want to improve work performance, stop working (just for a moment) and start reflecting.

That’s according to Marie-Hélène Pelletier, a leadership psychologist, executive coach, and author of The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health. In her book, Pelletier outlines how employees at every level can be more productive by aligning their work with their personal values.

She shared insights from her book with HR Brew.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What can HR pros learn from your book?

What I do in the book is I provide [HR professionals] a way to build their custom, strategic resilience plan, because there are generic actions, we all know about them, but they’re very hard to implement in a very full schedule, and what’s missing is that strategic aspect that really takes into account each individual context.

What’s an example of a resilience plan?

Often, as people go through the [book’s] exercises, they will realize, for example, that one of their key values is their physical health, or one of their key values is family…As they look at how their actual life is right now…they’ll realize that [their values are] not receiving a lot of their attention. So, for a lot of people, one strategic pillar will become time with family…If I’m working from home, and my office door is open and a family member comes to talk to me, I will actually stand up and be with them, as opposed to just turning my head while I’m still typing…very doable actions that are aligned with my values.

So, employees build resilience at work by determining how it fits with their personal values?

Yes, and sometimes you’ll need to [accept] the reality of your work as well, because sometimes the work part cannot change. If, for example, you’re required to work a longer stretch of hours, every whatever frequency, it’s a reality. It cannot change, and it means that maybe it impacts my sleep…then maybe one of my pillars will be to be exceptionally healthy about my sleeping habit for all the days that are around that day, so I basically proactively build up my sleep capacity, so that even if it’s impacted on that one day, I’ve done everything I could that I have control over around it.

As employers increasingly look to bring employees back into offices, like what we saw with Amazon’s recent mandate, how can those, whose values do not align with what’s being asked of them, build resilience?

I’m going to look for ways to stay creative on how I’m going to make this happen…[If] one of my strategic pillars [is] my personal physical health…I’m going to be creative about new ways I can bring this into this new context where I’m choosing to stay with this employer who is asking me to come in five days…Are there ways for me to go for a walk at my lunchtime? Is there a class I can join, either [in the] middle of the day, [or] after work?

Instead of just reflecting on the ways in which this is not working for me, or not my choice…we want to acknowledge these thoughts and feelings. And, if I am making the choice to stay with this employer…then for me to build my own resilience plan, I want to do everything I can to create in this new context an even better alignment with my values.