Neuroscience in the workplace, are you mad!?

As Tina Turner once impressively sang ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ Or should we more accurately transcript, ‘What’s love got to do, got to do, got to do with it?’

Neuroscience, emotions and hormones are not commonplace language in the workplace still, though it is changing, slowly. Say hormones as a woman or a man to a colleague that’s not a friend too, and you will be suspiciously eyed or the conversation will take a different direction just in case some HR policy is contravened or just simply that the conversation may just become awkward with one party not quite knowing what to say to the other.

Emotions and hormones are for our private lives right? Or wrong? If true Employee engagement means showing that you as a business and employer (and leader) care about your employees, their welfare, their health and their professional growth, then emotions and hormones are not just for our private lives and are very active and relevant in the workplace.

And that as an employee you love your job and who you do it for, enough to go the extra mile, achieve more and even show up when you’re feeling rough, enough to justify not doing so (assuming your colleagues won’t be brought down by your germs too as staying at home then might be the more engaged and responsible action to take).

But hey, you’re employer (assuming your job enables you to and it’s possible of course), let’s you work from home in these situations anyway, so germs aren’t such a problem, it’s more how much tea and how many biscuits you might consume by being too close to the kitchen too much of the day.

In all seriousness, understanding the brain and the role our hormones play will continue to be one of our biggest challenges, joys and frustrations. However, the more we understand about how we as a species tick, what affects us, how it affects us, what changes our behaviours, habits and health, both positively and negatively as well as how we react to certain situations and different stimuli, the better equipped we are as friends, partners, colleagues, leaders, customers and suppliers to have better more successful relationships and exchanges.

Through this continuing and greater understanding of how our brains work, how different hormones affect us and that brain plasticity is a constant ability, when perhaps we mostly shared the view previously that ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ we now know we can. And we know we are just on the cusp of truly understanding our brains and the root and causes of human behaviour and how we choose to behave in our personal lives and in the workplace. If choice is always a fair description of course.

We set about co-creating an eBook called ‘Neuroscience in the Workplace’ to help share just a small amount of insight as to how this improved understanding of how our brains work and how key hormones and emotions impact our behaviour in the workplace in particular.

Download the eBook Neuroscience in the Workplace.

eBook – Neuroscience – Engage & Prosper

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Engage & Prosper is a UK based privately owned Employee Engagement Consultancy and Social Enterprise, on a mission to help organisations develop a highly productive and fulfilling workplace culture, with their people, through enhanced employee engagement strategies, fabulous and effective internal communications platforms and tailored reward and recognition programmes.

For more information on Engage & Prosper or to discover how we can help you achieve your organisational and people goals please call +44 (0) 330 223 0464 or find out more at www.engageandprosper.com