NATURAL STRESS REDUCTION

I am being bombarded with books and systems for achieving better personal performance. All of which promise me outstanding achievements in my chosen endeavors. Unfortunately, most of these systems, products, and services do not recognize that people are not always going to perform at peak efficiency and that external systems only add to the noise, stress, and confusion of daily life. 

There are three easy-to-perform tasks that can yield significant improvements in your well-being. 

1.  Disengage from electronic devices ...

Whether your vice is playing video games or communication with cyber-friends using social media platforms, it necessary to step back and give your body a break from the constant need to focus attention on devices which often are time-wasters and proxies for procrastination. 

2. Declutter your environment ...

Whether in our home or our office, extraneous clutter often leads to upset and unnecessary stress as we berate ourselves for not being more organized.

3.  Take a walk for some "me time" ...

Nothing reduces stress or promotes new ideas like a walk without a purpose. Just ambling along and observing nature and your environment. Delighting in children play, people going about their day, and just the fact that you are not hunched over a desk working. 

Reduce the background noise in your life and reap the benefits of natural stress reduction. 
 

NO LOVE AT CENTEGRA HEALTH SYSTEM

Another health organization has announced mass layoffs after a major multi-million dollar loss for the year.

According to published reports, Centegra Health System plans to redress its $52.3 million loss for the recently ended fiscal year by laying off approximately 131 support and administrative workers.

In addition to layoffs, it will be outsourcing another 230 jobs to nThrive which already runs the business and IT operations at Centegra. This should come as no surprise to anyone observing the domestic outsourcing trend to avoid legal entanglements with personnel by employing an independent intermediary as a.buffer between an organization and its personnel. 

Of course, management had plausible reasons for the losses other than, of course, a failure in leadership: opening a new facility, more Medicare and Medicare patients, and billing adjustments and other write-offs.

Centegra CEO Michael Eesley wrote in an employee memo: “The difficult decision to balance our workforce through a reduction will ensure our health system is financially viable for years to come. While this day marks a major step toward financial improvements, it brings change for people in a number of positions."

It would be no surprise if this was some form of pre-merger tuning and preparing the stage to remove duplicative services without major legal or procedural hassles as it has been reported that Centegra is still working to finalize an affiliation or merger agreement with Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine. The deal expected to close in 2018 is said to involve no money and there are no details in potential changes in management.

Employees should add the use of local outsourcing of organizational functions to their list of continuing employment red flags.

DANGEROUS WORDS FOR DANGEROUS TIMES

"This time it is different" are the five most dangerous words any employee can hear from management. 

Going to work each day believing today will be the same as yesterday is the mark of a complacent employee that puts their faith in a management that may be under stress from both external (investors, activists, banks, Wall Street) and internal (Board of Directors, Senior Management) to reduce expenses. And the two most vulnerable areas are employees and advertising. And, of the two, it is far easier to achieve the company's objectives by reducing personnel. 

There is no substitute for being prepared. Reducing your standard of living and building a safety net.