Robyn - Volunteer Exercise Instructor

Keeping young by keeping others young

Robyn scored her job as 9.5/10 (with ten being the most fantastic job imaginable).

by Yukun Liu

It is 9:00 AM on a Wednesday morning when we walk into an indoor stadium located at a community centre in Australia. 

Robyn, the exercise instructor, walks to a podium and stands in front of 60 class participants. The participants, all in white uniforms, quickly self-organise into rows. In a gentle voice, Robyn greets everyone, warmly welcomes new members, and gives her best wishes for the forthcoming Chinese New Year. Then Robyn turns on her cassette player, faces people as a mirror-image, and the class is underway. 

Perfectly synchronized movements

The first song of the set, carefully selected by Robyn, is ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!. With the ups and downs of the familiar melody and the cheerful lyrics, the participants follow Robyn’s lead: “Two steps right, two steps left, one step backward, one step forward...” Their movements are perfectly synchronized and enthusiasm abounds. 

After a few more aerobic exercises, including some slow-paced ones for stretching muscles, Robyn leads a mindfulness meditation, and recites a beautiful poem. The atmosphere in the stadium is peaceful. The class ends, with participants refreshed and eager to come back for their next class. 

Robyn is a non-paid volunteer who has been working as a voluntary exercise instructor role for fifteen years, ever since she retired from her full-time job as a secretary. Every week Robyn runs four classes, each with a different structure and content. Behind the scenes, she needs to spend considerable time and effort designing each session, selecting songs and poems, and recording songs from CDs to cassette tapes. Like any job, this volunteer job also has its challenges, with the biggest ones being getting the class ready on time and remembering everything to run the class well. 

"When I see their faces and they are enjoying it, I’m relaxed and I’m happy."

Robyn loves this volunteer job and rates it as 9.5 out of 10. It helps keep her fit and healthy, yes, but mostly she is happy to see her students – many well into their 60s and some even in their 90 - benefiting from the classes. She experiences a strong sense of achievement: “When I see their faces and they are enjoying it, I’m relaxed and I’m happy, and I got a lot out of it!” 

Robyn is part of a team – there are more than 30 volunteer instructors doing similar classes in the community centre. Defined as “the act of freely giving one’s time, knowledge, or skills for the benefit of other people, groups, or causes” [1], volunteering is very prevalent in Australia, with 5.8 million people every year contributing a total of 743 million hours [2]. 

Research [3,4] shows that one of the strongest motivators for volunteering work is the enjoyment and meaning that the work can provide. Importantly, volunteering doesn’t only improve ‘hedonic’ well-being in the form of happiness and more positive emotions, but it also contributes to ‘eudemonic’ well-being in the form of enhanced meaning and stronger feelings of fulfilment and achievement.

Robyn brings these research findings to life, showing us the power of well-designed volunteer work. 

References

[1] Grant, A. (2012). Giving time, time after time: Work design and sustained employee participation in corporate volunteering. Academy of Management Review, 37, 589-615.

[2] Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2015, June 30). Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/latestProducts/4159.0Media%20Release102014 

[3] Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. New York, NY: Plenum.

[4] Gagne, M., Cordery, J., & Dunlop, P. 2015-2019, 'Designing Human Resource Practices that Promote the Retention of Volunteers', ARC Linkage Projects.

A little more...

Volunteer work in Australia

According to the statistics from the 2014 General Social Survey [1], 16.8% of Australians who volunteered in the past 12 months are aged 65+; while in the US the percentage in 2016 is 34.6% [2].

[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2015, June 30). Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4159.02014?OpenDocument[2] Dunn, M. (March 2018). Who chooses part-time work and why?  Monthly Labour Review. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/article/who-chooses-part-time-work-and-why.htm

Beauty Therapist Entrepreneur

The Female Entrepreneur: Multiple Roles and Dynamic Work Design in Service Start-up

Julianna scored her job 10/10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine).

by MK Ward

A spa is a space for clients to relax and de-stress. But what is it like to work in a spa?

Let’s find out with Julianna who is a beauty therapist and the owner of Limon Health & Beauty Spa. There’s relaxing Enya-like music playing and Julianna’s voice is calm and soothing. Everything in the room, from paint colour, music volume, scents, towel texture, and flooring were chosen with the intention to invoke a sense of calm. The ambiance put me so at ease that the interview was one of the more difficult ones because all the subtle details of the environment made it hard to concentrate and work rather than relax. Yet, we soon found out that cultivating such a calm experience is complex and challenging work.

It’s like having two jobs

Julianna has over a decade of experience in this industry and deeply understands the work.  After she launched Limon Julianna found that although we was working in the same industry she knew well, the work design of an entrepreneur was different from her previous jobs.

“In the beginning I overdid it, which you have to do when you have your own business. It’s like having a baby I would think, because it’s constant and it consumes you.”

She described how she had little to no down time because it is as if she’s dealing with the work demands of two jobs. On the one hand, she’s a beauty therapist performing treatments for clients in the spa. This involves specialized tasks and activities, which is a knowledge characteristic of work.

On the other hand, Julianna would work wherever there was internet connection to reply to emails, work on the website, and manage her social media. In addition to virtual upkeep, Julianna positioned the spa in a way that makes it essential to source quality products (organic, plant-based, vegan, animal cruelty free, eco-friendly). Sourcing requires searching for suppliers, sampling products to see which toxin-free products are effective, and deciding to order a selection. The knowledge characteristics of her job includes lots of information processing and can be cognitively demanding. Although her work design has changed to include more interaction outside the organization.

Demands becoming resources

Julianna’s work design has changed as her work tasks shifted from when she started Limon.

“In the last 6 months I still do as many hours, but less treatments and more work on the business itself including workshops, event networking, and online presence. Networking at events is a challenge because I am introverted.”

The networking events and workshops can be draining. However, over time the contacts made, relationships developed (social support), and knowledge acquired (cognitive development) become resources.

While her work design has evolved alongside her business, some aspects remain constant. For example, Julianna relishes in the creativity of the business and the ability to create something that fits her priorities, one of which is environmental sustainability. “I like creating something that takes care of the environment because we live in a world where we are destroying it so that is very important to me.” Julianna has consistently put time and effort into sourcing and using toxin-free, organic where possible, vegan, plant-based products. She sees nature as a stakeholder, similar to how she sees her clients as beneficiaries of the spa. This ability to do what she loves in a business that follows what she considers best-practices meant that despite the complexity and many demands of the job, Julianna rates it 10 out of 10. “There’s only so much time and you spend so many hours at work so what’s the point if you don’t like it .”

A little more...

Same Industry, Very Different Work Design

Similar to Julianna, Nell founded her business in the health and beauty industry. Nell makes and sells skin products for people with extremely sensitive and extremely problematic skin. Unlike Julianna, the inspiration of sorts for Nell began with a thorn prick from a rose.

Years ago, Nell happily worked as a masseuse until one day a thorn from a rose bush pricked her and triggered a bodily reaction that gave her arthritis. Consequently, she had to quit giving massages and shakes prevented her from giving manicures and pedicures. She liked working in the industry and decided to make skin products. She taught herself everything she needed to know to create a skin product that would suit extremely sensitive and problematic skin. Her proactivity to start her business required problem solving, information processing, and a shift in her specialization.

Although she managed to work in the same industry, her work context has changed dramatically. She now works in a garage space all day filling orders. While it pays the bills, the work context is very isolating. For that reason, she rates the job itself a 6 out of 10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine). We see that transition is difficult and good work design can also be constrained by the type of work being done. However, there are adaptations that may be possible to improve Nell’s work design. For example, social characteristics can be increased by talking with other on the phone while doing some of the more routine order filling tasks, relocate to a shared workspace (if possible), or increase the number of product expos she attends to increase social support via networking.  It will be important for Nell to change the work to fit her, rather than the other way around.

Cognitive work demands: Lingual challenges

At the beginning, a major challenge for Julianna was language. This lingual challenge added a layer of cognitive demands to Julianna’s work. Originally from Hungary, she had the added job demand of improving her English to be able to communicate with clients more effectively.

“I didn’t know that every country has a different accent. Irish, Scottish, Australian—at first I couldn’t follow any of it. Trying to sound professional and give advice during work was very stressful because you have knowledge that you want to give but can’t verbalize it.”

Training in the Australian beauty certification programs helped Julianna to learn the language and simultaneously get familiar with the beauty industry requirements here in Perth. Cognitive neuroscience research supports the notion that the additional job demand of processing a foreign language makes work more difficult and depleting (Volk, Kohler, & Pudelko, 2014 ). Fortunately, people like Julianna can learn over time and improve their ability to process what clients say.

References

Volk, S., Köhler, T., & Pudelko, M. (2014). Brain drain: The cognitive neuroscience of foreign language processing in multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies, 45, 862-885.

Article here: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v45/n7/abs/jibs201426a.html

Social co-working spaces

Social Contact in a Job - How Co-Working spaces Foster Connections

by MK Ward

One drawback of being a freelancer, or an entrepreneur in the early stages, is that it can feel lonely. There is no team of people to work alongside; no company office to hang out in. This means that these people miss out on a valuable aspect of work, which is the opportunity for social contact and social support.

Filling this need is where co-working spaces come into being. A co-working space is a shared workspace with multiple uses, often including some combination of: private and/or quiet spaces, meeting rooms, recreational/social space, phone-booths, shared reception, restrooms, mail and kitchen areas, reception, mail.  Co-working spaces have become increasingly popular, with freelancers and entrepreneurs willing to pay to get the benefits.

Yet an open space with a kitchen, some meeting rooms, and lots of desks and power outlets does not guarantee a community….  

To understand how you build a positive co-working environment, we observed the manager of one such space, Johnny, in action. Johnny gives tours of the space, runs events, and creates mentoring and advisory opportunities, all of which help to make it worthwhile for the freelancers and entrepreneurs to commute to the CBD to be in the co-working space rather than work from home.

But it’s what Johnny does informally that seems especially powerful.

 “Banter is really important here,” advised Johnny. Ten minutes later, a member walks through for a meeting and Johnny made a joke about the member’s attire.

“You’re looking quite smart today,” Johnny says. “What do ya mean?” “You’re looking smart,” Johnny replies. “I don’t have my hat.” “Yeah, I guess you’re looking a little less socialist” Johnny states before explaining that the member usually wears a hat with a red star on it. Both laughed, and the person went on to his meeting.

It's informal and regular interactions like these that create a positive community.

In the end, it’s not fancy furniture or décor that foster connections: its people. We observed a difference in the conversation and energy on the ground floor, where Johnny was working and talking and giving people tours, compared to the beautifully-styled modern upper floor. In the latter space, despite the gorgeous and fresh-looking kitchen, four members ate lunch across from each other, all silently staring at their smart phones. There was no Johnny striking up conversations and encouraging banter.

Humans value social contact at work. Indeed, evidence suggests that the ‘need to belong’ is one of the three most fundamental and innate needs of humans [1].

As work changes – as we see technological infusions and digitization of our work – we need to ensure that basic human needs are met through good work design. Well-designed and well-run co-worker spaces can play an important role in this.

References

[1] Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68