June 2023 Briefs
Forum23 Speaker Profile
Tammy D. Allen, PhD, University of South Florida
We are excited to announce a new Briefs feature as we near the HERO Forum23, which will be held September 27-29 in Salt Lake City at the Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek. Each month we will be profiling a speaker reflecting this year’s theme of “Doing Well by Doing Good: How Responsible Organizations are Addressing Societal Challenges.”
So, without further ado, meet Tammy D. Allen, PhD, University of South Florida, who will be giving the General Session Keynote: The Impact of Hybrid, Remote and Dispersed Environments on Health Protection and Promotion on Thursday, September 28th at 8:00 a.m
Interview with Dr. Allen
Can you provide an overview of your HERO Forum23 presentation? What do you hope attendees will glean from it?
My presentation is on remote work and employee well-being, including work-family balance. I hope attendees will come away with a good sense of the overall benefits and challenges associated with remote work as well as what we know in terms of the connections between remote work and health.
What do you view as the key societal challenges as they relate to worker well-being and how they have evolved over time?
I have been studying work and family issues for several decades now. Managing work and family demands is an ongoing key challenge for working parents. The intersection of work and family has changed over time as gender roles and expectations have moved away from the male breadwinner model to more egalitarian family structures in which men desire to be more involved in parenting and women desire to have meaningful careers. Understanding how workers manage their work and family roles is related to a variety of other well-being indicators such as job and life satisfaction. Identifying policies that can help support workers remains important. The changing nature of work, such as increased remote work and new technologies, also continues to provide both benefits and challenges to worker well-being.
What drew you to your profession overall and your current role in particular?
My career path has been somewhat non-traditional. A first-generation college student, I worked full-time while attending university part-time. I had worked my way into a managerial position at a health insurance company and became fascinated by questions related to “how to make the work better?” Despite my love for Psychology, I started as a Business major as it seemed more practical, and I knew Clinical Psychology was not a good fit. My major changed when I discovered Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology and took on a Research Assistant role. I had never considered a career in academics – or even knew what that was – but quickly became hooked on research and education. I was the mother of a toddler when I started graduate school, and this no doubt influenced my interest in studying work and family issues. People spend a significant amount of time at work and having a career in which I get to spend my work time researching ways to make work better, working with students, and developing science-based recommendations is highly fulfilling.
What superHERO do you identify with and why?
My knowledge of superheroes doesn’t extend far beyond Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. However, if I could acquire a superpower, given my love of travel, I’d be totally on board with being able to teleport anywhere, anytime.
Register
HERO Forum News
We’re excited to announce more than 30 breakout sessions for HERO Forum23, which will be held September 27-29 in Salt Lake City with a theme of “Doing Well by Doing Good: How Responsible Organizations are Addressing Societal Challenges.” Each day features multiple speakers, panels and learning labs aligned with this theme that offer deep dives into programs and initiatives, innovative strategies being tested, and results that are shaping future strategies.
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Fourth Annual HERO FitVent Invitational Team Steps Challenge
HERO, thanks to the support of WebMD Health Services, is hosting the 4th annual FitVent – Team Steps Challenge. Join us in this free, five-week activity challenge for fun and prizes. Create a team or join others on an existing team, then get active! It’s more than just steps – you can use our fitness chart to convert dozens of activities to steps.
Compete each week for prizes and overall bragging rights among your friends and colleagues. 2023 will bring a new category of prizes. HERO members will be eligible to win their choice of
50% off their annual HERO membership
OR
One free registration to the 2024 HERO Forum!
This challenge is open to anyone! So, get your co-workers, family, friends or kids together and walk, run, or vacuum your way to fun prizes.
Upcoming Events
Changing the Way We Work: Well-Being in Healthcare Workplaces, Policies, and Practices
The circumstances of the last several years have exacerbated ongoing challenges of stress, fatigue, burnout, and mental strain among healthcare workers, leading to significant turnover, and decreased employee engagement. There is a need to innovate and change how we work by addressing the environments, policies, programs, and practices we use to support healthcare workforce well-being. During this year’s Healthcare Summit, we will connect the dots between employee health and well-being obstacles that healthcare organizations are facing, with potential system-level solutions found in the Total Worker Health® Model, Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Strategy alignment, and the new Workforce Mental Health and Well-being models.
Following this Summit, participants will be able to:
- Identify and discuss trends in healthcare workplace policies, programs and practices that lead to unintended burdens on healthcare workers.
- Identify successful workplace well-being practices that can be adapted and implemented in healthcare settings to retain care teams and inform strategy.
- Discuss future directions for healthcare research to explore system-level changes to positively impact healthcare workforce well-being and organizational outcomes.
For more information and to register, visit: the Forum23 platform
(If you need to register for the Healthcare Summit but do not intend to register for Forum23, please contact Ariane Mistral at ariane.mistral@hero-health.org)
Save the Date for the 2023 HERO University Summit
Join your colleagues on October 30th from 12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. EST to discuss well-being and Mental Health on Your Campus – Measures that tell the story and inspire impact.
- The Ten Most Influential Women Scholars in Health Promotion. American Journal of Health Promotion names HERO Senior Research Fellow Sara Johnson.
- What the ESG Movement can Learn From the Workforce Wellness Movement. An editorial by HERO Senior Fellow Paul Terry.
- Fast Company: The business case for investing in employee wellbeing. “In one study, 87% of executives and managers said improving workplace wellbeing could give their companies a competitive advantage, but only about one third have a strategy in place to do so. It’s no surprise that only 29% of people in Indeed’s research report high wellbeing.”
- National Academies: Creating an Equitable Future of Work: Commuting from Home to Home. This webinar highlights findings and applications from the fields of psychology, behavioral science, human factors, and ergonomics to identify insights and research gaps, and it features HERO Forum23 keynote speaker Tammy Allen.
- Economist Impact: Examining innovative methods to improve mental health in the workplace. This report provides evidence-based strategies for improving workplace mental health outcomes.
- Working and Working Out: Decision-Making Inputs Connect Daily Work Demands to Physical Exercise. Learn how workplace interventions can address work stress, health orientation, or logical decision-making to promote physical exercise.
- Corporate Standards for Racial Equity. Building on the foundation of the CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity, PolicyLink, JUST Capital and FSG are developing new corporate performance standards tackling inequality in the US, with an eye on the global context.
- Don’t Let Passion Lead to Burnout on Your Team. Passion is often heralded as the key to a fulfilling and successful career, but the authors’ recent research suggests that it can also come at a cost: Feeling passionate about work can lead to exhaustion and even burnout.
- HBR: How the Best Leadership Teams Navigate Uncertain Times. Read on for the seven factors that set high-performing leadership teams apart from the rest.
