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Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – NYTimes.com

Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’ What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – NYTimes.com

Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – NYTimes.com

As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’ What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – NYTimes.com

The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team – NYTimes.com

program is. A wellness program that’s actually about wellness would be entirely voluntary, not financially coercive. It wouldn’t collect any personal health information from employees. It wouldn’t weigh people or take their blood samples. It would be truly a benefit, not a cost-saving measure. It might reimburse employees for their gym or yoga studio memberships. It might subsidize a community-supported agriculture membership. Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Total Sham

So what are employers actually after when they implement wellness programs tied to large financial incentives? Cost-shifting. Under the ACA, wellness programs are a legal way to shift a significant portion of the cost of premiums onto employees deemed unhealthy. Wellness programs don’t save money by preventing expensive medical claims—and in fact, they might even increase claims costs due to encouraging unnecessary doctors’ visits. But wellness programs can save money if enough employees fail them or opt out. Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Total Sham

What’s more, a 2013 meta-analysis of more than 7,000 studies found that a BMI in the overweight category was associated with lower mortality than a BMI in the “normal” range; only morbid obesity was associated with higher mortality. Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Total Sham

Since 2010, companies have been able to shift up to 30 percent of the cost of employee-only health care premiums onto employees who fail wellness tests unrelated to tobacco, and up to 50 percent for failures related to tobacco. Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Total Sham

But wellness programs promote medical tests of dubious value, encourage unnecessary doctor visits, and collect sensitive health information despite often extremely lax privacy policies, with little to no evidence that they improve health outcomes. Workplace Wellness Programs Are a Total Sham