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Point-2-Point

EDITOR’S NOTE

This edition: The dif-

ference exercise

makes

Pg 1

Dig in!

Enjoy this edition !

-Corporate

Communications

EDITORIAL TEAM

Morayo Nwabufo

Chief Editor

Onome Irorakpor

&

Oluchi Harry

Editors

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Entertaining, a bit

educating and a little

inspirational.

PG 5

Dress for success:

how cloths influence

our performance

PG 3

Photo Gallery

PG 6

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In–House Journal for Phase3 Telecom Ltd

WORKPLACE HEALTH

The clock ticks to 5pm and, officially, your working day is over. What’s your next

move? Are you frantically cramming for tomorrow’s big presentation, or rounding

up your team for your weekly exercise class, or going to the bar to sit with friends

and have drinks?

As an entrepreneur, you might think of the former as more beneficial to business –

every minute of the day can be invested in bettering your company and there is al-

ways a new task to tackle. But failing to take time out for exercise and relaxation puts

you and your team at risk of high stress levels, which in turn affects productivity. In

the UK,11.3 million days of worklost in 2013-2014 due to stress, depression or anxi-

ety – an average of 23 days per person.

Exercise and a balanced diet are proven panaceas to everyday strains. The better

your team are looking after themselves, the fewer working hours will be lost.

So how can you encourage your staff to favour exercise, or a healthy lunch eaten

away from their desk, over an extra hour of work? Some small business owners find

that offering free fitness initiatives is effective. Williamson is a fitness enthusiast and

was keen to share her pastime with her staff, so she brought in the “Swoon Sweater”

– a free weekly fitness session in a nearby park after work. The participants are

drilled by a personal trainer with resistance exercises like push-ups and squats, and

cardio, including on-the-spot jumps, sprints, and step aerobics..

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Meanwhile, a recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that regular, aerobic

exercise can boost the size of the hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in verbal memory, learning

and emotions.

While initiatives such as Swoon’s are designed to support healthy habits, there’s a fine line be

tween encouraging staff wellbeing and adding pressure to what is already expected of them at work.

Julie Creffield, founder of Too Fat to Run,consultant for the British Sports Council and ambassador

for This Girl Can, a nationwide campaign encouraging women and girls to exercise, says giving em-

ployees some freedom is the best approach.

“Sitting at a desk all day can leave you feeling fatigued and your work suffers,” says Creffield. “It’s a problem

if a member of staff can’t just say they’re going for a break, or for a walk, and instead, has to wait until lunch-

time. If you trust staff [to manage their time], you’ll have a more productive workforce.”

Creffield sums up the best approach to encouraging wellness in the workplace: letting the individual choose

for themselves. “Staff should talk to their employers about how important health is to them – encourage them

to open up conversations.”

Culled from

https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2015/aug/28/wellness-workplace-health-

initiatives-boost-staff-productivity

P A G E 3 V O L U M E 2 I S S U E 0 DRESS FOR SUCCESS: How Clothes Influence Our Performance

What you wear can influence your thinking and negotiating skills, and even hormone levels and heart rate

The old advice to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, may have roots in more than simply how others perceive

you—many studies show that the clothes you wear can affect your mental and physical performance. Although such findings

about so-called enclothed cognition are mostly from small studies in the laboratory that have not yet been replicated or inves-

tigated in the real world, a growing body of research suggests that there is something biological happening when we put on a

snazzy outfit and feel like a new person.

If you want to be a big-ideas person at work, suit up. A paper in August 2015 in Social Psychological and Personality Science

asked subjects to change into formal or casual clothing before cognitive tests. Wearing formal business attire increased ab-

stract thinking—an important aspect of creativity and long-term strategizing. The experiments suggest the effect is related to

feelings of power.

Informal clothing may hurt in negotiations. In a study reported in December 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:

General, male subjects wore their usual duds or were placed in a suit or in sweats. Then they engaged in a game that involved

negotiating with a partner. Those who dressed up obtained more profitable deals than the other two groups, and those who

dressed down had lower testosterone levels.

For better focus, get decked out like a doctor. In research published in July 2012 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychol-

ogy, subjects made half as many mistakes on an attention-demanding task when wearing a white lab coat. On another atten-

tion task, those told their lab coat was a doctor's coat performed better than either those who were told it was a painter's

smock or those who merely saw a doctor's coat on display. —Matthew Hutson

Inspired by findings that winning combat fighters in the 2004 Olympics had worn red more often than blue, researchers inves-

tigated the physiological effects of wearing these colours. As reported in February 2013 in the Journal of Sport and Exercise

Psychology, they paired 28 male athletes of similar age and size, who competed against one another once while wearing a red

jersey and again while wearing blue. Compared with fighters in blue, those wearing red were able to lift a heavier weight be-

fore the match and had higher heart rates during the match—but they were not more likely to be victorious. —Tori Rodriguez

Trying too hard to look sharp can backfire. When women donned expensive sunglasses and were told the specs were coun-

terfeit, as opposed to when they thought they were real, they cheated more often on lab experiments with cash payouts. Fake

sunglasses also seemed to make women see others' behaviour as suspect. Authors of the study, published in May 2010 in Psy-

chological Science, theorize that counterfeit glasses increase unethical behaviour by making their wearers feel less authentic.

—M.H.

The Red Sneakers Effect

It's not news to anyone that we judge others based on their clothes. In general, studies that investigate these judgments find

that people prefer clothing that matches expectations—surgeons in scrubs, little boys in blue—with one notable exception. A

series of studies published in an article in June 2014 in the Journal of Consumer Research explored observers' reactions to peo-

ple who broke established norms only slightly. In one scenario, a man at a black-tie affair was viewed as having higher status

and competence when wearing a red bow tie. The researchers also found that valuing uniqueness increased audience mem-

bers' ratings of the status and competence of a professor who wore red Converse sneakers while giving a lecture. The results

suggest that people judge these slight deviations from the norm as positive because they suggest that the individual is power-

ful enough to risk the social costs of such behaviours. —T.R.

Culled from

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dress-for-success-how-clothes-influence-our-performance/

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ENTERTAINING, A BIT EDUCATIVE AND A LITTLE INSPIRATIONAL

These are just pictures but they tell stories that may either educate, entertain or inspire you.....

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PICTURES FROM PHASE3 SIP RETREAT