IMPROVING EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND WELLBEING IN THE WORKPLACE

By: Felix Ho

An organization’s success is a combination of vision, leadership, and its team. Employees are the driving force behind idea generation and transforming that idea into reality. Without its employees, an organization cannot function, be productive or profitable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made business leaders realize the importance of employee health and wellbeing and its direct impact on an organization’s profitability and success. Organizations are taking their team’s health and wellbeing more seriously and looking at ways to ensure their employees health and wellbeing are cared for.

Let us explore how leaders in a healthy company culture care and help their employee with their health and wellbeing:

1) CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND SUPPORT

With any program or system that organizations want to implement, it starts from the top. Leaders must lead in the conversations about employee health and wellness and actively promote it within the organizational culture. Regularly check-in with employees to ensure their wellbeing to show the importance of staying healthy sets the tone for employees to be mindful of their healthy and wellbeing.

Leadership must also help create social interactions for the team to build camaraderie and support system amongst peers. Team building activities and events for individual or cross-functional teams and even company wide events can create a cohesive team environment.

Furthermore, creating collaborative and comfortable workspaces also helps with the overall employee wellbeing. Organizations are opting for open work areas, knocking down walls to individual offices and creating workspaces for teams to gather and work together. Also, improved ergonomic workstations, adding in more natural lighting and green plants, and creating breakrooms to step away from work and encouraging employees to take breaks or meditation can also help with employee health and wellness.

And by celebrating employee Successes / Milestones / Achievements, the organization is showing appreciation and recognition of individual contributions, making employees purpose and place in the company more amplified. Any additional reward systems will create additional incentives and morale for the employees. If the employees don’t feel appreciated or recognized for their hard work, eventually, they will feel that there’s no point to the effort that they put in.

2) AUTONOMY, FLEXIBLE WORKING HOURS AND REMOTE WORKING ARRANGEMENTS

Employee engagement and employee morale are at their highest when an employee feels that they have autonomy of their work, and they are trusted. When employees can make decisions in their role, they are more invested in the results and the success and failures of the company. Employees don’t want to be treated as ‘paper pushers’ or ‘button pushers’, they want to make a difference and they want their contributions to be meaningful.

And with autonomy, the topic of flexible work hours and remote working arrangements usually follow closely because employees want to have some control of when and where they work. Everyone’s situation is different, and a one-size fit all schedule may not be the most productive or efficient for everyone. Allowing the freedom (to some degree) for employees to choose how they can most effectively perform their duties let’s employees know that leaders trust them and their best judgement for the best outcome.

3) WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Businesses perform well when their top performers are being productive at work. However, there needs to be a balance because the most expensive machine will eventually breakdown if it’s not maintained regularly, and the best performing employees will burnout if they not take necessary breaks to enjoy their personal life.

Leaders and Managers need to encourage and remind their employees of regular habits of skipping lunches or working extra hours all the time when work is busy. Organizations should have a system to keep track of employee vacation days and remind them as the year progresses the number of vacation days the employees still have. Management must create a culture that does not view taking time off and breaks during the day negatively, but necessary energy to refuel to keep things rolling.

4) PROMOTE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS

When an individual is in poor (physical or mental) health, it can affect all aspects of their life and their productivity at work. With improved health, all aspects of life also improve, and this can be achieved by promoting and helping employees create healthy habits and eliminating poor health behaviours. Healthy habits can be doing regular physical check ups, keeping up with immunizations, health screenings, exercise routines / schedules, healthy eating with a balance of nutrients / supplements / vitamins, taking care of one’s mental wellness by minimizing stress / anxiety / depression, and more. A positive change can be as simple as encouraging employees to step away from their desks during their lunch or breaks and go outside for a walk.

While physical health issues are easier to detect compared to mental wellness issues, organizations must encourage their employees to be open about their mental health and create a supportive environment that leads them to seek help and counselling early.

5) PROMOTE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL WELLNESS

Financial stress can affect an individual when they’re at work or at home, when they’re awake or asleep. An individual’s finances can be straining on their mental wellness if they have a large burden or responsibility rested on their shoulders. Employers can provide financial education to employees to help with financial planning and remind them to seek further financial education and professional financial advice for their unique financial situations. With the proper planning, budgeting, debt management, retirement planning, and overall better understanding of one’s finances, it will reduce financial stress and improved wellbeing.

Furthermore, organizations can especially help employees struggling with poor mental health due to financial stress during bad economic times by openly communicating about the organization’s financial position. If the organization can weather the economic storm and is prepared to weather the storm with their team through the tough times, it can be vocal about job stability to reassure those who are afraid of losing their job.

6)  PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

People search for a sense of purpose in every aspect of their lives to create some meaning to what they do. It is important that employers establish clear goals and development plans with their employees so that the employees know what they are striving to achieve and how they can reach it. Setting annual goals and targets, development paths and growth plans, pushing employees to reach higher to help them grow, having regular meetings to review progress, these are all important to keep an employee motivated and happy about what’s happening in their profession.

At the same time, leaders and managers should also push their employees to set personal goals and targets that they want to achieve in life alongside their career goals because life is much more than just a job. These could be financial plans / goals, personal development goals, physical health goals, further education, and learning, and more.

Studies are now showing that having healthy employees brings both tangible and intangible value for the organization and directly affecting their bottom line. Organizations that have a healthy team report fewer accident, less sick leave, less stress, less turnover, higher team morale, more employee engagement, better productivity, and more. Employees must take care of their health before they can achieve other goals in life and employers must be there to support their team in pursuit of their health and wellbeing.

Contact Us today to speak with one of our Account Executives and let us help you build your team with the right talent this year!

Photo Credits: Image by tirachardz on Freepik

Link to Original Blog Post: https://www.expandreach.ca/2024/06/03/improving-employee-health-and-wellbeing-in-the-workplace/