Boosting Wellbeing In The Workplace: Strategies Businesses Should Adopt

During the financial year 2015-2016, 11.7 million working days were lost due 2015-2016, 11.7 million working days were lost due to work related stress, depression or anxiety. That’s an awful lot of lost business time, and highlights how important it is for employers to make wellbeing in the workplace a priority.

But, what can you do if you’re an employer or in a position to influence the policies your company is implementing?

Well, you can start by considering adopting these strategies.

Create A Workplace Wellness Program

Start by implementing a wellness program in your office. This might be made up of many parts, such as hosting weekly fitness clubs at work, discounted gym memberships and access to subsidized medical treatment and support for mental health issues. However, don’t just stop there: businesses should also try to encourage a culture of wellness too, such as prompting employees to get up from their desks at lunch time to take a full break away from screens, as well as encouraging staff to take their full annual leave entitlement. Even small things such as as swapping office ‘treats’ such as cakes and biscuits  for healthier alternatives such as fruit bowls is a a good way of promoting a culture of wellbeing, and all forms part of a well-considered wellness program.

Offer Flex Time

Another way to boost employee wellbeing is to be flexible with the hours they’re required to be in the office. All employees will have various demands on them outside of work, such as parental responsibilities, caring roles or something else that makes rigid work hours detrimental to wellness. So, allow employees to work from home occasionally, or consider implementing a company–wide policy that facilitates flexible hours so that workers can balance their personal lives with their professionals lives. Your  people management software will help you to keep an eye on who’s doing what, how you can contact them if they’re out of the office and the amount of unexplained absences, as well as helping you to keep a closer eye on attrition rates, employee satisfaction and the number of jobs you’re advertising with flexible working arrangements.

Ensure Employees Have A Balanced Workload 

Another key strategy you should adopt in your workplace is one that ensures employees have a balanced workload. It’s inevitable that businesses experience busy times or periods of understaffing, but on the whole, businesses should be aiming for their employees to have the right amount of work to complete within standard working hours.

Ensure Key Members Of Staff Are Good People Managers

Line managers need not only be good at performing certain technical skills, they also need to be very good people managers. Good people management and strong leadership increases employee wellbeing, reduces employee’s stress and enhances engagement. So, ensure that managers appointed on the grounds are good at managing conflict, remain accessible and visible at all times, are approachable, can manage workload and resources, and can manage their own emotions too. All the aforementioned reasons will feed into wellbeing in the workplace.

Offer Training Programs

Employee engagement and wellbeing are interconnected and interdependent, so concentrate on improving engagement and you’ll be doing a great deal for their wellbeing too. You can enhance engagement by offering high quality training programs to help staff feel that their work is meaningful and driving them in a direction that feels fulfilling. Offer job shadowing opportunities, internal and external training and access to e-learning courses too, if you can.

Administer Staff Surveys 

Once you’ve put all these strategies into place, it’s a good idea to measure wellbeing in the workplace. You can do this in part by offering employees the opportunity to give their feedback in anonymous surveys. You can ask them to rate how they’re feeling about the business generally, as well as focus on issues such as their confidence in approaching managers or how they’d rank transparency in the business. Offer regular one-to-one meetings with line managers too, as well as weekly team meetings. When practiced alongside surveys, you’ll have a good sense of how your wellbeing strategies are being received.