Why You Should Care About Workplace Wellbeing
Did you know that $322 billion of turnover and lost productivity costs are incurred globally due to employee burnout? Lisa Jones of Headstrong Training outlines how burnout and poor wellbeing can affect businesses both big and small, and what you can do about it.
Sure, we've all seen the headline stats like those for burnout, but the real cost of employee burnout is about a lot more than numbers. A survey by Gallup, a global analytics and advice firm, shows that around 61% employees are likely to experience burnout often or always. This has serious consequences for your business' bottom line. But, put another way:
Poor employee wellbeing threatens the very fabric of what makes your organisation:
your people!
What is Workplace Wellbeing?
Workplace Wellbeing, simply put, is the glue that holds your company’s people together. To put it in more specific terms, there are largely 5 areas of an employee’s wellbeing:
Mental Health
Your employees are able to work in an inclusive environment and have access to support at work without discrimination and feel psychologically safe.
Physical Health
Your employees have the energy to give their best and work in safe environments.
Financial Health
Your employees have access to fair pay, benefits and financial wellbeing including retirement planning.
Career Health
Your employees have opportunities to learn and progress with career development.
Social Health
Your employees have a voice, feel connected, valued, enjoy collaboration and have positive relationships with managers and colleagues.
Why Do You Need Wellbeing in The Workplace?
As a company owner or team leader, you might think, “Don’t employees have a personal responsibility for their health and wellbeing?” “Why should I worry about it?”
These are legitimate questions and are often asked. To ease into an answer, let’s think about it this way:
On a typical day, any employee spends about a third of their day at work, perhaps even more thinking about work or working extra hours at home. On a day when they are feeling stressed for example, they would find it harder to engage with work, be able to collaborate or to even give their best, despite their best intentions.
The statistics support this too.
Workhuman, a Social Recognition and Continuous Performance Management platform, recently found that a mere 26% of workers felt psychologically safe during the pandemic and experienced higher levels of burnout, stress and greater feelings of loneliness.
So, yes. Employees do have a personal responsibility for their health and wellbeing but employers also have a duty of care and responsibility to ensure workplaces are conducive to health and wellbeing too.
How Can You Improve Workplace Wellbeing?
The good news is that there is a solution; A Virgin Pulse survey, showed that 56% of companies that invested in employee engagement saw higher employee satisfaction, 40% saw enhanced company culture, and 14% saw revenue growth as a result of their employee engagement programmes. Remember, every step counts. The first step is to start recognising if there is stress within the team. A simple way to do this is to conduct a survey or wellbeing audit giving your staff a voice.
The signs of poor workplace wellbeing can be low performance or low employee engagement. You don’t have to it alone, our in-depth CPD certified training programmes equip you and teams with exactly what you need to promote psychological wellbeing and resilience in your team.
From onsite teams to remote teams, Workplace Wellbeing is for everyone. We are seeing a shift, accelerated post-pandemic, with how workplaces are evolving and how company preferences are changing. This is the time to understand and invest in the unique strengths of your team and build your people.
She founded HeadStrong Training® as a vehicle to teach others the importance of resilience and emotional wellbeing and feels strongly that people should be equipped with essential skills to confidently manage the stresses in life.
Lisa works in both the corporate and education sector (HeadStrong Training in Education) teaching others the importance of brain health, resilience, stress management and emotional wellbeing.
