Employees drive companies forward, and if they’re not looked after, businesses can come to a standstill. We realized that during the pandemic. If it weren’t for essential workers, we’d all have struggled to access everything we needed to survive as we huddled indoors.
However, prioritizing employees as essential shouldn’t just be an emergency trend. Giving workers first place in the company should be second nature now, deeply interwoven in the fabric of the business. This is especially true if you’re a customer-facing company. Clients actually care how you treat your employees, really, they do. Recently, we’ve seen big names, like Amazon and Tesla, come under fire because of how they treat their workers.
If you kicked off employee wellness programs during COVID, you can ride the wave. If you’re new to this, you can start now.
Read on to learn about employee wellness. If you’re eager to become a champion of employee wellness today, email us.
Why is employee wellness important?
Let’s be clear, employee wellness is not just about creating programs and policies; it’s about building a supportive environment that generates worker loyalty. Businesses that adopt an employee ‘wellness-first’ approach recognize workers as whole people.
If employees feel psychologically safe and have a sense of belonging in the company, they will show up for their employer. What you put out in the universe comes back to you — put out your best, and only the best comes back to you.
What does ‘wellness-first’ do for employees?
There’s a direct link between what companies do for employee wellness and employee productivity. Here are a few things that will happen when your business becomes an employee wellness-first place.
- Enhanced productivity:
When employers prioritize employee health and wellness, both physical and mental, they boost workers’ energy, focus, and overall job performance.
- Reduced absenteeism:
Employee well-being programs enable healthy habits that reduce stress and illness, leading to fewer sick days.
- Lowered health-care costs:
Healthy employees won’t need to use healthcare benefits if the company is proactive about their wellness.
- Positive organizational culture:
Wellness programs encouraging organizational social interaction create a sense of community and belonging, leading to better communication and teamwork.
- Creativity and innovation:
Employees, whose mental and physical health is looked after, focus on taking the company to new horizons.
- Attracting top talent:
Beware, setting a wellness-first path for employees is bound to make you a top talent magnet. Not a bad deal!
What does ‘wellness-first’ do for organizations?
Research shows that an employee wellness-first approach sets up a company for overall organizational well-being. Investing in employee well-being translates to providing workers with continuous personal growth and development, healthy relationships at and outside work, and an increased capacity to strike an effective work-life balance.
Also, people talk! Enabling employees to focus on their well-being alongside their work will sooner or later be mentioned by employees outside of work, increasing your brand reputation a few notches.
A wellness-first approach creates a healthy reciprocity between employers and employees. Think about it… If someone looks after you, wouldn’t you want to do more for them, too?
What can you do to set up a wellness-first approach?
Much like anything else, start at the beginning, go to the source and find out what your employees’ needs are. The best way is to give your staff a safe space to speak freely. We’ve facilitated such conversations several times in the form of employee surveys, focus groups, and exit interviews. Once you’ve gathered feedback, you can create a customized employee well-being approach using some of these tried and tested methods.
- Work-life balance:
This can be done by offering flexible work options, work-break options, and a strong vacation policy. Encourage and remind employees to take days off work instead of passing them on or cashing them in.
- Family care options:
It’s highly likely that your workforce consists of a high percentage of people from the ‘sandwich generation.’ This employee group has to care for children and aging parents. Recognizing these roles and attached needs, make appropriate provisions so the sandwich isn’t squeezed any further.
- Encourage volunteerism:
It may seem like our lives are all about work, but employees have personal causes they’re passionate about. Enabling and encouraging employees to give back makes you the understanding employer everybody wants.
- Promote professional development:
By spending on employee growth into professional roles within the company you set them up for success and give your business workforce stability that will drive it further.
- Use technology to take off the load:
Incorporate technology and even AI into your employee wellness-first strategy and take repetitive, boring, and redundant tasks off their plates to prevent burnout.
What else can you do?
Keep it going. Once programs are up and running, you need to collect feedback to determine which aspects are working well and which need to be improved.
Don’t know where to begin your employee wellness-first journey? We can help.
