What do you look for in your employees? Would you like someone who is healthy, productive and engaged? Have you lost a lot of employees due to stress, burn out or dissatisfaction with their work environment? Then it is time to focus on workplace well-being.
By ensuring the wellness of your workplace is top-notch, you could increase your bottom line, but how? Let’s take a look at what areas are focused on in workplace wellness and then consider what small businesses can do to build wellness into their business.
Workplace wellness focuses on the physical, mental, financial, and social wellness of the employee. When these areas are healthy, we will have an employee who is engaged in the job which in turn increases productivity in the whole business, and finally will have a positive return on investment.
If we don’t focus on workplace well-being, we will have a high rate of absenteeism, and more injuries or accidents. We may also experience presenteeism where people come to work but are unable to work optimally. This is because of physical or mental health issues or worrying about their financial and social wellness.
What can we do?
Ensure the work environment is healthy
When you walk through your company’s premises is there enough light and is the air quality good? Do the employees have an appropriate place to take a break and relax? If your employees have desk jobs, do you have an ergonomically-developed desk space?
Give them agency
Who dictates how the work gets done? By giving your employees control over how they need to get their work done will help to relieve stress. Give your employees measurable targets to aim for in their work. If your company can work with flexi-time, allow it.
Limit excessive workloads
Having tight deadlines once in while is tolerable, but when this becomes commonplace then you need to review your business strategy. Either you will need to hire more people to deal with the growth of the business or you need to turn away some business. Increasing the workload and decreasing the resources you have available to complete the work will lead to workplace dissatisfaction quickly.
Encourage healthy habits
If you offer a canteen, make sure you have healthy options available for your staff. When your staff go on leave ensure they can switch off from work completely, so they return refreshed and ready to work. Encourage them to step away from the desk for their lunch break. Give them common areas to relax in.
Build teams
Interpersonal relationships at work can lead to a lot of stress at work. Write a clear anti-bullying policy for your team. If you see favouritism occurring in your business, make sure you identify it and give the managers advice on how to limit it. Take part in team-building activities, like running a park run or fun fitness challenges for different departments to do against one another.
Upskill your employees
Make sure you have opportunities in your business to upskill and mentor your employees. Give them opportunities where they can take courses to build their work skills. This will give you a better employee and will show you care about their growth in their career and that you want to see them succeed in their work goals.
By investing in the welfare of your employees, you will build a business which will be attractive to new talent and will grow from strength to strength.
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