Every business needs two things to function; customers and employees. Customers are fundamental and there is no ‘your business’ without ‘theirs’. To effectively deliver your services, provide customer service for your products and cater to the needs of your audience, you need quality staff and a productive workforce. However, in recent years, many employers have been caught out in their limited care for their employees, treating them as replaceable and unimportant and considering their skills as the only benefit they bring to the organisation. In reality, every employee, every staff member, every contributor to your business is a human being, living a real, vivid life just like your own and their wellbeing counts for more than just a passing smile.

Employee wellbeing is directly linked to a good working environment and staff productivity. In short, happiness is catching and happy staff are proven to work more efficiently. By putting the wellbeing of your employees at the core of your business, you will encourage loyalty and a higher quality of work.

Why Does Wellbeing Matter?

Wellbeing is the whole package including our social, emotional and physical health, all of which can be affected and influenced by things that happen in the workplace. The average UK person spends a third of their life working and many do not end up in the jobs they were dreaming of when they were younger, but still have a responsibility to pay the bills and support their family. Humans are incredibly resilient and while many people are able to make the best of any situation and adapt, it still carries a toll on our emotional and social wellbeing.

Buzzwords such as the work-life balance and workplace incentives get thrown around a lot, but they do carry weight and mean more than simply meeting minimal annual leave allowances and paying slightly above minimum wage. The additional benefits you offer your employees can make all the difference to their wellbeing and should be carefully considered with input from your staff to ensure they are personalised.

Catering To The Wellbeing Of Your Staff

Meeting the wellbeing needs of your staff can be as simple as providing access to resources that support their needs but it is ensuring they feel listened to that can be more complicated, particularly if you are a large organisation that deals with tens of hundreds of staff members. By listening to your staff, it’s easier to combat presenteeism – where staff are present physically but their mind and their emotions are elsewhere – and help to avoid employees burning out.

Being at work when there is stuff going on in an employee’s personal life can be difficult but it shouldn’t be another source of negativity, instead, a supportive and encouraging workplace can be a place of positive escape. Additionally, knowing your workplace is a place of support but also provides resources to make the tough times in life easier will create deeper connections between an employee and their job. These resources can include avenues of mental health and family support, such as those we offer through our WeMa Workplace Solutions but true employee support begins at the core of the workplace.

Humans are social by nature, which is why social wellbeing can affect all aspects of our life but everyone has their own individual social requirements; introverts, extroverts and those who strike a balance in between. Providing staff with the space to socialise helps to form better interpersonal bonds between colleagues and this doesn’t need to be extensive or affect work output. Extended weekly lunchbreaks or time in the workday each week where staff can get together in a more relaxed setting, even if it’s simply a group discussion or sharing of ideas, are just one example.

Your Part In Employee Wellbeing

Businesses have a responsibility to their staff to ensure their wellbeing requirements are met and that the workplace is a space that they can be themselves, able to talk about their challenges without fear of it affecting their employment. As an employer, you must ensure that employees have a clear expectation of what is required of them and that their responsibilities don’t overthrow the work-life balance by causing undue stress or anxiety. Flexible working, wellbeing strategies and organisational structure can all improve the level of employee support your business provides and should be in place before your next phase of business growth and development if they aren’t already.