How do you create an effective workplace wellbeing plan? The world of work is changing and remote working, longer hours, and mental health are all topics which are common place across organisations. When it comes to planning for wellbeing, the questions which we often hear are:
How can we engage staff effectively through workplace wellbeing?
What does an effective wellbeing plan look like?
How can we measure success?
Part of our service is to guide you through this process and to create a meaningful and measurable plan. In this blog we have highlighted the basic steps which can help you to get started.
What you need to know about workplace wellbeing
In May we had Mental Health Awareness Week. People were encouraged to start a conversation around mental health, and for good reason. Pre Covid it was estimated that 1 in 4 of us would experience a common mental health condition such as anxiety or depression at some point in our lives. Statistically 7.8% of people will experience mixed anxiety or depression.
Health & Wellbeing at Work Survey
In 2020, 3 out of 5 companies reported an increase in mental health concerns for staff according to the Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey CIPD 2021. The cost to UK business of poor mental health and stress was 12.8 million work days lost in 2018/19. According to the HSE work related stress, anxiety or depression statistics 2019, this was at a cost of around £15 billion.
Before the pandemic, workplace wellbeing was considered a ‘nice to have’ feature in business, but now it is a necessity. Around 68% of private sector businesses say that employee wellbeing is on their senior leader’s agenda. This compares to 83% in the public sector and 82% of non-profits. Although interestingly, only 47% of businesses in the private sector have a wellbeing strategy. This is a 10% increase since 2020. However, it still doesn’t compare too favourably with public sector organisations where 64% have a wellbeing strategy. Increasingly, younger workers are asking about wellbeing initiatives at interview when deciding where to work. So, a wellbeing strategy can save you time and money in recruitment, and reduce lost productivity due to staff absence.
Workplace wellbeing and employee engagement go hand in hand.
A further benefit of a wellbeing plan is around employee engagement. According to research by Garton & Mankins, an engaged employee is 45% more productive than a merely satisfied worker. What is more interesting is that an inspired employee (one who has a profound personal connection to their work and/or their company) is 55% more productive than an engaged employee. This is more than twice as productive as a satisfied worker. The better an organisation is at engaging and inspiring its employees, the better its performance. Your wellbeing plan can incorporate and encourage team cohesion and inspire your teams to have a closer relationship, both with the organisation and with each other.
How do we create an effective wellbeing plan?
Much will depend upon your starting position. Staff surveys, pulse surveys, informal chats or facilitated discussions can be used to find out what your people need. Exit interviews or analysis of absence data can also be useful in establishing a base line.
Establish where you are now.
What does the business need?
What does the team needs?
Do you know what each individual needs?
Are there any pressing issues today?
What is absence data or your pulse survey telling you?
You may want to start with our wellbeing quiz
Creating your plan.
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Communication Strategy
Consider what you already have in place and how you communicate it. Are there additions to the private medical insurance that you can tell the team about? Do you have an employee assistance helpline you can set up a campaign to highlight?
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Balanced Approach
Create a balanced impact approach and consider staff needs and business needs. We find that businesses tend to focus too heavily on one area such as mental health and less on spirit type activities which is where resilience and team building can occur.
We look at wellbeing across four areas, Mind, Body, Spirit and Vision. Mind and body support individual resilience but spirit – which we consider to be community and creativity – can be a group learning experience to help a business process as well as individual development. Establishing the group’s vision can also iron out team tensions and get a consensus around what would work better.
Given the rise in Environmental Social Governance focus amongst investors, customers and team members, understanding your corporate values and living them may be more needed than you think.
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Culture and Values
Do your working practices reflect your culture and values, or those you would wish to have in place? For example do you have a guideline for evening or weekend emails? Do you encourage finishing work on time?
Gen Z, who were born between 1995 and 2010, is going to represent 82 million people by 2026 and will be the largest generation. This generation cares about the environment and saving the planet. Understanding your values as an organisation and aligning their values to yours is important if you want to attract and maintain your talent pool.
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Health & Safety
Are there any health and safety needs to be included in the plan? Have you considered any points of best practice or reviews of processes where staff could get involved?
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Senior Leadership buy in
This is probably the most important area. It’s not just about money it’s about behaviours. If the senior leaders don’t support a wellbeing policy, the staff are likely to follow their lead. Also, if a change in working practices would help with wellbeing this becomes hard to achieve without senior leadership support.
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Wellbeing policy and wellness plans
Is your wellbeing policy up to date and do people know about it? Consider implementing individual Wellness Action Plans as part of the general review process.
How can you measure success?
This is dependent upon your starting position. If you have an absence issue an obvious measure of success will be to see whether it has reduced. If there are no major issues, there are many apps and survey tools where you can ask specific questions around staff stress levels, how they feel about their employer and to chart how satisfied they are. The HSE have a stress indicator tool which may be useful. Employee and management feedback during the process is vital to ensure that impactful changes can be made where they are needed.
Finally
The post pandemic era is about learning how to be flexible and agile. It is now also the role of leaders to find a new way to lead with the human in mind. Workplace wellness is a way of reaching out across the organisation and finding a way to connect people together, make changes and take all generations with you on the journey.
Discover Your Bounce is a workplace wellbeing and culture change organisation. We offer consultancy, workshops, inspirational talks and mentoring with the human in mind.
“DYB are professional yet welcoming. It is great how they can come into our organisation and really understand where they can make the most benefit. We have had 2 workshops facilitated by DYB; Resilience and an Introduction to Mindfulness and Meditation. Both workshops had a good balance of theory and audience participation. The feedback was really positive and staff felt that they had gained some new knowledge from attending the workshop. Thank you to Nicky and Sharon for coming to the NCC and sharing knowledge about wellbeing.”
Laura Graham HR Advisor, National Composites Centre
Resources:
https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/health-wellbeing-work-report-2021_tcm18-93541.pdf
https://hbr.org/2020/12/the-pandemic-is-widening-a-corporate-productivity-gap
https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/downloads.htm
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