Is the real workplace wellbeing solution – dare we say it – to slow down? 

It feels like we have been talking about the importance of workplace wellbeing for a long time. We know that caring for employee wellbeing is the morally right thing to do. It’s commercially right too; employee wellbeing has a strong connection with employee engagement.

However the latest research suggests we haven’t done enough. We have hit a crunch point. The cost of living crisis is set to amplify the challenges and stresses that affect how healthy, resilient, and motivated people feel.

Our employees are over-worked, exhausted, and at risk of burnout:

• Two-thirds of staff are struggling with stress at work
• 60% of workers report feeling anxiety at work.
• Google searches for ‘signs of burnout’ have gone up by 221%

How did workplace wellbeing change during the pandemic?

Workplace wellbeing is not just a nice thing to talk about. Rather, it’s a broader societal phenomenon that people expect employers to prioritise. And it has significant business impact; resilient, positive staff have been found to be:

• More than twice as willing to consistently give their best efforts at work
• Less than half as likely to give up on their current employer and be in the process of looking for a job elsewhere

During Covid-19 lockdown, we saw organisations invest in employee wellbeing and come up with innovative ways to help people stay healthy, resilient, and motivated. Conversations around wellbeing changed too. Line managers became more comfortable checking in with teams about their mental health, and employees appreciated these conversations. With hybrid working on the rise, organisations must continue to invest in employee health and wellbeing and adapt wellbeing initiatives for remote teams.

What are organisations doing to support workplace wellbeing? 

There are lots of examples of workplace wellbeing initiatives to take inspiration from, such as:

• No-meeting Wednesdays at Asana help people focus on important tasks, with fewer interruptions.
• ‘Mental health every day’ is the focus at Fletcher Australia. They encourage people to talk about mental health openly, and make it part of the company’s everyday language.
• Leading with empathy – Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne openly shares his experience of dark days and of talking with therapists. Buffer offer their employees access to online or in-person therapists, as well as ‘unsick’ days to promote preventative care.
• Bupa’s global wellbeing programme, “Smile” includes a performance energy initiative developed to help employees manage their energy levels and feel better equipped to cope with daily pressures. Their “Bupa Boost” wellbeing app also facilitates nutrition, mindfulness and personal fitness goals while gathering health data so Bupa can tailor wellbeing activities to their employees.
• Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) are more popular than ever. While many health services were in short supply during the pandemic, EAP support remained available to employees to access support and treatment. Organisations are now working on targeted communication of the EAP, focusing on topical issues affecting employees such as supporting financial wellbeing during the current cost of living crisis.
• Women’s workplace wellbeing initiatives such as Hootsuite’s transparent meeting rooms, or Sharespace’s private workout spaces.
• Wellbeing in Workplace training provided by external organisations like Point 3 Wellbeing, who have corporate experience and movement, mindfulness and wellbeing expertise
• Self-serve apps like Spill (an integration in Slack), Headspace for work and Calm for business are being offered across many organisations.

Workplace wellbeing requires a well thought-out strategy, not just token gestures. 

Whilst the list above provides inspiration for wellbeing in workplace activities, these are insufficient without a proper joined up strategy. In fact, as our friends at the Human Times recently drew to our attention, organisational psychologists like Adam Grant get a significant reaction on social media when organisations just offer a token without properly thinking through wellbeing in its broader context.

12 ideas to build into your workplace wellbeing strategy 

So, an employee wellbeing strategy isn’t offering headspace while simultaneously setting unrealistic deadlines. This isn’t having an EAP about line managers who don’t listen, coach and support. It’s congruous with employee engagement, so when creating the strategy, consider the whole employee experience, and the culture of your organisation.

1. Decide on your goals for your wellbeing strategy. Do you want to help employees be more resilient, productive, engaged? Do you want to reduce sickness absence, staff turnover, and improve customer service? Are there areas of the organisation where resilience is a challenge?
2. Adopt positive wellbeing behaviours. This must be led from the top. When leaders are seen to look after their physical and mental health, it signals they care about their people doing the same.
3. Ensure line managers are trained and motivated to support their people. This might mean adapting their objectives to include supporting employees or measuring team engagement. Some managers will need more support with this than others – consider what will work best for your team.
4. Discourage competitive business and encourage proper breaks. Take breaks yourself and check in on your team to nudge them to go for a walk, finish up on time, or stop for a chat.
5. Cultivate a sense of psychological safety, where mistakes and feedback are accepted without punishment.
6. Remove frustrations that make people’s roles less efficient. This could be glitchy tech, outdated systems, insufficient materials or a lack of resources.
7. Build inclusion into your culture. Wellbeing is for everyone, so everyone should feel they belong, and are included and consulted in the activities and initiatives on offer. Sadly, survey data about inclusion at work shows there is work to do.
8. Think about wellbeing for home or hybrid workers, as well as those working onsite. It’s harder to spot that someone isn’t coping when they aren’t in the room with you. Build in time to ask how people are feeling before meetings or 1:1s and look out for signals from your team that something might be up. For example, if they keep their camera off but they’d usually have it on.
9. Make the line between work life and home life clear. Make signing off on time a positive thing. Belgium recently approved the ‘right to disconnect’ for civil servants – allowing them to ignore out-of-hours emails, texts or calls without fear of repercussion. While an extreme example, could you reflect this sentiment in your language and policies?
10. Measure your baseline wellbeing. Ideally, you’d conduct an employee wellbeing survey at the beginning of your strategy, to spot problem areas, refine your plan and create a baseline from which to measure improvement. People Insight’s THRIVE wellbeing framework is a great place to start to assess organisation wellbeing, with an index based on the latest research.
11. Expand your employee listening strategy to include wellbeing: Provide open, honest, trusted channels of communication where people can share their experiences and suggestions in a variety of ways -face to face, digitally, and anonymously. How effectively do you carry out your employee surveys? Are they appropriately regular, followed up with visible action? Getting this right means your people feel valued, listened to and important contributors – all adding to a sense of wellbeing
12. Work towards accreditations such as the Outstanding Workplace Award, Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index. These demonstrate your commitment to workplace wellbeing to your employees, job candidates and customers.

Is the real workplace wellbeing solution – dare we say it – to slow down? 

Slowing down goes against the fundamental drive for business to achieve more and do it faster. Competition is ruthless. Margins are squeezed tighter. Is this fast pace actually achieving anything other than making us frazzled? Productivity has not dramatically increased in recent times.

Technology made it possible for organisations to switch from in-office to remote working practically overnight during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some organisations expected their employees to logon at the time they would have previously started their commute to do more work. Back to back Zoom meetings for 9 hours were a thing. Tech enabled businesses to keep functioning, and even empowered teams to find newer, faster ways of working.

With all we know about rising levels of workplace stress, the Business Disability Forum (BDF) is calling for a global movement to #SlowDown. While it might sound counterintuitive to business growth, the BDF are asking whether just because we can work faster, should we?

THRIVE: How to measure and improve workplace wellbeing 

When it comes to improving wellbeing at work, having an employee wellbeing strategy is vital. Equally as important is checking in on how well your strategy is working, understanding how to measure employee wellbeing, and identifying where your people might need more support.

People Insight’s THRIVE framework has been designed to assess organisational wellbeing, based on the latest academic, applied and practical research, so you know you are measuring the right things.

Talk to us about using THRIVE to recognise and reduce stress factors at work and improve the wellbeing of your workforce.

“The anonymous, easy to access and detailed analysis that we have been able to obtain has helped to confirm that the work we have been doing around staff wellbeing is having a positive impact. Equally important, we have been able to critically focus on those areas that need further work and it is pleasing and reassuring to know our levels of staff engagement are improving as a result.” 

Will Phelan, Principal, Stamford Endowed Schools