Employee health and wellbeing is a hot topic. The Office for National Statistics reports that in the UK alone, in 2013, 131 million days were reported as lost due to sickness. Article by Heather Foley, Consultant at etsplc.com.
Enhancing your employees’ health and wellbeing is an important concern for employers, as keeping fit and healthy has a range of health benefits that would be foolish to ignore. Workplaces can be high-pressure environments. There are daily deadlines to meet and targets to beat. According to Bupa, regular exercise can be a great way to combat stress. Exercise can release ‘feel good’ chemicals, can increase energy levels and can even aid better sleep.
Improving Bottom line
It’s just common sense that, with a healthier workforce in place, a company’s bottom line will be improved. With energised, healthy people, productivity naturally increases. Feeling great helps us to work in a more efficient way, too, as we’re more likely to be focused and alert. Furthermore, absenteeism is naturally reduced.
Keeping us smiling
In addition to physical benefits, there are also mental health benefits to keeping fit and healthy. Workplaces are, potentially, happier places, if people are in good shape. The NHS states that there’s strong scientific evidence confirming that being physically active can help people lead a healthier and even happier life. It’s no wonder, then, that companies are keen to give their people opportunities to keep fit and healthy. So, what can they do to enhance employee health and wellbeing? There are four main considerations.
Change your culture
VitalityHealth, (the UK-based private medical insurance company) believes that there’s a strong relationship between a company’s culture and its productivity.
Adjusting your company’s culture appears to be the most obvious first step in enhancing employee wellbeing. This, typically, needs to come from the top. But whilst the tone is set from the top, employees can bring change about themselves too, by putting pressure on senior management. Employees can be more assertive in requesting help and support from their employers. After all, in an employees’ market, employers need to be doing everything they can to entice people in. And, if employers invest time and money in keeping their workforces healthy, then it stands to reason that staff will feel valued.
Investing in employee health is a win-win. VitalityHealth highlights a clear relationship between culture and investment: claiming that the more a company invests in health provision and promotion, the healthier the employees perceive themselves to be and, in most cases, the healthier they are. This, in turn, makes them more productive too.
Communicate the message
Once a company has decided to invest in its people’s wellbeing, it’s vital that the change is communicated. A great place to begin might be an employee survey, asking colleagues what they need their management team to do in order to create a healthy workplace. Employees who are involved in the process from the beginning are more likely to commit to the scheme. Another good idea is to establish a culture of peer support. The holiday company TUI has appointed health ‘champions’, who encourage their colleagues and who organise internal fitness competitions. Of course, management buy-in is a sure way to encourage participation and to demonstrate a company’s commitment. After all, your manager may be encouraging you to be healthy, but it doesn’t help if s/he isn’t investing in his/her own health.
If you build it…
Over the last few years, top companies have invested heavily in the infrastructure needed to encourage employee wellbeing. The examples are well-documented.
Sweaty Betty has worked hard to establish flexible working, in addition to having an on-site gym. Microsoft, meanwhile, has an on-site well-being centre, with GPs, nurses and physiotherapy. It offers free health assessments, too. In this way, minor health issues can be stopped in their tracks before they lead to absences from work.
Investment in on-site facilities works well when you’re trying to establish a culture of promoting and valuing health and wellbeing. But, it may not be feasible for small businesses. Fret not. Even small changes can be effective. Pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson has installed ergonomic workstation assessments to help make sure that employees are sitting correctly at desks, thus reducing the risks of repetitive strain injuries or problems caused by poor posture. They also offer flu vaccinations and hand out free fruit.
Some organisations recognise that good mental health is vital too. Creating a working environment where stress levels can be managed, and problems can be discussed openly, can be instrumental in establishing a healthy workplace. As part of its stress management programme, Johnson & Johnson gives its employees access to massage therapists, while Old Mutual offers counselling, for both work-related and personal problems. Here, staff are positively encouraged to bring their problems to work, so they can be dealt with. Adidas has taken this a step further, offering its employees life coaches and specialists who are trained in cognitive behavioural therapy, which can help people change their thinking on particular subjects.
Incentivise
But, having built a state of the art facility, or given your employees chairs with great back support, what, ultimately, will encourage them to buy in to your initiative? No matter how evangelical you are about your new programme, people need a reason to sign up. The first step needs to be giving people back their time. One way to encourage them to spend time on their personal fitness is to actively give them the time to do it. The idea is that an hour off to go to the gym is potentially worth three hours of good productivity when people return to their desks. As recognised by the American Psychological Association, companies who give employees time to invest in their fitness, are more likely to have people who return to work more focused and productive.
Supporting a workplace charity, through achieving fitness goals is another possible incentive. Websites like Sportrelief are packed with suggestions such as organising a lunchtime fun run, or a walk-to-work scheme. It’s a great way to motivate colleagues, as well as boosting your company’s social conscience. Incentives can even take the form of cash equivalents. Lindt & Sprungli, the chocolate company, offers a £100 personal incentive towards helping its people achieve their personal goal outside of work. This can take the form of such things as entry fees for a marathon or even yoga lessons. There’s no doubt that encouraging health and wellbeing in the workplace is a topic that businesses should embrace whole-heartedly. After all, in the end, whatever is good for the employee, is almost certainly always good for the business.
