How focusing on the 8 factors of wellbeing will benefit employees.
There is a growing awareness of physical and mental ill health and the effect it can have on the workplace: both for individual employees and for businesses. More people than ever before are asking “What is my employer doing for me?”
The workplace can be stressful, and with the average person spending more than a third of their life there, it is essential that businesses find ways to provide health and wellbeing support. Moreover, an ageing workforce1 coupled with an increase in people living with chronic health conditions2, adds additional potency to the requirement.
The benefits
As a business, shouldering some of the responsibility for the health and wellbeing of your workforce won’t just have a positive impact on individual employees. Providing opportunities for your staff to develop physically, professionally, emotionally and socially will be a net benefit to the business too. For example, businesses can benefit in the following ways:
- Recruit and retain the best employees
- Improve productivity
- Reduce Presenteeism
- Reduce sick leave
- Reduce costs
- Become more attractive to investors
What are the 8 factors of wellbeing?
Wellbeing can broadly be categorised into 8 elements, each of which needs its own attention and care. The factors are mental and emotional, physical, social, occupational, financial, spiritual, environmental and intellectual.
Every little helps
Small measures to improve and monitor the health and wellbeing of your staff can produce huge results and impact each of the 8 factors. As Hesiod put it, “if you add a little to a little, and then do it again, some that little shall be much.” Indeed, a comprehensive health and wellbeing programme that consists of incremental changes will enable a culture change within the workplace that, if managed correctly, can last well into the future.
Over the coming weeks, Sangha will look at those incremental changes and which wellbeing factor they impact. We will write about how they can be implemented effectively and investigate some of the benefits.
REFERENCES:
1) IPD Reward Management Survey 2018, source from Ageing-Workforce PDF
2) Workplace Health Practices for Employees with Chronic Illness. Move Europe. 2013. Source from Proceedings PDF