It has almost reached the last responsible person in the world of work - employee wellbeing has a direct influence on - everything.
Starting with metrics and KPIs that every company already measures and looks at monthly in dashboards, through to sick days, dismissal rates or the length of time employees stay with the company. Why only almost? Because companies, and by that we mean the people in companies who are responsible for them, often act reactively when it comes to employee well-being. Conversely, this means acting when it is already too late and not taking preventive action.
Employee wellbeing does not mean that we wrap ourselves up in absorbent cotton, are only allowed to talk through flowers and call out toxic positivity - no. Employee wellbeing is multi-layered and may therefore seem complex, but it is manageable for everyone and all companies. The first step is to discuss what people need and what is possible. This discourse must be conducted and should cover three categories:
Psychosocial well-being
This category includes mental health, stress management, emotional support, work climate, social relationships at work and anti-bullying measures. It refers to the mental and social health of employees and how this is influenced by the working environment.
In psychosocial wellbeing, there are many measures at the level of working practices that can reduce stress, check-in and check-out routines help with emotional support
Physical well-being
This is about the physical health of employees. This includes ergonomic workstations, health promotion programs, fitness offers and measures to prevent work-related illnesses.
It's common knowledge that office work causes us to move far, far, far, far too little and that we often score very poorly in terms of posture at our desks. The simplest hack is to set a timer so that you can work standing up every 60 minutes. Another easy measure that a study by the Huberman Lab at Stanford Medical has produced is to soak up 30 minutes of sunlight before starting work.
Professional and financial security
This category deals with aspects such as work-life balance, career development, training opportunities, fair pay and additional financial benefits. It looks at how working conditions and structures influence employees' job satisfaction and financial stability.
Your employees should earn as much as possible so that money is not a daily topic on the table, but can be ticked off cognitively. Humanistic and professional training enables employees to develop their careers and companies to retain competent employees.
Preventive measures in employee wellbeing initially trigger thoughts of costs in most people's minds at management level. However, the wrong ones - because if we add up the costs of employee absences, lack of productivity and the costs of application processes and training, we find that the costs of prevention are significantly lower and also amortize in a shorter time.
