With health and wellbeing firmly on the corporate agenda, are your initiatives boosting your business and employees or could that money be better spent?
Health and wellbeing have been on the corporate agenda some time now as businesses learned not just the cost of poor, but the benefits of good, health and wellbeing amongst their workforce. Since then, national and global labour shortages mean that many organisations face real challenges in attracting and retaining talent. Health and wellbeing programmes have become even more important but you don’t get healthy employees just by rolling out health and wellbeing initiatives across your business…
Having a healthier, happier workforce is a good enough reason – for a responsible business anyway – to invest in itself but the benefits also stack up commercially. A workforce that is physically and mentally healthy means better morale and engagement, increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and presenteeism (and obviously the costs associated with that). It is also a key factor in attracting and retaining talent in an increasingly tough labour market. Effective wellbeing initiatives benefit both individuals and the organisation – but the key is in the word ‘effective’…
Yes, there are steps every organisation should take, such as providing mental health first aiders, in the same way there are standard health and safety requirements. But in the same vein, an office-based organisation is unlikely to have a flight safety programme whereas an airline hopefully would.
Health and wellbeing are affected by many different factors including individuals’ personal circumstances, their pay and conditions, company culture and practices, the nature and demands of job roles, the location and facilities of the workplace. If a health and wellbeing programme is going to work, it needs to address the priority factors. Someone suffering from the cost-of-living crisis might find a pay rise more beneficial than a free weekly yoga class or extra day off.
It’s ok if the requirement to describe your health and wellbeing initiatives in a tender or to potential employees is driving this agenda – we operate in a commercial reality. But we need to understand the problem that we are trying to solve or the benefits of investing in health and wellbeing are unlikely to be realised.
Ask your employees, consider what’s relevant to your organisation and your team, prioritise, and measure success. Yes, healthy employees deliver better performance but you don’t get healthy employees just by rolling out health and wellbeing initiatives across your business. Putting resources into the areas that truly matter could make a real difference to peoples’ lives and to your bottom line.
