How is well-being critical to business success?

We recently did a poll on LinkedIn asking you what topic you most wanted to see and ‘How is Well-being Critical to Business Success’ stormed ahead with 56% of the votes!

Let’s start by looking at why well-being is critical to business success…but before that, why do we care?

We all want success; we all want to know that whatever we do is leading us towards knowing how to become or how to be successful. When we look at a business, we can use the analogy of a clock, knowing that each department and each employee or colleagues roles are working together to maintain a smooth and effective function like the cogs behind a clock face.

A simple theory, everyone doing their job, keeping the time, and doing their part makes everything run smoother. However, like most things in life it is not always that simple. Life is full of many challenges and having a balance over each factor and maintaining that positive mental state can help everything run that little bit smoother.

When we look at a business, this is similar. There can be different things thrown at a business and its people, let us take the coronavirus as an example. It is not the kind of thing many of us would have seen coming or necessarily prepared for. It has had a real hit on businesses and people's lives. For a lot of people, it has changed the way we are working or whether we are working at all.

We know from a brilliant study that Deloitte published in March 2017 that 60% of mental health related costs are due to lost productivity at work.

To understand why this is, we need to understand what well-being is.

Well-being is the state of being happy, healthy and comfortable. At Arthur Ellis, we use the evidence-based principles, breaking well-being down into 5 different pillars.

These pillars include;

This allows us to look at what activities we do that add to our well-being throughout our lives, whilst looking at areas of improvement. It can also help us to see what behaviours we are engaging in that are counterproductive.

These pillars can be applied to all areas of our life, including work and even across a working population, at Arthur Ellis we do this all the time in our Insight sessions and it sometimes just takes small changes to open up to these pillars to drastically impact the organisations well-being.

Think about your own performance in a business, are there times when perhaps other life factors have begun to influence the level at which you are performing…don’t worry, everyone has those times. If we are over stressed, things going on at home, we’re not getting exercise or seem to have no time for the things we enjoy, our well-being is already being affected, the typical activities we do within these pillars are being changed and we aren’t in control of that, at least it can feel that way. Apply this to other people that you work with too, if there are times, they have had their five pillars of well-being knocked, how has their performance changed? Now we’ve got an idea of what well-being is and how it’s influenced, it's now time to have a look at how it is critical to success.

Improved and good mental well-being has been associated with several positive factors.

For an individual, improving their well-being can improve their general physical and mental health. It can help us with our ability to manage emotions, communicate better with others as well as improve mood and concentration.

With this in mind, we can think about how a business can be affected by poor well-being and if these 5 pillars are affected.

This can include points such as;

• Increased staff turnover
• Employees over stressed
• A strained working environment
• Lack of focus
• Job tasks and goals not being met
• Poor communication between departments

With improved well-being, we have the potential to have a really positive impact on these points above.

It’s important to think about what success in a business means to you. Whether that’s an increase in sales, creating strong connections with customers or getting your name out there for your own brand. We all want these points to succeed and build a business that is successful. So how can well-being assist in this?

With what the evidence tells us about the 5 pillars, we know that improving these areas can have the following benefits:

Being active;

• Improved emotional management
• Clearer thinking

Taking Notice;

• Improved problem solving.
• Stress management

Connecting

• Improved relationships
• Improved workplace environment

Giving

• Stress management
• Improved support of self and others

Learning

• Improved management of workload
• Increased productivity

For a business, these are all beneficial factors. Poor well-being and mental health can not only cost a lot for a business, which was close to ￡100Bn to the UK economy pre-COVID, but it can also diminish performance, trust and reputation long-term.

The well-being of your employees builds the well-being of your business, and that is critical for success.

To find out more about the 5 Pillars of Well-being, please feel free to download a free copy to our guide on our website – www.arthurellismhs.com

You can also book an Insight Session with us here - https://www.arthurellismhs.com/business/

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