The Seven Things You Must Be Measuring to Improve Your Workplace Well-being.

Note, this is the second article in a series of six all designed to help workplaces understand how to better measure, manage and grow their workplace happiness so they can become accredited happy workplaces and employers of choice. You can find part 1 here .

Workplace wellbeing is one of those concepts and to be honest, buzzwords, that’s been around for decades. It’s not uncommon that when we talk about workplace well-being we can see some eyes in the room glaze over. We can see people lean back and shrug and say, “here we go, we're going to talk about yoga and meditation.”

Unfortunately, people have become a bit banner blind to workplace well-being and as a result, there are a lot of organizations taking workplace well-being for granted and not being intentional enough with how they measure and improve the well-being of their staff.

Now, we mentioned in the first article in this series , that low workplace well-being costs workplaces, an average of $10,000 per staff member per year in direct and indirect costs. So whether you're thinking about the ethical part of running a happy, thriving, successful workplace in terms of contributing to the happiness and well-being of your staff, or if you're thinking about your bottom line, the answer is still the same.

You need to get intentional about contributing to the well-being of your team.

What does that mean? Once again, it's not so straightforward. There is not a one size fits all answer for 7 billion people when it comes to living a happy, healthy and well life. However, we do know from extensive research that there are common underlying themes, that are present in organisations that have great workplace well-being.

In this article we're going to share all seven of them as well as a few prompts to get you reflecting on and thinking about, how much does your staff and team meet these seven. How is the well-being of your team and what are you doing as an organization to help them improve it?

1: Emotional Wellbeing

This can also be referred to as mental health at work and it's becoming an increasing focus of workplace health and safety legislation. As well as recommendations on a government and industry-wide level in looking after your staff, and it's going to continue that way.

The trend of talking about mental health and emotional well-being at work is not over, in fact, it is only beginning to grow and I promise you now if you're in a workplace that's not doing something in this space, you will be left behind.

2: Environmental Well-being

This means considering the impact that the working environment has on your staff. Is there clean air in the building? Are there ergonomic setups at their desk? Does their work in the environment that they are working in have a net positive or a net negative impact on their health and their well-being?

3: Social Well-being

We human beings are a social species. We don't work in isolation, even those who say that they prefer to work alone, which may be true, still have a need for a sense of connection, and a sense of belonging.

Social well-being could also be called office politics. It's how well does the team work together? Is this a safe space? Is there bullying going on? We're going to unpack this further in future articles in this series, but we want to start thinking about; does the team feel connected and supported? Is there a good social network and environment within this organization either virtually, if you're working from home and through zoom, or in person at the office space?

4: Intellectual Well-being

This involves intellectual stimulation and challenge. People like growing, there is a core part of a thriving happy individual, which is achievement and accomplishment that comes from doing things that are difficult.

It's been shown time and time again that workplaces that helped challenge their staff intellectually and help them grow and develop tend to have happier staff. So think about it. When was the last time your staff were intellectually challenged?

Are they doing their tasks much like a robot these days, especially with future trends towards machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics? We can't afford to be doing work like robots anymore. We need to be leaning into the human capacities and human skills that we uniquely bring to the table.

5: Physical Well-being

This is one that most people are aware of. It's kind of the traditional one. When we talk about it with workplaces at BU Happiness College we tend to talk about physical well-being in terms of movement and exercise, in terms of nutrition and hydration and alcohol consumption. And in terms of sleep and rest and recovery.

So again, thinking about how healthy and well your staff is. This is an area that doesn't need a ton of explanation, but it's one that again, people are starting to take too much for granted. Rather than being intentional and proactive.

6: Spiritual Well-being

This area of well-being is often misunderstood, so we're gonna spend a bit of time on it. Now often when people hear spiritual well being they think, "Oh, does that mean religious well-being?" and it doesn't necessarily. Spiritual well-being refers to how people feel on a gut instinct, intuitive, soulful level, and specifically, it relates to a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Now, again, we know from fields like positive psychology, that when someone's clearer on their meaning and purpose, they're happier. They're healthier, they perform better at work, they thrive, and as a result, when the individuals in your organization thrive, your workplace thrives.

So when we think about spiritual well-being and the role that work plays in it, does your work have meaning and purpose and is your workplace providing this to people? Are you talking about and discussing why you do the things you do instead of just how you're doing them or what you're doing on a week-to-week or day-to-day basis?

7:?Financial Well-being

We've all heard the saying, we've all grown up hearing that money doesn't buy happiness. Well turns out that is not actually correct, in fact, it has been shown time and time again that financial insecurity and financial stress are a huge detriment to happiness on an individual and a workplace wellbeing level.

So when we talk about financial well-being what we want to talk about is first, are your staff getting paid enough? Do they get paid enough to have a living wage and salary? Secondly, do they have financial skill sets and capabilities to understand how to utilize money well and work with it well?

So we want to think about not only empowering and equipping people with a healthy living salary but then also upskilling them and giving them the opportunity to develop to make sure that they're using that money wisely and in ways that promote their ongoing happiness, health and well being throughout the rest of their life.

Those are the seven areas that contribute to workplace well-being.

If this resonated with you, make sure you give me a follow and make sure you keep an eye out for the future articles we're going to be putting out about how to become a happy workplace and an employer of choice. Workplace well-being is only one of five of those contributing factors.

If you were reading this and thought, "hey, we've actually got a lot of work to do with our workplace wellbeing", and you'd like some extra help and guidance with direction, accountability and support to take the guesswork and headaches out of improving your workplace wellbeing, then send me a message and we'll talk about what we do with Workplace Happiness Consulting.

Or if you're ready to go, "I think we're doing all this exceptionally well", then you may be a great candidate to get your accreditation as a recognized happy workplace and employer of choice. And in that case, please reach out we'll talk about the accreditation process and what it means to be formally recognized as an accredited happy workplace.