Wellbeing at work...
Wellbeing programs are a powerful tool to attract and retain top talent
In today's increasingly ultra-competitive job market, businesses are looking for every advantage they can get to attract and retain top talent.
One of the most effective ways to do this is to develop and implement Wellbeing Strategies - systems for staff welfare and workplace culture curation that creates a supportive and inclusive workplace, focused on employee well-being and wholesale mental and physical health wellness.
But what exactly does Wellness entail and how does one go about making workplace strategies based on it?
Wellbeing in 2023.
The post-pandemic era has been defined by a deep appreciation of wellbeing as central to workplace productivity, happiness and skills attraction.
But, sadly, this has been due to a rising awareness that the systems we have in place to handle stress, burnout, abuse or malpractice were woefully inadequate in the digital age, and come up short during a crisis.
Decades of “if it ain't broke” leadership mindsets about mental health, and a toxic hustle culture of overwork crashed against the Great Resignation, mass redundancies and workplace panic as the pandemic struck.
Long-term, digital nativism and staggering generational differences in workplace expectations have brought wellbeing and wellness to the fore.
This is for good reason as the scope of mental health deficiencies and the lack of support, as a result, are beginning to widen the dysfunctional, unhealthy cracks in our working culture:
1 in 6.8 people experience mental health problems in the workplace (14.7%)
50% of employees have experienced at least one characteristic of burnout due to greater job demands and expectations, lack of social interaction and lack of boundaries between work and home life
Globally, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety at a cost of US$ 1 trillion per year in lost productivity
?When the scale of ill health is so huge, the solution has to be inventive, flexible, meaningful, and globally minded.
Critically, most employers now realise workers don’t want sprawling benefits or work perks for exceptional performance - they simply want to be given the tools to look after their health and their community health, the environment and their work/life balance (more on that below!)
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What is a “wellness strategy”?
A wellness strategy refers to a wellness program, a wellness plan, or a culture of wellness within work - an “organisational approach to improving individual health”.
In short, it refers to a strategic umbrella of in-work, organisationally-funded set of health and wellbeing tools.
And while there are a multitude of accepted wellness standards that all companies have to adhere to - Health and Safety protocol, leave and sickness systems, mandated time off, maternity leave, paternity leave etc - what we’re also referring to are the additional investments made in company-specific wellness programmes that help their staff.
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Examples of wellness and wellbeing at work.
Wellness can often become synonymous with general welfare and safety at work, so we want to draw a line between the two.
Wellness, Wellbeing or Welfare, in the context of Wellbeing Strategies, refers to active programmes that mitigate ill health, improve mental and physical health within work, reduce toxicity and negativity within the workplace, encourage positive systems of support and help, and generate a culture of self-care within the workplace.
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Examples include:
?Wellbeing and recruitment.
Recent Gallup studies looking at what employees wanted from their next job revealed that both better pay and wellbeing rose significantly as motivating factors, with nearly two-thirds (61%) citing greater work-life balance and personal wellbeing as ‘very important.
It’s clear as day that Wellness is central to the recruitment of talent, central to the establishment of good referral schemes, and central to workplace motivations.
Wellbeing and the retention of talent.
When employees are thriving, they're 32% less likely to be watching for or actively seeking another job.
Beyond the hunt for talent and competition on the front lines of jobs boards and candidate networking, Wellness is increasingly seen as central to the retention of talent too.
So whilst it’s always right to focus on communicating corporate welfare strategies to new hires, having a constantly evolving, well-invested wellness strategy makes current staff feel at home, safe and backed up.
But the one thing candidates want more than anything else is to be seen, looked after, trusted and kept safe - and far from being a recruiting “trick”, a well-communicated Wellbeing strategy will be the transparent, human-centric magnet for the talent you’ve always been looking for.
Reach out to the team at Brookwood - [email protected] if you would like to have a further discussion and understand in more detail how we can support your next talent search.
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