Wellbeing of employees: Is it a can of worms you’re avoiding opening?
Many organisations are aware of the wellbeing of staff, now more than ever with the wide range of issues being highlighted and individual experiences throughout the pandemic.
It would be fair to say, that for the majority of business owners, board members and leadership teams, their collective knowledge on how best to address these issues will be somewhat limited, as this is fairly new territory for many.
However, avoiding the problem won’t make it go away.
Mental health issues have always been prevalent, and are much more openly discussed and respected with many organisations having done good work to address how they support employees to date. However, this is becoming a necessity, a duty of care, a corporate social responsibility and a basic expectation of all staff. Individuals want to know what organisations are doing to help their wellbeing at work both during the impact of the pandemic but also longer-term too. Will it form part of a potential employee’s checklist when doing their due diligence on who is a good employer?
Where on earth do you start?
If you are part of the Leadership team right now and aware of this increasing need, where do you begin? How do you begin? How do you get it on the agenda when you are also being tasked with Health & Safety issues, pressures on budgets, concerns about cash flow and reduced resources?So, what if you open the can of worms on wellbeing, and you ask your staff how they are feeling? Are you afraid you cannot understand/manage/contain the response? If you ask the question, then you have to act on the responses, right? What if that requires money and time that the organisation simply doesn’t have right now?Firstly, ignoring this problem is not going to make it go away. Everyone knows that. But we can be very good at never allowing the difficult issues get to the top of the to do list, and of course you are juggling all of those other demands from shareholders and business owners.
What if you continue to put it to one side?
Your staff are your biggest and most important asset, and you want them to be performing at their best. For them to be able to do that, they need to be able to bring their whole self to work, they need to feel valued, in control, safe and comfortable. They need to feel supported.If an individual is not able to feel all of those things, they are physically and mentally working harder to do their job. The more they give never seems to make up for all of those feelings they are missing, and they just keep putting in more, until eventually, they burn out. It's unsustainable.Now, you know that you will have a much more productive company with people performing at their best, and a company isn’t going anywhere fast if employees are heading towards burnout. So, what can you do, what is your first step?
How to segment the worms
Firstly, define your intentions, get the approval required then communicate to all staff. You will already get a sense of relief across the organisation from staff knowing that this is being addressed. When defining the scope, this is where you may want to define your parameters to prevent escaping worms. It may be that you provide some steps that occur over a defined period of time.
Some of the steps that you could consider might include:
You should define your approach based on the parameters you have to work in. At ProAction HR, we consider any wellbeing programme to follow the 3 C’s; Culture, Compassion and Collaboration.
Culture:
You need to set the tone, there is no point in having a message out there that the organisation cares how people feel if the leaders are not reflecting that in their behaviours and demands. The message is pointless until staff actually feel their wellbeing matters and is supported.
Compassion:
People can ask how someone is, but it doesn’t mean they are listening or actually taking notice of the response. Having open and supportive discussions with their line manager can make all the difference to how resilient a member of staff is at work. Everyone has faced adversity, but thriving from it will have a positive impact on your organisation. Showing compassion is one big step to enable that.
Collaboration:
Not all interventions have to be expensive or timely. What is key is that they are meaningful to the employees. Everyone will have different ideas on what wellbeing means to them, but understanding what that is, and getting the staff to identify and implement them will ensure they are effective.
What are the next steps?
Whatever you choose to do now, you are going to have uncomfortable moments. Moments when you may have to share some of your own experiences, and show that you are human too. Obviously, there are practical factors of running a profitable company that always have to be considered, but doing that whilst showing compassion for others will pay you dividends in the end.
If you would like more guidance on how to move forward with a wellbeing programme to suit your organisation, we would love to speak to you.