You want to give your employees the best experience you can offer while working with them, but you don’t know how, so you’re here. That's why employee wellbeing should be front and center of your human resource strategy.
As you know, well-being is one of the primary concerns in the workplace and surely the first you can consider looking into. But what does employee wellbeing really mean? Is it just about having staff that sing "Hakuna Matata" and let go of all worries or is there more to it? Read on to learn more.
What is Employee Wellbeing?
Employee well-being refers to the overall health of an employee in a workplace. It’s not only about avoiding burnout. Pursuing better well-being at work is about seeking hollistic wellness and productivity in a way that benefits both the employees and the organization too.
This encourages organizations to perceive their workers as whole persons with optimal physical, mental, emotional, social, intellectual, and economic health needs. And as you do so, you're not sacrificing company growth and health too.
Although optional, the best choice for any organization is to maintain a high, or at least a decent, employee well-being rate in the workplace for a happy and actively engaged workforce—and a consistent positive bottom line.
Check out some of these statistics on employee wellbeing:
- More than 9 in 10 organizations have at least one wellness incentive for their teams. (HBR)
- 70% of companies have improved their physical environments to encourage healthy behaviors at work. (Forbes)
- Roughly 87% of employees have considered health and wellness offerings when deciding where to work. (Forbes)
- 91% of employees in organizations run by executives who support wellbeing initiatives believe they are motivated to achieve their best at work. (American Psychological Association)
- More than 9 in 10 workers feel more motivated if their managers and supervisors support well-being efforts. (APA)
- 70% of employees enrolled in wellness programs have reported higher job satisfaction than those not enrolled in the companies’ program. (Aflac)
Benefits of Prioritizing Employee Wellbeing for Organizations
What better way to thank your employees than to take good care of them?
When it comes to the health and well-being of any workforce, extending the effort means extending the rewards. The more you prioritize the health and happiness of the employees, the better they perform at work, therefore, the better the output and outcome.
Here are some of the best reasons why you should prioritize employee well-being:
1) Improved employee recruitment and retention
Reputation speaks for itself, and word of mouth is still the best mode of advertising. Even today.
When you take good care of your employees, they take good care of you and your business. As a means to give back to the company, they spread the good word about your organization to their network outside and can potentially recruit their peers (through referral programs). Resulting in lower employee turnover and higher talent acquisition—which is great for candidate pooling.
2) Reduce worker's compensation claims
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Prioritizing employee well-being means giving your workforce a safe environment to perform their duties from the get-go. Taking precautionary measures and providing proper safety equipment and training to employees on the onboarding decreases the likelihood of errors that can affect their health and dramatically reduce workers' compensation claims.
Both the organization and the employees win in this situation.
The organization reduces revenue loss from the high volume of compensation claims while improving profit gain. Employees receive peace of mind and confidence while working in a safe environment.
3) Improve productivity and engagement
The genuineness of your care and interest in your employees’ well-being is easy to spot from the get-go.
Companies who genuinely care and are interested in giving their employees a great working experience win the cake in this situation.
First of all, it’s the reciprocation of the employees towards the company’s efforts to take good care of them. Employees who are taken good care of are more likely to be productive and proactive at engaging actively toward the company and the organization’s goals.
Since these employees are more fulfilled and cared for than their counterparts who don’t receive the same benefits, they feel empathy for their organization. To give you a better perspective: If the company wins, they also feel fulfilled—and vice versa.
4) Establish and maintain high employee morale
High employee morale is directly connected to an effective work culture approach that puts workers' well-being first—affecting the company's productivity, employee engagement, and reputation.
Here are some of the strategies you should try to accomplish high employee morale:
- Reinforce work-life balance in the workplace
- Respect boundaries and work hours
- Recognize employee efforts and show appreciation
- Open general and personalized communication channels
- Offer employee health and wellness programs
- Offer remote work options and flexible work plans
- Offer substantial salary and other incentives
- Promote empowerment and autonomy
- Host team-building activities
- Offer career development pathways
- Offer well-designed workspaces
Any company or organization must establish and maintain high employee morale and good relationships with the workers. This is a tedious process that requires genuine commitment and understanding since it changes quickly.
Test your strategies and adjust them regularly to your employees’ needs.
If you need a tool that promotes better well-being at work, we highly recommend our platform, Quizbreaker. It’s got all kinds of tools to help measure wellness and engage teams.
Some of our favorites include our team engagement exercises and activities like:
- Asynchronous icebreaker games
- Workplace personalities to understand what motivates your staff
- Trivia games
- Escape games
- Team kudos (recognition boards)
A pulse survey feature also helps you gather data on how engaged or happy your team members are at work.
Check out Quizbreaker’s wellness and engagement tools when you sign up. Try it out for free today and see why thousands of teams use Quizbreaker to build engagement and connection at work!
Ways to Measure Employee Wellbeing
Since you already know the benefits of an effective employee wellbeing strategy, the following question should likely be this: How do you measure them (referring to employee wellbeing)?
There are 6 Common Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure employee well-being:
1) Employee satisfaction
Do the employees feel exploited for their time, effort, and talent? Are they always looking for greener grass outside of your organization? Do they feel the other way Employment satisfaction is measured with online surveys physical handouts, or a combination of all of the above?
Work satisfaction plays a crucial role in wellbeing. When you measure it through poll surveys and pulse survey questions, you get a feel of how your team is doing. Try to be proactive, and ask your team regularly about their satisfaction levels.
Ask them questions like:
- Are you currently happy at work?
- Do you feel like you're using your skills and talents in your current role?
- Is there anything you wish you could change at work?
- Are there forces in or outside of work that are affecting how you feel about your job?
- Do you feel like the compensation and benefits you receive reflect your value in the organization?
2) Employee retention
Employee retention is a clear indication of a healthy work environment and company culture. Probabilities are likely higher for companies who offer positive workplace characteristics to retain employees—Plus, it’s something worth paying close attention to.
Poor employee retention is directly linked with poor company reputation, and it’s something you want to avoid if you’re after business longevity and employee relations.
This KPI is measured using annual employee turnover, or the number of employees leaving your company.
3) Employee motivation
Are the employees working past the bare minimum? Are they happy about their job? Are they actively participating in reaching company goals? There’ll be signs.
Managers use performance databases, personal interviews, and assessments (questionnaires and surveys) to measure and check employee motivation.
4) Management satisfaction
Is workplace management great? Management encompasses every operation happening at the back end of a workplace.
This KPI shows the effectiveness of the management or the leader entity governing the employees. Since the management responds to all workplace concerns, it directly affects employee wellbeing either positively or negatively, depending on the resolution implemented by the governing entity for hiring, onboarding, project management, compensation, and even firing employees.
Gathering data about management satisfaction comes in the form of interviews and surveys.
5) Peer satisfaction
Toxicity in the workplace community is very harmful to all employees’ well-being.
Think about it. Diversity and negativity in the workplace can affect the well-being of each employee. If toxic people constantly surround them, they’re more likely to be unhappy, and toxic themselves—increasing their chances of leaving their roles and the company behind altogether.
Peer satisfaction data are often collected via interviews, suggestion boxes, and surveys.
6) Work environment
What’s the general vibe of your workplace? Work environment encompasses all physical factors of the workplace: the conditions, the atmosphere, and the surroundings in which employees do their daily tasks for work. That’s why a conducive work environment is a must for productivity, collaboration, and employee morale.
Work environments are measured via research, regular polling and employee interviews, and suggestion boxes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Wellbeing
Why should HR and leaders care about employee wellbeing?
Happy and supported employees stick around, meaning less headache for HR in dealing with turnovers and added concerns. Employees can only give their best and thrive in a workplace where the management cares genuinely about their well-being.
An efficient management is a magnet to awesome talent, because at the end of the day who wouldn't want to work where they're treated well?
What are the common ways to address employee wellbeing?
These are the most common ways to address employee well-being:
- Flexibility – letting people juggle work on their terms
- Mental health support
- Break that stigma and offer counseling or self-pace resources
- Create a safe workplace environment where employee recognition and teamwork shine and lift spirits
- Throw in health programs
- Regular check-ins, feedback, and monitoring workloads also keep things in check
Employee wellbeing is subjective, so it's different for everybody. Most of the work is about finding the sweet spot in your strategy and putting it into practice. So, the best way to know how to address employee wellbeing is to ask your employees about their concerns that they need help resolving.
What should a positive work culture look like?
There’s no template for a positive work culture, which will always be different for every workplace.
A positive work culture:
- Fosters inclusivity and where everyone's cheering each other on
- Allows creativity and listens to inputs
- Sees the value of everyone, regardless of their role
- Understand the importance of work flexibility and letting folks balance work and life without feeling chained to their desks
- Prioritizes good communication: open, honest, and where feedback is like a two-way street.
- Celebrate wins, big or small
- Builds workplace traditions that will help the team to feel closer to each other. Sees employees as people
Each workplace consists of different people with different backgrounds, cultures, etc. This means their needs for their well-being are unique to them, which could be a good thing useful for data collection.
Final Thoughts
Employee wellbeing must be a top-of-mind concern. How organizations manage the wellbeing of their people directly affects their performance at work because bad outputs lead to bad outcomes.
There's no other way around. How do you know how you can help your employees? Simple. Remember that your employees are human beings with needs, wants, and opinions.
Ask them directly. Do polls, interviews, and surveys. If you’re looking for a tool to help you do these things, we highly recommend that you check out our platform, Quizbreaker. Thousands of teams use it to increase engagement, retention, and motivation, which are all strong indicators of employee wellbeing.
Using these methods, you’ll meet them exactly where they’re at and provide resolution where needed. When communication is great and all problems are resolved, no one loses.
