Get well, soon Employee wellbeing is moving up the agenda for L&D professionals. And with good reason: engagement, creativity and productivity are all impacted when businesses make wellbeing a priority. The subject of health and wellbeing is on our minds, as headline stats show. The yoga industry is currently valued at £74billion, while estimates by the Global Wellness Institute show the workplace wellness sector contributes $48billion to the worldwide economy. With that in mind, here’s a look at a few areas to focus on if you want to make the workplace well, based on comments from participants in the L&D and Wellbeing Discussion Group at the Richmond L&D Forum on 20 March.
Line managers are critical to the wellbeing agenda. As a company we can provide everything we want or can afford, but if they don’t speak to their people about what’s on offer in a very personal way, there’s very low take-up of some initiatives.”
*All quotes are from workshop participants
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You have to ask people what they want. The days of the corporate centre pushing wellbeing down through the company does not get buy in to the initiatives.”
1. Empowering your Line Managers When it comes to wellbeing, line managers matter. Lots of companies report plenty of push from upper management around health and wellbeing programmes, but very little pull from employees requesting or engaging with them. Line managers are the vital link here. With training, they can offer guidance and encourage employees to take charge of their own wellbeing, while helping organisations walk the fine line between wellbeing as a transactional driver of productivity, and wellbeing as the right thing for any organisation to focus on and care about. Some organisations report that too much choice can even lead to reduced take-up of wellbeing programmes – another area where line manager guidance is useful, either helping employees navigate their options or feeding back to senior management with suggested changes. There is a caveat: should something as complex as employee health – particularly mental health – be a line manager’s responsibility? Some organisations prefer not to get their line managers involved, for this reason; but most tend to think giving them relevant knowledge and training is helpful, and that the benefits outweigh any potential risks.
2. Asking questions Every organisation differs, and ideas to improve wellbeing for one team wouldn’t help another one – manual workers might need different interventions to desk-based ones, for example. With that in mind, it’s essential to ask what employees really want, and what would help them. Starting a conversation will ultimately lead to finding practical solutions. Similarly, asking questions once wellbeing programmes are in place will make sure both employees and businesses are getting the right kind of ROI. At the moment there’s very little measurement going on in this area, so there’s an opportunity to tighten up your wellbeing offering with some well-placed questions to make sure you’re giving your people what they want, and that it’s working.
