Wellness

Where do organisations start when it comes to wellbeing?

Before investigating new wellness programs for your staff, you need to look at how you communicate in the workplace. Your employees need to feel safe talking about how they are coping, and that comes back to psychological safety. Often large organisations have HR teams with designated wellness officers to assist with that, but if you’re in a small organisation you can nominate someone in your office who anyone can turn to when they need a confidential chat.

Another thing often overlooked in the workplace are quite simple human necessities. Are your team moving enough during the day or are they sitting for 8 hours straight? Do they get out in the sun at lunchtime? Evidence suggests that if you don’t get up and move or stretch for a few minutes every 50 minutes, you’re negatively affecting your metabolic rate, blood pressure and cholesterol so it’s literally the little things throughout the day that make all the difference.

As a starting point, I suggest building foundations around open communication, psychological safety and basic movement and hydration. If your culture isn’t conducive to those things, you may need to evaluate how you can make some changes.

“In the last 12 months, have you experienced any of the below that impacted your ability to perform your best in your role?’ of Gen Z experienced anxiety

53% 29% of Gen X experienced anxiety

*More women than men experienced the above.

Of those that experienced one of these conditions, 45% said their employer did not provide any support. However, 13% said that the support provided exceeded their expectations.

How do you help organisations improve their wellness offering?

As Talentpath’s Wellness Specialist, my job is to ensure that everyone is feeling their best both personally and professionally. My approach is centered around the four pillars of feeling good (managing stress, nutrition, sleep, and movement) and my educational workshops provide clarity around what an individual might be doing well and where they need to improve when it comes to their wellbeing. To feel good at work you need to feel good at home, so I really focus on wellbeing as a holistic concept that can be worked on to improve individuals’ health personally rather than exclusively in the context of work. This in turn leads to top performing talent in the workplace.

If this intrigues you, Talentpath offers this service to their clients as a value add or standalone program for workplaces looking for a holistic solution to their wellbeing offering. We have some exciting long-term plans to support our clients and our temporary talent community, so stay tuned.

Follow Sonia: @balanced_life_nutrition