Is Your Company Focused on Employee Wellbeing?

There is a move today within corporations to improve employee productivity and to solidify buy-in at the same time.  One way to accomplish this in the long term is to improve employees’ wellbeing.  Plans today might include providing ergonomically correct workstations, gym memberships, in-house massage therapy sessions, topical learning lunches, access to counsellors or life coaches, and nutrition consultations, to name a few.

A great way to ensure your company is paying attention to employee well-being is to talk to your staff about their greatest challenges.  You may be able to identify certain areas of wellbeing that would benefit most from more targeted attention.  Nurses working with seniors or in palliative care, for instance, may benefit more from having counselling or life coaching sessions than they might benefit from being given an ergonomically correct chair in their nursing station.  If your employee demographic is youthful, gym memberships and intramural sports team activities may be more attractive than massage sessions. 

Another way of improving your employee wellbeing is to invite outside specialists in to give talks.  You might invite in personal trainers, psychologists, yogis, or other professionals for after-hours or lunch break sessions.  Some may charge a fee, while others will do it for business promotion.

Monitor the attendance at each session to evaluate topic success.  Offer follow-up opportunities to those who attend by offering next-step information.  This might include providing employees with the business cards of the speakers, or pamphlets that will assist them in investigating the external services on their own.  Another next step might be to offer your employees personalised plans.  Resources can be provided in the way of books, checklists, or links to valuable websites as well.  

Focus on keeping the momentum going if you want your employee wellbeing program to have credibility.  Talk about and advertise events and services in other business meetings.  Hang informational posters where the employees will see them, send around group emails and welcome replies and input.  Give your employees adequate time to attend functions.  Have your senior management participate too.

Doing business from a holistic viewpoint is not only good for your employees; it should be good for your top line.  Your most valuable asset may be the knowledge and skills carried by those bodies that walk your company’s floors.  They need to be taken care of.  Do your employees a favour by helping them to stay healthy and live a balanced life.

‘Did you know?’ - Psych Press have a range of services that help you monitor and manage your talent retention strategies; including culture surveys, climate surveys, job satisfaction surveys, exit surveys and online outplacement services. Feel free to Contact us to talk about how Psych Press can help talent retention in your workplace.