Workplace wellness programs support employee health so both people and culture thrive.
Employee well-being tops the list of organizations’ goals. While many companies have workplace wellness programs in place, it’s time to reevaluate their effectiveness and explore innovative wellness solutions.
The first step in creating workplace wellness that supports employees' mental health and prevents burnout is identifying the challenges employees currently face.
Challenges employees face and effective solutions
Mental Health
Providing effective mental health supports is part of any well-rounded employee wellness program. Making it easily accessible is one of the most critical aspects, including allowing employees to access mental health and wellness supports anonymously. If they fear their query being tracked, they are far less likely to access the resources they need.
Create a mental health resource suite that includes resilience tools, mindfulness, burnout prevention, and stress management.
Physical Health
Innovation and productivity rely heavily on employees feeling their best. Promoting a healthy lifestyle to build and sustain employees' physical health can go a long way. By implementing robust, straightforward tools and resources, companies show their employees that they care about them and are willing to go the extra mile to support them.
Create a collection of physical health resources for self-care, getting adequate sleep, and exercise. Equip employees with tools such as a burnout assessment, a stress indicator, and a self-care questionnaire to recognize the signs of burnout and address them effectively.
Employee isolation
While the Work From Home (WFH) movement presents many opportunities, it also presents challenges. Foremost is employee isolation and loneliness. Creating community among colleagues while working remotely can significantly affect morale, employee engagement, and company culture.
Offer employees opportunities to interact informally with the only agenda being social interaction. Encourage virtual coffee breaks, lunchtime social conference calls, and mid-day nature walks. Research shows that spending time in nature improves performance on problem-solving tasks that require creativity.1 Exposure to nature also increases focus and concentration.2
Lack of engagement
In a recent era, employees interacted informally around the water cooler, coffee bar, and lunchroom. With work-from-home environments, remote workers continue to need the connection those encounters provided. Often, spontaneous conversations lead to ideas.
Create a sense of belonging with collaboration. Innovation rarely occurs in isolation. Offering consistent opportunities for collaboration sparks ingenuity that leads to passion. When equipped and well developed, passionate people make outstanding contributions.
Communicate company vision clearly and often. Boost morale by helping employees see precisely how they are a part of something bigger than themselves that provides meaning for real people. Create crystal-clear communication through a variety of methods, since people learn differently and require multiple touchpoints.
Stress and burnout
Chronic stress can lead to burnout if not effectively managed. Continually changing technologies, social isolation, and a lack of resources can put enormous pressure on employees. Providing adequate training, personal and corporate development opportunities, and face time with managers, whether virtually or in person, can go a long way toward alleviating stress.
Create clear guidelines for work boundaries, including levels of responsibility and autonomy. Name exceptions around working hours, project accomplishment, time off, and after-hours reachability. Unless absolutely critical, encourage staff to refrain from checking work email and to turn off audible notifications on their phones, tablets, and computers.
Six elements of workplace health and well-being programs
Strong Leadership
Healthy organizations are built on strong leaders. Respected leaders exert a powerful influence over their employees at every level. The CEO and C-suite must be on board to effect positive change throughout the organization. Few workers will engage in programs if they do not see significant buy-in from upper leadership through endorsement and personal use.
Leading by example not only shows support for programs but also removes any stigma associated with wellness initiatives. Engaging leadership and every level of the company with clear communication, actionable steps, and easily accessible resources bolsters the entire organization.
Corporate Culture
Wellness programs and corporate culture go hand in hand. Culture is created at the top and trickles throughout the organization. The ripple effects of leadership influence employee engagement, productivity, and motivation. A strong vision leads to highly motivated people with a sense of purpose and passion that fuels innovation.
Connecting workplace wellness with a company’s mission, vision, and values empowers deep integration with strategic objectives. Policy-making and dependable human resources services cultivate loyalty and motivation. Supporting employee well-being directly strengthens the organization's overall strength and success.
Effective Management
Building trust between management and those they oversee is the most effective way to develop strong, healthy relationships. Meaningful conversations, showing emotional intelligence through empathy, and active listening reinforce the bonds that create strong companies.
Using assessments to evaluate staff needs, opening dialogue by asking critical questions, and offering encouragement make employees feel they belong and are valued. Ensuring staff know they are a vital part of the team through trusting relationships and team building creates happy, healthy employees and a healthy company culture.
Strong management results in greater employee passion, increased focus and performance, enhanced vision, and better innovation.
Workplace Wellness Programs
A plan is only effective if employees find the programs are meaningful and provide personally relevant professional development. Learn about employees' challenges and needs through assessments and surveys, by asking critical questions, and by collecting data. Once you have a sense of employees’ specific needs, create employer-sponsored programs based on recognized challenges.
Focus on leadership first, and train managers in communication and implementation. Gaining leaders’ buy-in creates authentic endorsement throughout the organization, leading to greater acceptance and widespread application. Provide comprehensive benefits and flex time, if possible.
Employee Training
Effective employee training involves providing a series of opportunities for personnel to engage. Strategic implementation based on closing performance gaps and addressing personnel challenges will bring the organization and its workers the greatest reward.
Offer opportunities in the form of company-wide professional development days, lunch and learns, and team-building seminars. Support employees with pre-recorded webinars they can watch at their convenience, followed by a team discussion. Provide easily accessible resources for employees to learn self-care, healthy lifestyle, stress management techniques such as mindfulness, mental health, and resilience training. Implement wellness across every sphere of personal and professional life through emotional intelligence training, boundary-setting, and tools for managing emotions.
Be sure to provide custom options as needed, such as individualized or small group executive coaching to overcome obstacles.
Outcome Evaluation
Using assessments is an effective way to evaluate the outcomes of an employee wellness program. Implementing assessment tools throughout the wellness program's lifespan at critical points offers leadership an ongoing evaluative tool.
Natural touchpoints include new staff onboarding, quarterly supervisory check-ins, bi-annual professional development workshops, and annual evaluations. A healthy review provides objective measurements for measuring results, creating case studies, and generating strategic objectives.
Why preventing burnout is important
The consequences of not having a comprehensive employee wellness program and healthy organizational culture far outweigh the costs of employer-sponsored well-being programs.
The following lists outline the impact of stress and burnout on an organization and individual employees when adequate resourcing through comprehensive workplace wellness programs is not in place.
Organizations
Reduced job performance, employee engagement, and morale. 3
Reduced energy and concentration. 4
Conflict with co-workers and customers. 5
Decreased passion for innovation. 6
Increased use of sick days and leaves of absence. 7
Resignations. 8
Individuals
Physical health: exhaustion, decreased immunity, heart disease. 9
Mental health: anxiety and depression. 10
Social health: conflict with friends and family. 11
Emotional health: exhaustion and a sense of failure. 12
Financial health: a sense of loss and decreased self-esteem. 13
Benefits of robust workplace wellness programs
Greater productivity.
Less stress. Pressures become manageable.
More energy, concentration, and focus.
Less conflict with co-workers and customers.
Reduced health-care costs, absenteeism, sick days, and leaves of absence.
Greater employee engagement and morale.
Higher sense of purpose and passion leading to greater innovation.
Greater loyalty and retention.
Top performers mentor others to become their best.
Organizations can focus on their mission rather than dealing with recurring recruitment and human resource challenges.
A comparison of burnout to wellness
An effective employee well-being program saves organizations money while supporting the wellbeing of employees. By investing in a quality, high-performing workplace wellness course of action, both the organization and employees thrive.
“An effective employee well-being program saves organizations money while supporting the well-being of employees.”
About the Author
Bonita Eby is a Burnout Prevention & Organizational Culture Consultant, Executive Coach, and owner of Breakthrough Personal & Professional Development Inc., specializing in burnout prevention and wellness for organizations and individuals. Bonita is on a mission to end burnout. Get your free Burnout Assessment today.
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References
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Christina Maslach1, Wilmar B. Schaufeli2, and Michael P. Leiter3
1Psychology Department, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-1650
2Psychology Department, Utrecht University, Utrecht, 3508 TC The Netherlands
3Psychology Department, Acadia University Wolfville, NS BOP 1X0 Canada
Anthony Papa & Robyn Maitoza (2013) The Role of Loss in the Experience of Grief: The Case of Job Loss, Journal of Loss and Trauma, 18:2, 152-169, DOI: 10.1080/15325024.2012.684580