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The Importance of Employee Wellbeing and How to Improve It

By | Elaine Bennett | Editor in Chief, Bizzmark Blog

Although stability is still important, more employees are looking for job opportunities with companies that share certain values with them, ensure a purpose for the employee, and provide a safe, thriving work environment for every individual to develop. In the center of it all today is employee wellbeing. Modern workers will often abandon a position where they are constantly stressed, burnt out, or undervalued. To make sure your workplace ensures wellbeing for your employees, here are a few methods to keep in mind.

Encourage flexibility – not just on paper

Many companies claim that they are flexible, and yet, they’ll often hire the people who are willing to stick to a classic nine-to-five, office-based job. Then again, many employees will sign a contract with a business claiming to offer remote work or similar flexibility perks only to find out that they’ll have a hard time actually using such benefits. 

It’s time to step up to the promise. Offering flexible hours to parents, remote work, and similar flexible terms is vital for today’s business success. It helps you hire talented individuals no matter where they are, but it also grants your in-office staff enough freedom to carve their own schedules while ensuring they complete their work in time. 

Provide them with targeted training

Stress is an integral part of life, and there’s no way to completely eliminate it, especially when people care about their careers. However, you can definitely do your best to reduce stress triggers at the office and build a collaborative work space that encourages sharing and support over competition. Add to that, many businesses now provide stress resilience training to their employees to help them discover the most effective ways to reduce and manage stress. 

Acknowledging that your work place can be a source of stress is a great start, but you should also go above and beyond to ensure your teams won’t experience burnout or that they can resolve and prevent conflict at the office in a healthy, productive way.

Invest in their health and fitness

Each of your employees has a different hobby, but you can actually help them stick to a healthy life and encourage their fitness habits by covering their gym fee, dance classes, Zumba courses, or whatever it is they enjoy doing. Many companies provide such benefits as a competitive advantage, but in the today’s world, businesses need to make sure that they employees have the healthcare and the fitness passes they truly need and use. 

Provide healthy eating options

Fast-paced work means that many people forego their meal-prepping so that they can rest more, get some sleep, or just read their favorite book. In a hectic workplace, they’ll often keep their lunch break as short as possible, which means they’ll select fast food over a home-cooked meal. 

If you, as the employer, provide healthy snacks and healthy meal options for your team, they’ll not only feel appreciated and recognized, but also supported when it comes to their goals that have nothing to do with your company. Although, healthy employees do benefit the business by taking less sick leave and being more productive overall – but that shouldn’t be your main motivation for providing with healthy options. 

Show appreciation regularly

In addition to physical health, there’s a growing focus on emotional and mental wellbeing in the workplace for modern employees. That means that any type of isolation, too much competition, lack of transparency, and the like can lead to a negative outcome for the individual. It’s up to you to foster a positive, collaborative work space where people know precisely that they matter and that everyone sees their input. 

Show your employees how their work benefits the entire organization, and acknowledge their work and success in private performance reviews, but also in company emails and group meetings. Being valued in such a way adds to the feeling of belonging and purpose, which is essential for any individual to keep evolving. 

Wellbeing doesn’t start or end with a clean bill of health from a medical professional. In a work environment, wellbeing is based on so many different factors. Your employees need to work in harmony, collaborate with ease, and solve problems as a team. They need to feel that their preferences and lifestyles are respected, and that their contribution has a purpose for your business. Use these tactics to improve your employee wellbeing, and as a result, your retention rates will soar.

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