Workplace wellbeing often gets a bad rap as the unnecessary frills companies use as a distraction from major culture issues.
In reality, a successful wellbeing strategy is built into every aspect of company culture, and contains 4 key aspects:
Empathy
Great leadership involves stepping outside of your needs, and stepping into the shoes of the people who work alongside you. In order to avoid the kind of burnout that leads to people leaving, leaders need to create environments where people are able to communicate issues without fear of negative repercussions, and know that their opinions and issues are being taken into account.
Development
Stagnation does a number on self esteem, and negatively affects how we perceive ourselves at work. Taking learning and development seriously is as much about wellbeing as it is about the success of the business. For development to work it needs to be: built into the culture, budgeted properly, offered across teams, and built into employee’s workloads.
Flexibility
Flexibility means different things for different companies, but what’s certain is that people expect some degree of it. In 2022, our Great Brands report found that 67.5% of people wouldn’t work for their favourite brand if they didn’t offer flexible working. Work now needs to exist in harmony with other parts of people’s lives, and since we know the office isn’t always necessary, time spent there needs to have a purpose. If you’re able to make the flexibility offering at your company stand out, it will have a positive effect on overall wellbeing.
Reward
Do you have a compensation strategy that aligns with your company’s vision? Have you updated your perks and benefits to include things people actually want? If you think compensation and wellbeing are two separate issues, you’ve got the wrong idea. Financial wellbeing plays a huge role in happiness at work, and in order to feel like their contributions are actually valued, people need to be rewarded properly!
Keen to keep your best people? You can find more on retaining great talent here.