The importance of wellbeing in the workplace is no longer up for debate. The covid pandemic saw wellbeing increase in importance, as employers sought to better respond to employee wellbeing needs. In fact, 81% of workplaces have since increased their focus on employee mental health (MHFA).
Yet 1 in 6 people still experience mental health problems in the workplace (Mental Health Foundation) and 1 in 3 people say that workplace mental health support is inadequate. These surely highlight that employee mental health still isn’t where it could and should be.
The challenge is that wellbeing is still a reactive conversation, often only addressed when things have already gone wrong.
Wellbeing solutions play into this too, with many still opting to just put in place traditional, crisis-only, support. These have a role to play but don’t help us get any closer to prioritising employee wellbeing.
The reality is that we can only start to prioritise wellbeing when we move from a reactive to a proactive approach - what we call a “modern” approach to wellbeing. When wellbeing is not a nice-to-have, but a daily priority.
So if you want to be doing more when it comes to employee wellbeing but aren’t sure where to start, this article is for you.
More specifically, this article will guide you on how to prioritise wellbeing at work, including the following steps we think need to be considered:
How to build a case for wellbeing
Every business is different, but we believe there is general best practice that exists when it comes to promoting wellbeing in your organisation.
You may have done some of the following steps, none at all, or even done them all. We recognise the journey to wellbeing is not linear. However, wherever you are on that journey, take what you need!
Link employee wellbeing to business goals
Common business goals all have a link to wellbeing in some way. Goals like reducing costs, increasing revenue, increasing efficiency, and improving employee retention all have one thing in common - they’re all dependent on your people being capable of delivering these goals. If your people have the right tools to do their jobs, feel mentally strong and healthy, and their wellbeing is well-supported, hitting business goals is a no-brainer!
So when thinking about setting business goals and a plan to get there, we have to consider wellbeing as an important, even fundamental, part of the plan.
Working towards business goals comes with risk - how are you mitigating this risk?
So it’s clear that to reach your business goals, wellbeing has to be an active, ongoing topic of conversation.
But what happens if we don’t prioritise workplace wellbeing?
No need to state the obvious - there are certain people-related risks that come with business operations. After all, poor mental health among employees costs UK employers up to £45bn each year.
And if we don’t prioritise employee wellbeing, these risks become greater and negatively impact the business’s ability to reach its goals. The most common challenges that come with high levels of risk are absenteeism, presenteeism, and employee attrition, but this isn’t exhaustive.
Recent data highlights the people-related risks involved
Absenteeism: during 2023, employees took an average of 7.8 sick days, which has risen since the average 5.8 days in 2019.
Presenteeism: mental health-related presenteeism costs UK businesses up to £29 billion annually. 3 in 4 HR professionals have observed presenteeism among employees working at home and in a workplace. Mental health-related presenteeism costs UK employers up to £29 billion per year, as employees come to work but are not fully productive due to mental health challenges. This is often more detrimental to businesses than absenteeism, as presenteeism prolongs recovery and reduces efficiency over time (Deloitte United States)(High Speed Training Limited).
Attrition: 46% of employees have considered leaving their job due to inadequate mental health support at work. MHFA Portal
All of these challenges cause risk because they’re a barrier to the business achieving its goals.
So, futureproofing your wellbeing ecosystem (whatever that looks like for you and wherever you start) is a critical part of mitigating people-related risks. Business goals must consider the risks involved, and how wellbeing plays a part in mitigating them.
How to start small if you’re short on time or resource
Particularly if employee wellbeing support isn’t yet something that has been on the agenda until now, or if you’re unsure where to start, then start small.
Think about the accessible things you can do before kicking off an official wellbeing strategy or action plan.
For example, if you’ve not got the resource to launch a full organisational mental health check or pulse survey, start by asking your managers how their teams have been feeling and any challenges that people are reporting or coming up often.
If the topic of wellbeing still carries a lot of stigma in your organisation or you haven’t yet discussed the topic of wellbeing with your leadership team or your board, then make this a priority first. Have an open conversation with leadership and / or your board members - by doing this, you’ll be able to find any advocates or potential executive sponsors who will come in handy further down your wellbeing journey. Think again about the business goals, risks involved and how wellbeing plays a part - and therefore why it must be a priority for the business.
If you do have existing wellbeing support, such as an Employee Assistance Programme, you might start signposting this tool more often. You might want to do this on specific mental health awareness days. Have a look at upcoming mental health awareness days here.
If you have Mental Health First Aiders, make sure they know where and who to signpost to if they become aware of someone struggling with their mental health.
Starting small with limited resources can still build momentum. It’s a crucial part of the journey to prioritising employee wellbeing.
How to launch an employee wellbeing survey
Whatever you call them - mental health checks, wellbeing audit or pulse surveys - these are a great way to get an overview of employee wellbeing & mental health.
Dane Krambergar, Founder at DAIN, fills us in:
“As the saying goes, "what gets measured, gets managed". Employee wellbeing is no exception. Conducting pulse surveys with employees routinely will not only help your business understand how employees are feeling, but also what impact this is having on their ability to deliver against your strategic objectives.
Employees thrive when they have clear goals, know how they directly contribute to them and are given the right tools and support to achieve them. Pulse surveys can tell you whether this is the case or not, and can provide actionable insights that remove barriers to high performance and demonstrable results.”
The prospect of launching an engagement or pulse survey can feel daunting. But it doesn’t need to be. If you’re launching for the first time, even just a short survey can give you actionable insights. You can build on this in future with deep-dive surveys across different topics. Starting small means you are starting somewhere in the journey to prioritising employee wellbeing.
Take a look at our blog on the 5 essential questions to put in your employee wellbeing survey here
Our top tips for designing an effective pulse survey
- Align your survey with your business goals: which goals does your survey relate to? How will the survey results help to move the dial on specific key business outcomes you’re trying to achieve?
- Think about the survey results: what do you want the results of the questionnaire to tell you? Think about the end goal first before writing a single question e.g. “Our revenue would increase if we saw a xx% reduction in employee absence and a xx% increase in staff retention”.
- Audience: will you survey a specific segment of people first e.g. managers or are you looking for insights from a wider segment e.g. all employees?
- Question design: Think about how the order of the questions may impact on how an employee answers the questionnaire. For example, if you start the questionnaire with an open-ended question or ask a more complicated question first, it’s likely to put people off and they may drop out.
- Anonymity: offer staff the ability to identify themselves if they want to, but to maximise your response rate and generate quality answers, keep it anonymous.
- Avoid leading questions: e.g. “How much more positive does this make you feel? These can skew results and ultimately aren’t useful.
- Gather qualitative and quantitative results: use a combination of open-text questions as well as closed questions that allow you to gather specific data points. Precise data comes in handy when you’re presenting your case to leadership or the board.
Focus on promoting your mental health check or survey
Promotion is one of the key parts of maximising employee response rates on your mental health check.
It’s all about how you promote it, and then turn the results around to present them back to the business with a clear action plan. Surveys are most effective if you act on the feedback given quickly, categorising it into an action plan of short-term quick wins and a long-term plan to improve employee wellbeing based on what employees have fed back.
When doing this, refer back to what you originally set out to do with this survey, and how they align with your business goals.
Want to know how to use the insights from your employee wellbeing survey? Get in touch with us here and we’ll be happy to help you create a wellbeing action plan for your business.
Things to consider when building your case for wellbeing to leadership or the board
- Engagement versus impact
If you’re with an existing wellbeing provider, what data are they providing you with that evidences its impact?
Data that shows how much your employees are engaging with a solution does not equal the impact it is having. It also doesn’t help to justify your case to leadership.
To prove the ROI of any wellbeing initiatives, it’s key to collect impact data, such as stats on absenteeism, presenteeism and productivity. This is much more meaningful for the business. That’s because it helps you to build a stronger case as to the ROI of any wellbeing initiatives and why the business needs to further prioritise them.
Here’s how we measure the ROI of MYNDUP:
- Make sure you know what is being spent
Approach senior leadership and your board with a clear understanding of what’s being spent and the impact that the current wellbeing budget is having.
With this, there needs to be an awareness that employee wellbeing doesn’t just equal mental health. We need to also acknowledge the connection between wellbeing and learning & development, as well as DEIB. Often departments will be spending budget on initiatives that sit in these buckets, but it’s not being counted as wellbeing budget.
The conversation on wellbeing investment needs to account for what is being spent by other departments, including for L&D and DEIB purposes.
If the impact of the current investment into wellbeing across the business can’t be measured, it’s difficult to make a case for it to be further prioritised.
- This isn’t something you need to solve alone
Finding an executive sponsor or advocate can help to get wellbeing on the leadership and board-level agenda. There needs to be executive-level accountability for employee wellbeing.
This can be any member of your senior leadership team who understands why the business must prioritise wellbeing.
The role of this advocate is to take ownership of the employee wellbeing piece at executive-level and drive it forward.
Summary
There’s a lot that can be done to make wellbeing a priority. We hear you - it’s a big task.
If you take away anything from this blog, it’s that starting small in the journey to prioritising wellbeing is by no means pointless. The important thing is to start somewhere and prioritise an approach that values proactivity rather than reactivity, as well as true impact.
Starting somewhere gets you one step closer to developing a wellbeing ecosystem that not only improves employees’ lives but also helps the business to successfully achieve its goals.
If you’re looking for support in getting wellbeing on the agenda at your organisation, MYNDUP’s here to help. Book a call with us here.