HR professionals love to talk about employee wellbeing. People on the outside may wonder what the heck they’re going on about and whether it actually matters. The reality is that, yes, employee wellbeing is a real concern, and it can actually affect your company’s bottom line.
Defining Employee Wellbeing
“Employee wellbeing” can seem like a nebulous phrase. That’s because it’s a broad term. It’s not just about health – although that’s an important part of it. Rather, it’s a holistic concept that covers various aspects of an employee’s experience.
Gallup defines employee wellbeing as “a measure of how employees experience their lives overall.” It encompasses five elements: career, social, financial, physical and community.
Why Is Employee Wellbeing the Employer’s Concern?
Employee wellbeing has received a lot of attention in recent years. To understand why, we can look at the issue from two different perspectives.
- From the employee’s perspective, a person’s job has a major effect on their overall wellbeing. Some elements – namely, career and financial – are directly related to the job, but even the other elements of wellbeing are connected. People spend a significant portion of their waking life at work, so the work environment affects their social life, physical health, and role in the community. Most people also get health insurance from work, which affects both health and finances.
- From the employer’s perspective, employee wellbeing has a major effect on productivity and turnover. Employees with low wellbeing are more likely to suffer from challenges that distract them from work, cause them to miss days, perform poorly or even quit. As a result, boosting employee wellbeing isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s a smart business investment.
The Link Between Employee Wellbeing and Work Performance
It’s not hard to imagine how employee wellbeing could affect work performance. When someone’s life is in order and they feel physically and mentally healthy, they’re motivated to do their best each day. When wellbeing deteriorates, people become unfocused and unmotivated, and problems can spiral out of control, affecting those around them.
Here’s how it often goes. Worries about finances and health keep them up at night, so they’re tired and lack the energy to engage in activities that could make them feel better. Their health worsens. They become irritable and may turn to alcohol or other substances to self-medicate. They fall behind on work and call in sick more often. Coworkers have to pick up the slack, which makes them resentful.
But what about all the statistics linking employee wellbeing and work performance? There are plenty of those, too. For example:
- Link to chronic conditions. Lower wellbeing is linked to 159 additional new chronic conditions per 1,000 people, according to Gallup. The takeaway for employers: If you have 100 employees and your employee wellbeing is low, you can expect around 16 extra chronic conditions, resulting in lost productivity, missed work days and higher healthcare costs. Conversely, by supporting wellbeing, you can help workers avoid chronic conditions and all the associated costs.
- The value of caring. 92% of workers say it’s very or somewhat important for them to work for an organization that values their psychological and emotional wellbeing, according to the APA. The takeaway for employers: If you show your workers that you care, you can attract higher-quality workers and retain them for longer, resulting in lower turnover.
- Competitive edge. Companies that have been recognized for health, safety and wellbeing initiatives had a 115% growth in earnings per share, compared to just 27% among their competitors, according to the World Economic Forum. The takeaway for employers: By investing in worker wellbeing, companies can make a big impact on their value.
How Employers Can Support Wellbeing
Harvard Business Review says that nearly 85% of large U.S. employers offer some sort of worker wellness program, but burnout and mental health issues aren’t improving.
Not all worker wellbeing initiatives are effective. If you want to see real results, you have to invest in programs that actually make a difference in your employees’ lives.
- Pinpoint the problems. If your workers are struggling to pay their bills and manage serious health conditions, a meditation app probably won’t make much of an impact. Go ahead and offer the app if you want to, but don’t use it as an excuse to avoid the real issues. Find out what’s keeping your workers down, and figure out a way to alleviate the burden.
- Make sure benefits are actually accessible. Low participation rates can kill employee benefit programs. Sometimes workers don’t use benefits because they don’t know about or understand them. Sometimes they don’t have the time or motivation to use them. Cost is also a factor – if the benefits involve high premiums and out-of-pocket costs, they may not be affordable.
- Be willing to make bold moves. It’s easy to switch from one insurance carrier to another, or slap on an extra subscription, but these Band-Aid fixes won’t necessarily change anything. If you want to see real improvement, your benefits program may need a complete overhaul.
Here at Health2Business, we’re supporting employee wellbeing with direct community health plans that lower costs while providing much better and more affordable access to quality healthcare. Learn more.
