Employee wellbeing crucial for businesses

"Take care of your employees, they will take care of your business,” says Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, a renowned British multinational corporation. This statement says a lot about the importance of ensuring the wellbeing of the employees of any organisation for its sustained success.

Human resources, undoubtedly, are the invaluable assets for any dynamic and thriving enterprise. Any organisation can have the best product, unique business model yet they need an engaged team to take the product to the customers, provide services and come up with the innovations to improve the existing offerings to be able to be competitive.

Research findings suggest that the better the employee wellbeing, the more engaged the workforce is. Media mogul Arianna Huffington commented: “Taking care of wellbeing in the workplace is becoming an 'incredibly important investment' to companies, to the point where it's likely to be as vital as investing in technology.

Employee wellbeing was traditionally referred as physical wellness only. The emotional part was often overlooked or ignored. Human beings, by nature, are driven by emotions. Therefore, employee wellbeing should cover physical, emotional as well as social wellness which eventually would entail an overall feeling of engagement and happiness to the employees.

It gives a sense to the workforce that they are working in a career which is fulfilling. In other words, it is the measure of overall life satisfaction and hence organisations should not limit themselves within the premises of the workplaces while designing a comprehensive wellbeing scheme.

Numerous studies have been conducted in relation to impact of employee wellbeing. It is quite evident from all the studies that, wellbeing boosts employee morale radically and resulted in better team work, enhanced productivity and job satisfaction. Eventually bottom-line improves. One such study titled “The impact of excellent employee wellbeing” conducted by the US-based reputed HR Consulting firm QC Tanner, reveals that the numbers are implausible:

• Both individual and team productivity rise by almost 20 percent.
• Job satisfaction gets nearly double. Forty four percent of the employees working in the organisations with poor wellbeing say they are satisfied while in case of excellent wellbeing this number goes up to 89 percent.  
• The 25 percent of companies with the largest health promotion budgets have seen an 8 percent year-on-year improvement in the proportion of employees in good or excellent health, and a 16 percent year-on-year reduction in productivity loss.

Research shows there are three “causal mechanisms” that ensure higher productivity, job satisfaction as an outcome of having employee wellbeing:

• The cognitive abilities of the employees get better enabling them to think more creatively and to be more effective at solving problems.
• Positive attitudes increase their likelihood of being more co-operative and collaborative.
• Employees' improved sense of wellbeing and work performance leads to better physical health – improving their cardiovascular health and immunity, enabling speedier recovery from illness and greater levels of energy.

The consequences of having lack of employee wellbeing are somewhat costly. Those are:

• High absenteeism
• High labour turnover
• Poor timekeeping
• Poor performance and productivity
• Low morale
• Poor motivation
• Increased employee complaints
• Increased ill-health, accidents and incidents reports

Britain's Healthiest Company Report, which is considered as the biggest study of employee health and wellbeing in the UK reveals some eye-opening facts:

• Sick leave and working while unwell costs companies, on average, 7.78 percent of their yearly wage bill which is in monetary term equals to an estimated total cost of lost productivity to the UK economy of over £58 billion per year.

One study in the US shows that 60 percent of workers suffer from work-related stress that costs US businesses $30 billion a year in lost workdays. It won't be unfair to assume that situation is similar elsewhere in the world.

There are quite a few measures being taken by many dynamic organisations to ensure employee well-being. Few such instances are:

Nurturing a positive culture:

• Providing customised feedback: Feedback plays crucial role in building a supportive and engaged workplace. Positive feedback boosts the morale of the employees while constructive feedback helps employees to improve their efforts.
• Attitude of gratitude: Appreciating and recognising employees' efforts work like a tonic. Sometimes a simple “thank you” note and a pat on the back help creating a positive working culture.
• Giving employees a voice: Listening actively and passionately and practicing open door communication policy is vital in building trust among colleagues.
• Making employees feel needed and worthy: Involving employees in decision making process makes employee feel engaged.
• Resolving conflict:  Conflicts need to be resolved sooner rather than later to ensure a healthy working environment.

Flexible options:

Work from home -- flexible working hours allow employees to have a better work life balance. Experience shows, these measures boost their morale and productivity as well.

Healthy working place:

People spend most of their time in office. Therefore, the working place needs to be designed in such a way so that it ensures a healthy environment having proper lighting, temperature, comfortable sitting arrangements and other amenities.

Access to healthy food:

It is extremely critical to ensure physical fitness of the employees. Food in modern days is considered as medicine as well. 

Advocacy programmes:

Financial assistance programme regarding investment decision, retirement plan etc. help employees to prepare better for the future.

Soft training:

Trainings on mindfulness, emotional intelligence are quite beneficial in terms of managing stress.

Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, a reputed management consulting firm, said a global poll saw only 15 percent of the world's one billion fulltime workers feeling a sense of strong engagement at work. One of the main reasons being excessive stress and burnout. It's critical that people have that opportunity to recharge and return to work, operating and running on all cylinders. A caring wellbeing initiative can get the employees up and running with full of energy and passion.

The writer is chairman and managing director of BASF Bangladesh Ltd.