To sustain a healthy working environment, corporate wellbeing should be at the heart of your business. The world is waking up to the importance of wellbeing. With one-third of our lives being spent at work, wellbeing for both employers and employees must be of utmost priority. 79% of British adults experience work-related stress (figures as of 2020).
It is harder to manage corporate well-being off the back of the pandemic and the rise of working from home.
You can read more about the relationship between WFH and Employee Wellbeing here.
Whether you are a small local business or a global enterprise, corporate wellbeing should be prioritised.
What Is Employee Wellbeing?
Employee wellbeing refers to the overall physical, mental, and emotional wellness of your employees. Although one’s wellbeing can be affected by factors outside of the workplace; hours, pay, workload and work relationships are huge factors of work-related stress.
Although like with any stress, levels will vary from one individual to the next, a workplace should have average employee wellbeing to increase productivity.
Returning to the office, for many people, has caused a decrease in their wellbeing, being reintroduced to those work-related stresses.
Further Reading: Five Elements Of Employee Wellbeing.
Why Is Wellbeing Important For Companies?
When spending up to 40+ hours a week at work, it is easy for us to argue that corporate wellbeing is important. With the reduction of stress and the improvement of focus at work, comes increased productivity and fewer absences.
50% of work-related ill health cases were due to ill mental health.
You can read more about work-related stress here.
Corporate wellbeing is important for many things. By improving your employee’s well being, you are having an effect on their quality of life which in turn will make for a more positive and productive workforce and result in greater success for your corporation.
Personal Wellbeing
Our psychological needs must be met. As humans, we should nurture our psyche, in the same way, as our physical body. It is important to maintain to boost our quality of life and mental health.
Our wellbeing doesn’t only affect us, but it can also affect our relationships, how we behave in social environments, and our work.
Wellbeing is affected by many factors, where we are placed as individuals in the fields of economy, health, and education as well as those factors we have personal control over ie. Relationships.
Maintaining good wellbeing is vital in our growth as human beings and results in us being more productive in our lives.
You can find ways to improve your wellbeing here.
With the advancements in technology, we can reach for ways to improve our mental health at the click of a button. As the pandemic has seen many things struggle, including people’s mental health and the services in which mental health is treated, the development of online resources has improved.
Further Reading: Wellbeing Apps For Employees.
What Can I Do To Improve Corporate Wellbeing?
As an employer, you must protect your employee’s wellbeing. A holistic approach is most beneficial when it comes to managing wellness and mental health in the workplace. Offering a means by which your workforce feels supported will result in a happier work environment.
CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work Survey Report highlights that more workplaces are prioritising mental health and are doing more to improve corporate wellbeing and combat work-related stress. It is a shared responsibility to support corporate wellbeing
You can read more about looking after staff mental health here.
Through unprecedented times, we have been faced with a decline in mental health with 41% of employees across the globe experiencing reduced mental wellness since the start of the pandemic. With uncertainty comes anxiety and so it is more important now than ever that we nurture corporate wellbeing to avoid a further decline.
There are several things, as employers, that you can do to improve corporate wellbeing.
Sleep
It is essential for one’s wellbeing, that we are getting enough sleep, to protect our physical and mental health.
According to the National Sleep Foundation Guidelines, adults require 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to gain the benefits of a healthy and productive mind and body. With sleep playing a huge role in a person’s wellbeing, it is important to monitor how much and the quality of our sleep.
Further Reading: The Benefits Of Sleep Tracking
As an employer, wanting to boost corporate wellbeing, encouraging your employees to get more sleep is a successful way of assuring productivity in the workplace and the overall wellness of the individual.
Activity
Wellbeing can largely be affected by the amount of physical activity we do. With the increase of endorphins from exercise comes a decrease in stress and anxiety. Encouraging your employees to be active and also track their activity levels results in a more positive mood within the work environment.
Read our recent blog on the effects of physical exercise on mental health here.
Tracking our sleep and activity is a wellbeing trend in 2022 with wearable technology such as Apple Watches and Fitbits. Stay up to date and allow your employees to track their sleep and activity. A person is more likely to change a habit if they can monitor it.
Mental Health
Mental Health comes under the umbrella term of wellbeing. The state of our mental health can determine our ability to be productive, react to situations, make choices and form relationships. Low mood often presents itself in ways which are detrimental to a corporation; low productivity, absence, and aggression toward others.
Encouraging employees to track their mood and mental health status is an important way of identifying patterns and working on improving mental resilience which will have a positive effect on one’s ability to work.
Community
Providing a sense of community within a workspace encourages employees to engage and want to be at work.
Creating an open environment and developing good work relationships are all ways in which we can improve corporate wellbeing. Making time and listening to employees is one thing but opening chat rooms, notice forums, and arranging social events are all ways in which a sense of community within the corporation can result in improved wellness.
Content
Having access to this kind of information is important to both employers and employees. Sharing encouraging and informative information about sleep, exercise, and mental health are all ways in which employees stay engaged and feel supported at work.
Nutritional advice, fitness videos, blogs and articles on financial wellbeing are a successful way of integrating wellbeing into the workplace. This also adds to that sense of community.
The Advantages of Workplace Wellbeing
Happy workers are 13% more productive. By prioritising wellbeing within the workplace, you are not only benefitting your employees but your business.
There are several advantages of corporate wellbeing:
- Reduce absences
- Improve recruitment and retention of staff
- Improve employee health
- High workplace morale
- Improve productivity
The Benefits Of A Workplace Wellness Programme
Workplaces offer a variety of perks and benefits; paid maternity leave, pensions, sick pay – but what would go that extra mile?
Having a workplace wellness programme in place is the most successful way of creating a happy and healthy work environment. It allows employees to feel supported and encouraged and it allows employers to monitor patterns and put in place ways to improve the workforce and corporation as a whole.
Read more about the benefits of the Wellspace Application here.
Wellspace Training
Yes, Wellspace offers all those things in our application, but we also deliver several tailored training programmes to help you achieve corporate wellbeing in your business. By exploring your current understanding of wellbeing, we can provide relevant tasks and advice to help you achieve wellness throughout your business.
Read more about our training here.
Get In Touch
Want to know more about how Wellspace can help you achieve corporate wellbeing? Let us know!
Book a demo here. Alternatively, call us on 0808 178 0748 for more information.
