Health and wellness protocols important
There are many versions of businesses’ workplace health and wellness policies.
Some are great. They’re clear on advice for staff around taking their entitled breaks, sick leave when they’re sick, their allocated leave every year, and they follow through to make sure these are being taken.
Some get human resources to schedule regular (maybe sixmonthly) one-on-one checks with staff to see how they’re doing. Some have a nurse available for one or two days a week and encourage staff to take up the offer of a free appointment if there’s anything worrying them, physically or mentally. Some even have a doctor who can be on call for free.
Generally, these are bigger businesses. But many – often smaller ones – don’t have these resources available.
They might have a policy but don’t follow it up, preferring to leave it to their staff to selfmanage. Or they have no policy. Often this is because they’re small and too busy to get to it. Or maybe they don’t do dangerous work so they decide they don’t need one.
Anecdotally, health and wellness polices in businesses have improved in recent years, but there is still much more businesses can do.
It’s important to realise health
and wellness protocols for an IT service business are just as vital as safety standards are to a scaffolding company.
One might be optional and the other required by law, but they’re both vital to the successful operation as well as to the overall profitability of a business.
We know that safe and well staff are generally happy, and happy staff tend to perform better and stay longer, boosting production and avoiding lost productivity caused by changing staff and bringing new team members up to speed.
This is shown clearly in the Southern Cross Healthcare’s Healthy Futures Report Business Edition, which has just been published.
It gathered health and wellbeing insights from more than 2000 people.
It shone a strong light on staff perceptions and influences.
Fifteen per cent said they were not satisfied with their work-life balance (18% for non-office-based workers), while 43% said their work-life balance was ‘‘poor’’, 31% said it was good, and 11% excellent.
Sixty per cent of those who had a poor work-life balance said this was due to workload, while 47% also cited financial pressures, 38% no flexible working hours, and 21% said the lines between home and work were blurred.
Eleven per cent said they never took all their annual leave in the year it fell, and 25% said they took it only sometimes.
Thirty-five per cent of those who never took all their annual leave in the year it fell said they were too busy to take it, while 25% said they couldn’t always afford it.
Interestingly, 90% of employees said they found work-life balance important, and 89% said it was important to work for a company that supported the health and wellbeing of their employees.
A major barrier to good health and wellness is stress.
This is generally caused by several factors, though the main one is consistently high workloads and/or pace of work with little or no chance to rest and recover.
Other causes can be low levels of trust, lack of support, unresolved conflict, badly managed changes, bullying, harassment, unclear job requirements, constantly changing priorities, and feeling like they’re not part of the team.
The important thing for managers to realise is that if left unchecked, stress often leads to staff burnout, and that means time off work and so lower productivity, meaning they struggle to service clients and that could lead to long-term viability.
A workplace wellbeing survey across 600 organisations by the Employers and Manufacturers Association in 2021 found 84% agreed staff wellbeing initiatives contributed to the retention of high-performing employees.
A further reason is they can get into legal trouble. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, business owners and operators must monitor, get rid of, or reduce mental health hazards as much as is possible.
So, how can businesses promote health and wellness?
They could start by preparing a policy in consultation with staff. The mere matter of involving staff immediately introduces an invaluable ingredient: trust.
The possibilities for inclusion in a policy are almost endless, but could include a general statement around managing workloads and the pace at which work needs to be delivered, and involving staff in all health, safety, and wellness issues, and in changes to the business as soon as possible.
Specifically, a policy could include: Introducing a flexible working policy; making tasks and goals clear and achievable; introducing policies and procedures to deal with unacceptable behaviour; regular one-on-one check-up sessions; encouraging staff to take regular annual leave; offering incentivised activity-based programmes; supplying free flu vaccines; offering fatigue and sleep management advice; making employee assistance programmes available, including counselling; offering subsidised health insurance.
One obvious threat to businesses if they don’t move on health and wellness is the number of jobs currently available – if they don’t do something about it, staff can walk to an employer who has.
Health and wellness in a business is like planting a tree – invest in the right place and you’ll reap the benefits in the long term – in so many different ways.