Workplace wellbeing is vital for small businesses
With one in four people in Wales expected to face mental health problems at some point, promoting wellbeing and mental health support is vital for people across Wales, and FSB’s new campaign seeks to shine a light on workplace wellbeing for those working in or running a small business.
The FSB Workplace Wellbeing campaign seeks to highlight the need to support wellbeing in small businesses across Wales.
A new wellbeing hub is available on the FSB website, along with various tools, signposts to advice and a guide on how to support wellbeing in the workplace.
Small employers rightly take pride in their role creating local jobs and providing a good place of work for their employees. Wellbeing is central to this. We know from our members that ensuring their own health and wellbeing, as well as that of their teams, is crucial to the success of their business.
The FSB’s new workplace wellbeing guide forms the basis for FSB’s September 2017 wellbeing campaign. The guide contains a list of options that small business-owners and the self-employed can try, if they’re looking to improve their own wellbeing and that of their staff, and contains a number of tips and links of where to go for more detailed information and advice.
Many business-owners make a conscious effort to look after the wellbeing of themselves and their employees in various ways. This guide contains suggestions for extra things you can do which you may not have thought of – on areas ranging from helping staff return to work after an illness, to having plants in the working environment.
Not all the ideas will be right for every business, but this guide is intended to help small businessowners to look for ideas that are right for their businesses, themselves, and their staff.
Crucially, at FSB we want to encourage there to be a conversation about wellbeing and mental health amongst Wales’ 200,000 small businesses.
Wales is built on a small business economy, and for this to truly grow and flourish, the people running and working in these businesses need to feel at full strength.
Mental health is just as important as physical health and FSB is supporting small businesses to feel as confident in discussing mental health as they would any other physical illness.
In doing so, we hope to help small businesses cut down on sick leave caused by stress and other mental health issues, and boost productivity.
The Workplace Wellbeing campaign encourages business-owners to be able to look at their organisation and the people who work in it as a whole in order to best support the business and its staff.
This is something that the Welsh Government has also recently signalled a move towards.
In a recently announced national strategy entitled Prosperity for All, the Welsh Government announced that it will now look at issues facing Wales in a similar, more holistic way, rather than allowing traditional government silos to ensure that different departments do not interact on policy-making.
At a recent keynote speech, Economy Secretary Ken Skates pledged to integrate the economy brief with other areas of government, after mental health was identified as a priority area of work for the cross-cutting strategy.
This strategy is designed to ensure that experts and departments work together to support the whole picture. By cutting through traditional boundaries, the Welsh Government seeks to achieve progress in various areas in ways that have not been possible previously. FSB Wales will work closely with the Welsh Government to ensure that this is the case.
Janet Jones is chair of the FSB Wales Policy Unit.