In this new series of blogs, Spirus is taking a look at how businesses can get it right from the core – starting with the wellness of their staff.
A happy, engaged, motivated workforce is obviously going to produce better results than a miserable, uninspired one. Your people are your brand ambassadors, your recruitment advert, your secret to success. Every interaction with any of your staff is a potential opportunity for your business, and you need to be taking care of them so that they reflect well on your company as brand advocates. It’s all part of your marketing strategy – and it’s a lot more important than you may realise.
We spend a lot of time at work. More, in some cases, than we do sleeping. It should therefore come as no big surprise that our contentment at work has a big impact on our general levels of happiness and wellbeing. But just how important is it to look after your wellness at work? And how do you go about improving it?
“Wellbeing” covers such a huge range of subjects that it can be hard to define, and even harder to assess. From the physical comforts and amenities in your workplace, to managerial support; from exercise and diet to environmentalism, wellness is the result of a huge spectrum of interacting factors about how you live your life. How you live your work life, given how much time it takes up, is therefore pretty darn important.
Employees who are physically comfortable, professionally motivated and mentally supported are much more likely to be productive, positive members of a team. Negative factors like illness, depression, anxiety, inertia and resentment will not only impact the wellbeing of the person or people affected, but can have a wider ripple effect to other staff too. Looking after your employees’ wellbeing is therefore vital for business success.
The main areas to take into account when assessing the levels of wellbeing in a workplace are around individual resilience, the challenges of the job, the workplace environment and the company culture. These are not simple areas to assess, but in our follow-up blogs we will be looking at them in more detail, helping you to understand the importance of each area, and offering some helpful tips on how to make some simple changes (and some not so simple ones!) which could have a really positive impact on your people.
Work-related stress is reported to cost the UK economy around £3.2 billion per year. Again, there are a lot of things contributing to that, such as advances in communication technology meaning people are expected to be available all the time, wider economic pressures, job uncertainty and many more. Any steps a business can make to keep its people feeling valued, safe, trusted, motivated and rewarded are therefore not just worthwhile: they’re absolutely critical for business success.
Next time we will have a more detailed look at what changes you could make in your office to boost a sense of wellbeing, what role managers play, and how wellbeing extends a long way beyond the office walls.
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