Joanna King of Psychology of Success writes:
I sat down at 9am this morning motivated and interested to write a blog responding to Dame Sally Davies’s report calling for employers to help to tackle the ‘astounding’ cost to the economy of mental ill-health. At last! An acknowledgment of the need for wellbeing to take a centre stage in organisational success.
It’s now quarter to four and I have become overwhelmed by the vast remit of wellbeing, unable to organise my thoughts and construct a coherent and persuasive argument, challenged by the fact that I would end up giving you the same argument with just some new stats but that I want a different outcome.
And then it struck me. What is happening to me trying to write this article, is exactly what happens to organisations when they want to address wellbeing as a task, topic or commitment. They are faced with a vast wooly pile of stuff which all bundles together to be called “Wellbeing,” they struggle to define it and make a clear business case for it and therefore lack buy-in, action and a realistic budget.
And now we need a different outcome because we need buy in, we need support and we need action. The costs of not fully addressing well-being are vast and cannot be ignored.
When we recently worked with a group of people from local businesses interested in and tasked with addressing wellbeing in their organisations, we started by looking at what their organisation would be like if they really championed wellbeing:
It was really interesting because the words they came up with described a culture, a philosophy, a set of values such as respect, empathy, responsibility for ourselves and others, not a set of perks and off the peg solutions like increased holiday entitlement, alternative therapies, flexi-time or counselling provision.
What they came up with suggests that wellbeing is closely linked with engagement, empowerment and ownership.
This wide scope for wellbeing is both enabling and disabling for those tasked to improve wellbeing in a workplace. Without a clear understanding of what’s involved and the benefits to the business it can be a struggle to build a good business case and get a budget to work with. But also because it has such a wide remit it can be an opportunity for real innovation and engagement in talking about and improving wellbeing in your business.
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