Looking after the people who work in your organisation must absolutely be a strategic priority to your business. A recent Intrafocus survey found that over 43% of UK employees felt undervalued and unrecognized at work, and the results of this are clear to any thinking business manager; a lack of engagement, low performance, high turnover, bad employer reputation, high costs, erosion of competitive position… the list goes on.
Unlock your people potential
If you want any other element of your strategy to be achieved, you need to unlock the potential of your employees. This means empowering them to become consistent high-performers, and motivating them sufficiently to offer that all-important discretionary effort that allows your business to leapfrog the competition.
But you can’t even hope to achieve this peak performance situation across your workforce if you aren’t looking after them. The answer lies in creating a wellbeing strategy, using the same rigor, creativity, and commitment as you would for any other enabling strategic objective.
Wellbeing matters more than ever
Whereas the concept of a ‘wellbeing strategy’ might have seemed a little…trendy for some businesses before Covid, the landscape has changed after a year of pandemic lockdowns. Even the best employees are feeling the effects of multiple and prolonged stresses. And smart, forward-thinking businesses are working out how to help them recharge and regroup, so that they can get back to work, and to their usual state of high-performance, with support.
Consultants agree. In its Human Capital Trends Report for 2021, Deloitte concluded that wellbeing must – as an imperative – be designed into every element of the employee experience, and not treated as a siloed initiative.
A holistic approach
Businesses that are doing this well are naturally taking an inclusive, employee-led, and holistic approach to creating a people strategy. They do this by fostering cultures that naturally create inclusivity, trust, and resilience, with a strong focus on listening to employees from the bottom-up.
Furthermore, successful businesses are ready to learn from what they hear and to trust their employees to find solutions to their problems – with support.
Keeping high performers
When businesses create this powerful and supportive culture, with a strong element of enablement, they create a culture where people feel valued and where they naturally want to work. A culture where talented, high-performing people want to work. After all, if a high-performer knows that he or she is joining a business where collaboration, innovation, ideas-sharing, training, development, reward, recognition, and listening are all part of the daily agenda – they will want to be part of that business.
Conversely, if an employee feels that they are not looked after, supported or valued, they will leave the business- and what’s more, they will share their negative experience with their network; diminishing your brand and doing serious reputational damage in the marketplace.
Actions to take now
To help you to create your wellbeing strategy, consider these steps:
1. Values
Revisit your business values. Are they clear? Are they correct? Do they resonate? And – perhaps most importantly – are they actually currently lived within your business?
2. Diversity
Review (or create) your Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitment to ensure your business is hiring a truly diverse workforce that reflects the diversity of your customer groups.
3. Benefits
Evaluate the benefits that you offer to your employees; ones that support their wellbeing. Perhaps, for example, you offer a cycle to work bike discount scheme, a reduced gym scheme, healthcare, counseling, etc. Are these services being used? Are they the services that your people want? If you aren’t sure – ask your workforce, listen and respond accordingly.
4. Measure
Along with your new wellbeing objectives and initiatives, set some wellbeing measures and begin to gather the data that tracks progress. For example, a healthy workforce will have lower rates of sickness and absence. A diverse, happy, and engaged workforce will have fewer leavers. (As added motivation here, know that Harvard University economics found that absenteeism costs fall by $2.73 per $1 spent on corporate wellness programs!)
5. Communicate
Create an internal communications strategy that uses your own people to act as local champions, program representatives, team communications leads, and so forth. Hold regular briefing sessions, Zoom chats, ‘Meet the CEO’ sessions, knowledge transfer lunches, team socials… whatever it takes to encourage healthy, open and two-way communication in your business. naturally, a lot of this is likely to be online for now, but bring as much of it in-person as you can – safely of course – as restrictions ease. And if you have remote working teams or night-shift workers – make sure your managers include them too! (Imagine how your night-working team would feel if a director actually appeared to meet them all in person during their shift?)
Find out more
If you are keen to develop your business wellbeing strategy but aren’t sure where to start, the team at Intrafocus can help. Also, take a look at the Intrafocus Academy e-books. Please contact us in the first instance for a no-obligation chat about your needs and we will be delighted to assist.
