Member Article

Increasing Resilience with Health and Wellbeing

When you hear the words ‘health and wellbeing’ what do you think of? Yoga in the car park, mung beans in the canteen? If so, it might be time to think again – because in these times more than any other, looking after the health and wellbeing of your employees is looking after your organisation and its future.

Health and wellbeing good practice encompasses a wide range of issues and focus areas, taking it much broader than just encouraging healthy eating and physical fitness. In fact, research has found that employers consider health and wellbeing to cover issues such as stress, security and morale – all elements that can make or break organisational resilience to both internal and external factors.

A key determinant of people’s wellbeing and at the heart of health and wellbeing is how well people are managed and particularly in today’s changing climate, is therefore extremely important.

By imbedding good health and wellbeing practices, overall performance improvement can be encouraged rather than just minimising sickness and injury. Indeed, having a health and wellbeing programme in place can support a culture of happy and healthy employees, in turn providing improved employee engagement, motivation and productivity.

Recent research from PriceWaterhouseCoopers has also found that for every £1 an
organisation invests in health and wellbeing, they could see a return of over £4 due to benefits such as reduced sickness and improved productivity.

Who said encouraging a culture of happy and healthy employees doesn’t make business sense?

Top HWB Tips: Encouraging Supportive Management

• Lead from the top: If a HWB strategy is going to work people need to believe that senior management support it
• Manage by objectives, not hours: Emphasise the importance of managers assessing employee performance by the achievement of objectives - not by the hours they spend in the office
• Review meeting effectiveness: In terms of working practices, management style and outcomes. Effective meetings help communication, morale and feedback within the organisation
• Attendance management: Think about defining the standards expected from people, the role of managers, the sources of help available (such as occupational health support) and the processes involved

If you would like to find out more about health and wellbeing and how it can support improved performance for your organisation, click here to visit our website.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by idg .