You may think highly of your firm as an employer. But the way the job is structured might be detrimental to workers' health and well-being even if the organization has the best of intentions. Working conditions and the demands of the work environment are a major cause of stress and research has indicated that the design of work may have large implications on employee well-being and health.
Fortunately, there are practical approaches that managers can take to rethink work that promotes health and wellness and helps the company in the long run. For instance, recent studies show that proactively altering working settings to encourage worker well-being may lead to good corporate results, enhanced job performance (including higher productivity), and reduced employee burnout.
It doesn’t have to be pricey to rethink work to boost employees’ well-being. In fact, it may frequently be a beneficial investment. One work-redesign programme at the IT division of a Fortune 500 company, for instance, had a positive return on investment (ROI) for the business because it lowered turnover costs. Furthermore, such measures may strengthen the organisation as a whole.
The following seven strategies might serve as a suitable jumping-off point:
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Provide staff with greater discretion in their daily tasks.
Little control over one's work environment has been linked to lower mental health and increased incidence of heart disease. In addition, the risks of diabetes and mortality from cardiovascular causes are greatly amplified when high work demands are coupled with inadequate job control. Improvements in workplace morale may be achieved with even modest increases in workers' discretionary time. Research revealed that providing staff with more training to take on new jobs and address more client issues independently increased employee satisfaction and productivity.
2. Provide workers with greater leeway in terms of their working hours and location.
It has been shown in several studies that providing employees greater say over their schedules has a positive effect on their emotional well-being on the job. Some examples of this would be allowing for more flexible shift swapping and later start/finish hours for work that requires constant physical presence. Workers' physical and mental well-being improved, and turnover was cut, as a result of a more comprehensive redesign of work at a Fortune 500 company in which IT workers were given greater flexibility in when and where they did their work while still collaborating with their teammates to ensure necessary coordination.
3. Improve the consistency of employees' work schedules.
The term "just in time" scheduling is often used by many modern service firms and retailers to adapt staffing levels to fluctuations in customer demand. Frontline employees have it tough when their schedules are all over the place and they can't plan ahead for things like family time. Poor sleep quality and increased mental discomfort are just two of the many negative effects associated with an unpredictable work schedule, according to studies.
On the other side, increased schedule predictability benefits both the company and its workers. Providing more consistent schedules for employees led to increase in revenues and a boost in labour productivity for participating businesses. Employees who had children slept better and were less stressed thanks to the newfound stability.
4 Allow workers the chance to report issues and participate in finding solutions.
One way to increase workers' well-being is to give them a chance to influence workplace changes. Professionals' burnout and happiness on the job went down and up, respectively, when they were encouraged to take part in an organised process of issue identification and resolution, according to one research. Another advantage for businesses seeking to keep their best workers is that those who have participated in group problem-solving are less likely to desire to quit their positions.
5. Maintain a healthy staffing ratio to ensure manageable workloads at all times.
There is evidence to suggest that working long hours or under intense time pressure may have negative effects on an employee's health and well-being. More than a few studies have shown that increased rates of depression, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease are just some of the negative health outcomes that result from having too many expectations placed on you without the means to meet them. While it can be more expensive to hire more people to help spread out the workload, businesses lose much more money when workers show signs of exhaustion or illness and either miss work or resign altogether.
6. Encourage managers to meet employee needs.
As many workers are also responsible for the care of young children or ageing relatives, it is important for managers to be understanding of the difficulties these workers encounter as they strive to meet the demands of both their professional and home life. Nurses whose supervisors were more understanding of personal circumstances reported fewer cardiovascular disease risk factors and improved sleep quality. There are positive results for work-life balance and health from studies of training programmes for managers to enhance family-supportive behaviours in the healthcare and grocery store sectors. Worker happiness, productivity, and loyalty all increased among those whose managers had received this training, which was beneficial to the company as a whole.
7. Promote a feeling of social connection among your staff.
Creating a work environment in which employees may form supportive connections with their coworkers can be a crucial tactic for enhancing employee well-being. According to research, such workplace interactions are related to lessening psychological discomfort, a symptom of poor mental health. Fostering a feeling of social belonging should not be a difficult or costly endeavour
8. Provide Effective Incentives
Motivating staff to achieve their objectives and engage in your programme is much easier with the help of incentives. Rewarding productive behaviour rather than punishing inactivity or lack of results is generally recommended. Grouping the awards you may give out, with varying degrees of gratification for different levels of individual or team performance.
Never forget that monetary incentives are simply one of many possible sorts. Health-related achievements might include reaching a health-related objective or finishing a health-related programme. For less well-off groups, monetary incentives may not be as successful as public acknowledgement of accomplishments in the form of a shout-out at a meeting or in the newsletter. Make sure that monetary incentives are modest in value to encourage participation in the programme for the sake of health improvement rather than as a means to an end.
9. To Put the Program Into Action Quickly and Efficiently
Occupational wellness initiatives need to be designed with your specific business's values and norms in mind. Your policies and procedures need to be adaptable so that you can respond to the requirements and suggestions of your staff while still leaving opportunities for creativity and enjoyment.
During the implementation phase, it may be helpful to make use of preexisting resources and tools to encourage health and safety on the job. In the long run, this may reduce costs for your projects.
10. Methods of Evaluation and Measurement
Use your imagination to find preexisting data on that you can base your project to maximise your use of resources. Use the resources accessible to the public and put your energy into advertising something you may already be providing. How many small and medium-sized businesses make the most of their available resources throughout the assessment and evaluation phases?
These steps provide the groundwork for a productive programme and serve as a guide for the remainder of the program's lifespan. Assessing and evaluating a program's performance is crucial to ensuring it meets its objectives. What works and how to make it better may be deduced from the data gathered.
This article is meant to provide small and medium-sized businesses with the tools they need to implement and sustain a health and wellness programme in the workplace. Although a company's size presents certain obstacles, it also affords you advantages that bigger businesses would miss out on, such as a family-like setting where senior leaders are accessible to employees at all levels. Plus, as a smaller organisation, you're in a better position to cater to the specific requirements of your staff. One possible advantage of a wellness programme committee is that its modest size and a high degree of cohesiveness may facilitate rapid programme implementation.
As these examples demonstrate, several management strategies that increase employee well-being are also advantageous to businesses. This should not come as a surprise. Long-term, organisations that care about the health and well-being of their workers are more likely to have employees who care about the health and well-being of the company. And this is a result desired by all effective leaders.