Ensuring Your Employees’ Wellbeing

You may take pride in being a benevolent employer. Yet, despite your best intentions, you may be hurting the health and wellbeing of your employees if the work is not organized in the proper way. Ensuring your employees’ wellbeing is an important factor for your business.

In fact, the prevailing working conditions and the need for a better work environment are major reasons for the stress of employees in the United States today. Various studies have shown that a company’s work strategy may cause severe adverse effects on the well-being of the employees. At the same time, it may have a substantial impact on the healthcare expenses of employees.

However, the good news is that entrepreneurs and managers can redesign work feasibly to support the wellbeing of the employees, and bring long-term benefits to their organizations. A recent study shows that altering the workplace conditions strategically to facilitate employees’ wellbeing can help not only to augment the well-being of workers but also reduce employee burnout and improve job performance.

Redesigning work to enhance employees’ wellbeing need not be expensive. Sometimes, it may even be a good investment. For instance, one such initiative at a Fortune 500 company generated positive ROI for the firm simply because it eased turnover costs. At the same time, adopting such strategies can improve the organization’s resilience in general. You may consider the approaches below as a good starting point to redesign the work environment and improve employees’ wellbeing.

Give more autonomy

Studies have revealed that giving employees little or no option on how work gets done is linked to poor mental health and higher risks of heart disease. At the same time, poor job control and higher work demand actually increase the risk of developing diabetes and death due to cardiovascular issues. On the contrary, giving employees even a little autonomy can help to improve their wellbeing, while enhancing their performance on the job.

Allow more flexibility

Research has shown that allowing workers more control or choice vis-à-vis their work schedules results in improved mental health. This may include simple things like changing the shift timings and easier trading of shifts in on-site jobs. There are instances where IT employees were given control over how and where did their work collaborating with their teammates to ensure coordination led to improvement in their physical and mental health.

Stabilize employee schedules

Unpredictable and erratic worker schedules make frontline workers’ life difficult, as they are unable to meet their personal and family responsibilities. Studies have shown that erratic schedules often lead to negative consequences like sleep disorder and emotional distress. On the other hand, better schedule stability can benefit companies as well as employees, thereby increasing productivity. As a result, several service and retail companies have now introduced “just in time” scheduling to match labor to fluctuating demand.

Workers’ participation

Providing workers with the opportunity to identify and solve problems at the workplace may prove to be an effective way of improving the employees’ wellbeing. Studies have shown that involving workers to participate in workplace issues helps to decrease burnout while increasing job satisfaction. At the same time, workers who get such opportunities are less likely to quit the organization.

Adequate staffing

Studies have shown that high work demands like long hours or pressure to work faster can often take a toll on employees’ health and wellbeing. When the work demand is high and control is low, it may make the employees suffer from hypertension, depression, and cardiovascular disease. The solution to this is altering your staffing strategically – adding more people to the organization to alleviate work pressure. It may be a costly thing to do, but your employees’ lives are valuable too.

Encourage managers

Many workers in your company are also caregivers to their elderly parents and children. When such employees have a supportive manager, they are able to maintain their work-personal life balance. In fact, studies undertaken in grocery and healthcare environments have examined providing training to managers to increase their family-supportive behaviors. When employees have a better family-work-life balance, the company benefits too, as it increases job performance and the workers do not think about leaving the organization.

Foster social belonging

It is an important strategy for entrepreneurs to create a work culture that helps the employees to develop a supportive relationship with their colleagues. Studies have revealed that healthy relationship among workers is related to reduced psychological distress—a precursor of poor mental health. When entrepreneurs promote a sense of social belonging among the employees it results in a considerable decrease in burnout.

Having said all these, it is important to mention that companies that are concerned about their employees’ wellbeing are likely to have workers who also care about the health and wellbeing of their company. This is something that all good leaders dream of