With some companies tentatively returning staff to the workplace, what is the mood of your business?
Despite the threat that people feel from job insecurity, recent research, news and commentary suggest a radical realignment in the job market which spells bad news for retention and people risk in general. Nearly 1 in 3 professionals said they had a shift in perspective due to the pandemic and prefer to work for an organisation that better aligns with their personal values. A further 71% percent of employees surveyed by a leading agency stated “they’d leave a company whose values don’t match their own”.
We have all faced pressure and stress from the Covid crisis, like no other – as companies think about returning to the workplace, many staff members are hiding the true damage under sunny smiles. Despite the stigma of mental health being lifted in recent times, employees honestly do not want to admit they are struggling, both physically and mentally. We talk the talk of supporting staff and giving them help, but do we really follow through? Can we support that culture that will encourage our best people to stay, and attract talent to our organisations?
We need to identify where the problems are, where the cracks are appearing, and parachute the help in where it is needed.
At The Business of Wellness (Kate Cook) it is vital for us to know where our wellbeing interventions (seminars, coaching, are most likely to be impactful and to measure progress and to that end we have teamed up with The Resilience Factor, an evidence-based tool that can indicate where an organisation needs to focus its efforts to foster resilience, harmony and the happiness of a company. If you could answer two fundamental questions, what would they be?
- Do you know the mood of your business?
If you don’t know the mood of your business how do you know the most important drivers of employee well-being and engagement, but more importantly, how do you identify and then support your employees with the services they require?
At the moment, businesses typically have a set budget for resources and combine that with incomplete, often inaccurate, information or feedback from employees as the basis of their well-being strategy. But how can you make informed, accountable decisions based on that? Recent research has shown that the corporate programs most important to workers are; employee well-being (70%) and diversity, equality and inclusion (47%). Therefore, identifying and monitoring the most important drivers of employee well-being and engagement and acting on feedback in a timely manner is the foundation for a healthy employee and business relationship.
- Do you know when your people are struggling, surviving or thriving?
The term ‘well-being’ is used freely but in reality, it’s multi-layered and can mean different things to different people. The only way to truly understand your people is to assess their resilience, holistically, across the four domains of health, not just mental and physical health. It’s the inter-relationships between them that determines how we deal with events in life. According to research 70% of your staff may not working be to their full potential. Employees who feel a sense of purpose in their work tend to be happier, healthier, and more productive
The path to achieve mutual success for employers and their people is through trust and transparency. Businesses must trust their employees to tell them how they are and what they need. They must then use that information exchange to transparently deliver the right support and development tools to their people, where it’s needed.
This doesn’t have to be hard, you just need to take the first step by measuring the health of your people. Once those metrics are understood, the appropriate interventions and support can be introduced in a systematic way – focusing on the whole human-being in your company and not just ticking boxes by introducing only mental health programmes, which might be “of the moment” and even useful, but are they actually what is fundamentally the root cause of the issue? You can’t know if you don’t measure!
To find out more about how to measure your Organisational Mood, get in touch with Kate Cook (The Business of Wellness) www.katecook.biz
