Well-being
blog
An inspiring well-being policy needs dialog, data and boundaries
blog
Published on Wednesday, October 26th 2022
6m
Well-being is high on the agenda in many minds, but in practice well-being policies are few and far between. A healthy work-life balance, however, gives employees the energy and resilience to empower themselves and each other in a sustainable way. Discover tools and tips to keep your employees physically and mentally healthy.
The coronavirus crisis rocked the (business) world, and since then organizations have had to deal with many new or amplified challenges. Illnesses (including long-term) are steadily on the rise, the war for talent has become even more fierce, and finding the right work-life balance while working from home is not so easy.
Given this situation, it’s alarming that barely 43% of companies in Belgium have a policy in place for mental and physical well-being in the workplace. Almost a fifth of companies are not taking concrete actions to improve the well-being of their employees. And a third of companies that did develop measures for well-being at work did so on based on gut feeling. This is striking, because almost all these companies claim they consider well-being at work important. These are the findings of a recent survey conducted by Acerta, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and HR Square.
Before launching your new wellness initiatives, you should look at your core. What culture, perceptions or behaviors exist in your organization today that are unconsciously having a negative impact on well-being? Perhaps as an organization you don’t expect employees to answer emails within the hour, but the perception that you do expect this may be alive and well among your employees. Expressing concrete expectations and communicating your vision helps. We also see this in Acerta’s figures. When asked what they would like their employer to do differently, employees mainly request clear communication (49%). As an employer, do you feel you already give them that? Beware of navel-gazing – 87% of employers say they are (strongly) committed to transparent and clear communication, but employees don’t experience it that way. When in doubt about how well aligned all parties are, you can organize a quick survey or roundtable discussion with employees from different parts and layers of your organization to find out what the perceptions around well-being are.
Before launching your new wellness initiatives, you should look at your core. What culture, perceptions or behaviors exist in your organization today that are unconsciously having a negative impact on well-being? Perhaps as an organization you don’t expect employees to answer emails within the hour, but the perception that you do expect this may be alive and well among your employees. Expressing concrete expectations and communicating your vision helps. We also see this in Acerta’s figures. When asked what they would like their employer to do differently, employees mainly request clear communication (49%). As an employer, do you feel you already give them that? Beware of navel-gazing – 87% of employers say they are (strongly) committed to transparent and clear communication, but employees don’t experience it that way. When in doubt about how well aligned all parties are, you can organize a quick survey or roundtable discussion with employees from different parts and layers of your organization to find out what the perceptions around well-being are.
Every employee in your organization has their own vision of well-being, so setting up something that increases everyone’s well-being immediately is a pipe dream. That’s why it’s important to leave room for individual needs; autonomy is key. As an organization, you can offer tools that people can use flexibly, such as flexwork so employees can choose to work outside of regular hours. Or offer ergonomically configured workplaces, but allow your employees to choose whether to use them or work from home.
You can also focus on digital enablers. Some companies shut down email traffic after regular business hours. For some employees, this helps them delineate their working hours, but for others, it feels like a restriction on their freedom. Instead of a hard stop, you could opt for a softer approach that allows for freedom of choice. For example, consider a notification on the monitor when someone’s been active for 6 hours nonstop. A nice message encouraging them to stretch their legs or get some fresh air raises awareness.
At Inetum-Realdolmen, we’re constantly looking for tactical means to put our strategic goals, of which “connecting people” is an important part, into practice. In the context of hybrid working, we wanted to strengthen the connection. We took advantage of our National Compliment Day and worked with our in-house experts to develop a user-friendly compliments app embedded in our Teams working environment, to meet our employees where they are in their daily work.
We empowered our people, and they empowered each other by giving and receiving the positive energy of a compliment in just a few clicks. In one month, more than 1,000 compliments were sent.
Your employees’ well-being goes beyond the (virtual) walls of your company. Our professional and private lives are blending together more than ever. A healthy lifestyle in general also has advantages in the workplace. Where does the organization’s responsibility end? One clear boundary is privacy legislation. Tracking someone’s stress level 24/7 with a wearable in order to use that data in your well-being policy will raise questions. That’s why you should focus on small, creative initiatives in the workplace that are stimulating. When they catch on, the positive effects will spread further into the private lives of your employees anyway.
In addition, well-being is often perceived as something difficult to capture in demonstrable results. Only 1 in 5 employers effectively measure the impact of their actions (Acerta survey). Still, you should try to put a measurable ROI on your well-being initiatives. Data collection is indispensable for this. Measurable results also help you to set boundaries in terms of budget, or push back the boundaries, because such investments pay off in the long run.
