The Benefits of Workplace Wellness

Implementing wellness initiatives at work offers numerous benefits for both employees and employers. One of the most significant benefits is the positive impact on employee health and wellbeing. Encouraging regular exercise, nutritious diets, and mindfulness practices can help employees reduce stress, feel their best, and improve their mental clarity. Investing in employee wellness can also lead to higher morale, job satisfaction, and overall engagement with the organisation. Healthier employees get sick less often, leave less frequently, and are more productive when they are at work.

How HR Leaders Can Help

HR leaders have an essential role to play in promoting workplace wellness initiatives. They work with management to educate employees about the benefits of wellness programs, develop health and wellness incentives, and support their successful implementation. HR leaders also help management identify the unique wellness needs of their employees and workplace culture. They can suggest individualised wellness interventions that respond to those needs, which may include yoga or meditation classes, nutritionist consultations, or mental health support. Beyond physical initiatives, HR leaders can also provide resources to help employees establish healthy work/life boundaries, manage their stress levels, and other wellness best practices.

Navigating Unique Workplace Cultures

Not every workplace culture is conducive to promoting wellness and self-care practices. Working with management, HR leaders must take into account the unique elements of an organisation’s culture and target the right objectives for their wellness programs. For example; if a fast-paced sales team has minimum time in their workday, a mid-day yoga session may not be feasible. Instead, consider stretching exercises that can be done on desks, or even a reminder app that pops up every hour, reminding employees to take breaks from their screens. HR cross-functional efforts to bring wellness into a culture can be more about creating and offering a variety rather than specific programs that work for everyone. Initial offerings can then be adapted according to usage and feedback of these offerings.

Promoting workplace wellness programs is an essential responsibility for HR leaders, and it improves not only employee health but overall job satisfaction and productivity. It’s important to consider unique workplace characteristics when implementing wellness programs, and to tailor initiatives to the needs of employees. By nurturing self-care practices in the workplace, businesses can attract and retain top talent, boost productivity and get an excellent ROI on their investment. HR leaders are instrumental in developing and implementing programs that meet the specific needs of individual organisations and employees, and ultimately lead to a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce.

Related Blogs: Succession Planning: Nurturing Future Leaders, The Art of Talent Acquisition: Strategies and Techniques for HR Leaders

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Whereas the outdated term work/life balance implies a clear separation between “work” and “life” the argument now is that it is artificial and unproductive to try and separate the two.  However…this must not be taken to mean the creeping spread of more work and more hours.

Work life integration is the creation of easy joy and meaningful engagement between interconnected roles, relationships and responsibilities that make up our lives. This means allowing home, community and wellbeing into our work and vice versa.  We have all heard the term “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”  By creating harmony and synergies between different areas of our life we can benefit from greater combined value than if we compartmentalise them and treat them as separate.

Old narratives of success dictated that the more time we spent at the office, the more successful we would be.  This is actually quite a toxic narrative and has resulted in many a burnout!  Research now shows that investment in other areas of our lives can only enhance our professional careers, not detract from them.  What is success anyway?  This is a very complex question and I suspect every answer will be unique for each individual.  However, might I suggest that rather than thinking in terms of outputs, maybe it is more about how you live your life. Do you have a strong sense of identity and purpose that is consistently lived across all domains?

But what does this mean in practice? When I think about my own career, a simple example might be how I combined my love of travel and adventure with my work.  I was able to integrate this love of adventure into my work by volunteering for assignments and opportunities abroad.  But also, whenever I did an assignment in a new country I would be sure to add on an additional day or two leave to do some site seeing and learn about the place and the people. This practice also gave me a rich store of stories that I could use in my training programmes to bring concepts and ideas to life for others. Instead of there being a conflict between the two domains, I was able to unify them in a way that supported both.

My dad is a brilliant scientist.  At age 81 he no longer works full time for the University of Edinburgh as he is retired.  Except that he isn’t – he does still work!  He has such a passion and interest in his subject that he still reads loads, contributes to journals, writes books about it and lectures on his subject.  He also has used his scientific knowledge to benefit the community and has been involved in being an expert witness on several legal cases involved in protecting the countryside. This to me is a great example of work/life integration.  His identity as a scientist carries through into all areas of his life and in turn, his outside activities enrich what he can offer professionally.

Work Life integration coaching tool

1. Start by mapping out the 4 domains of your life: Work and career, Health and wellbeing, Home and family, Community.
2. Take a moment to identify what is most important to you in each of these areas: values, goals, interests, activities, results.
3. Reflecting on these priorities, what do you need to say “no” to right now in order to say “yes” to your top priorities?
4. Where is there apparent conflict or competition between domain priorities?
5. Where do you see the opportunity for harmony where there is conflict? For example, can you think of alternative ways of achieving that goal e.g. trying new activities in different places?

What does this mean for organisations?

• Flexibility is key here. Empower workers with as much flexibility as possible to be able to design their working lives and maximise their own energy cycles.
• Measure productivity and total value added, not hours.
• Encourage employees to contribute to the community and share back.
• Encourage people to bring what they learn in other domains back into their work and vice versa. Give a platform to showcase employees’ talents and other interests.
• Stop rewarding heroic hours.

Seren Trewavas is a Chartered Organisational Psychologist and ICF accredited coach with over 25 years’ experience in personal and organisational development.  She works with leaders and professionals globally to help unlock potential.

Read more blogs from Seren: One conversation really can make a BIG difference

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