The importance of prioritising Employee Well-Being May 13, 2024 There’s a reason why organisations talk about ‘investing’ in Employee Well-being. A commitment to and for the emotional, physical and mental well-being of your employees is exactly that, an investment which yields a return for everyone involved. Whether fuelled by an employer’s duty of care to make well-being a core element of their HR strategy, or because an organisation wants to create a holistic framework around which to build their company culture, the importance of well-being is firmly at the centre of HR fundamentals. Motivations to prioritise employee well-being Now, more than ever before, the employee experience is everything. From the recruitment phase, through to active employment and retention, how an individual is treated by their employer is of the utmost importance. Happy, healthy employees are more engaged, motivated and productive, go on to create far better outcomes for their employer and are less likely to leave an organisation. From an employer perspective, staff who feel their well-being is a priority are far less likely to take sick leave and more likely to return from leave in a timely and sustainable way. Sick leave is of increasing concern with data showing employee sickness leave is at its highest level reported for over 15 years. If fact, 35.2 million working days are lost to work related ill health. Reducing these absences will be of key importance to any employer in order to positively impact their finances, improve their recruitment and retention, and ultimately create a company culture that encourages long term commitment and productivity. How to focus on employee well-being? It’s advisable to take some time to talk to your team. Ask them what they need, what would help, and where you can be of support to them. Use the information you gather from your employees to design and roll out a framework of support that is created specifically for your organisation and employees. Your support could comprise of making counselling available to your employees, explaining key health and safety training provisions, offering assistance around financial and physical health or giving access to occupational health professionals or mentoring programmes. The content of your well-being framework should be crafted to fit your organisational and employee needs specifically. Turn your focus to training all managers, from senior leaders to line managers, anyone who supervises a team should be trained and updated regularly on the employee well-being options and support available. ‘Management style’ remains as one of the top causes of stress related absence so ensuring that your managers are well trained to lead positively is vital. Once your framework and training are in place, make sure you have clearly communicated throughout your organisation. Employees should know exactly what support they can access and what is expected of them along the way. Managers should be quickly able to work with their team to offer support, work through the provisions in place and document progress in a central and consolidated way. Keep information and support up to date, provision of training and access to services will necessarily change over time so take time to ensure intuitive and accurate information. Putting in place centralised and consolidated employee files can be very useful in keeping your managers up to date and ensuring nothing is overlooked when it comes to your employee well-being. Talk to us about how Hark can help in supporting your employees in your HR Management.