This allows everyone an overview and can ensure that tasks get completed on time. Understand why stigma is still preventing employees from telling their boss the truth about their mental wellbeing in the workplace. Nearly two in ten employees we spoke to said financial concerns were the leading cause of mental health issues.
And debt which is not secured against underlying assets, also known as unsecured debt, as a percentage of household income has reached Potential impact of financial difficulties for your staff.
Insomnia — the worry of money is something that everyone will experience at some point. However, for some, the fear of the next bill or an overdue statement can lead to many sleepless nights. Behavioural Changes — Financial challenges can lead to increased stress levels which can cause your staff to potentially turn to unhealthy substances to try and deal with these situations. More frequent smoking or heavy drinking not only have a negative effect on their health, but can worsen their financial situation, potentially making the problem worse.
Anxiety and stress - The NHS states that feeling low or anxious is a normal response to struggling with debt. Poor mental health can make managing money harder and worrying about money can make your mental health worse.
It is important to remember that your staff may be embarrassed around their financial situation so any conversations should be approached with care and consideration of the employee.
Pay them on time - it goes without saying that this will help employees manage their finances. While most businesses always pay on time as a matter of principal, it should be every businesses priority. Offer support - provide your employees access to an Employee Assistance Programme specialising in finances. They will be able to help recommend relevant resources on everything from debt management to financial assistance. Affordable loans - it is often cheaper to pay for big ticket items upfront rather than spread the costs out.
For example, if an employee needs to purchase an annual train ticket you could pay the lump sum and they could pay you back each month. Offer the opportunity to work from home - commuting is expensive and time-consuming. Free up your employees time and money by offering the option to work from home for a day or two each week. Training and education - budgeting, managing debts and generally getting to grip with finances are skills which some people are yet to develop.
You can encourage your staff to better understand their finances by providing them with training opportunities. Yet globally, young people have the worst access to youth mental health care within the lifespan and across all the stages of illness particularly during the early stages.
In response, the Forum has launched a global dialogue series to discuss the ideas, tools and architecture in which public and private stakeholders can build an ecosystem for health promotion and disease management on mental health.
One of the current key priorities is to support global efforts toward mental health outcomes - promoting key recommendations toward achieving the global targets on mental health, such as the WHO Knowledge-Action-Portal and the Countdown Global Mental Health. Read more about the work of our Platform for Shaping the Future of Health and Healthcare , and contact us to get involved.
To help our business partners face this ongoing test, our team has provided assistance in a number of ways. I look forward to working with the World Economic Forum Chief Health Officer Community on innovative solutions to the pandemic that underlies the pandemic: Mental Health. This past year introduced a series of challenges and uncertainty as work and home life shifted dramatically. Individuals and businesses have had to make many sacrifices and learn to prioritize health and wellness.
In the face of the pandemic, companies have implemented procedures to protect their workforce, products and communities. We have provided our associates with several emotional and physical wellbeing resources and benefits to help them manage all the stressors that have been exacerbated due to the pandemic.
We also introduced flexible work policies to give employees the responsibility, freedom and support to work most effectively based on their individual needs. It is important for all businesses to establish a culture and work environment that values employee wellbeing, especially as we continue to navigate the future of work.
I accept. Image: Photo by Christina wocintechchat. Workforce wellbeing has become a business priority. There is increased awareness of its links to business performance, operational resiliency and sustainability.
More research that can further explicate this link and any moderating or mediating factors is required. Despite this, it is recommended that information on the potential benefits of the promotion of workplace health and wellbeing aligned with perceptions relating to healthy and unhealthy workers may be necessary to contextualise information provided. The results of this study add to the existing literature demonstrating that while employers may be cognisant of the benefits of healthy workers, they remain uncertain about their personal or corporate responsibility to provide health promoting opportunities for their employees.
Reluctance to direct employees on matters outside the scope of their job roles has been reported elsewhere [ 21 , 24 , 31 , 38 ]. For example, McCoy et al. This reluctance may also reflect the views of some employers in this study that it is possible to be an effective employee while exhibiting poor lifestyle choices. Workplaces that have a high risk of injury, such as mining, were focused on reducing injury risk, which may include strategies to reduce alcohol and other drug consumption, treat mental health issues, and improve the physical fitness of employees.
However, such strategies are within the context of reducing immediate threats to injury, rather than influencing the broader lifestyle choices of employees. In these workplaces, once the decision to change work practices is made, employers are empowered to implement new policies and practices. This contrasts with other similar sized businesses in different industries, or medium and small businesses in other industries, where the risk of serious injury at work was considered unlikely and therefore employers expressed greater reluctance to suggest or dictate changes in work practices for health purposes.
In contrast, employees view responsibility as the equivalent to autonomy. It has been suggested that this conceptual incompatibility may result in distrust between stakeholder groups [ 21 ].
This seemed to be a very salient theme for employers from smaller businesses where participants interacted directly with their employees and developed close personal relationships. Participants from larger businesses did not mention friendship; this may be the product of a corporate culture that physically and corporately separates owners, managers, and workers. While employers from larger businesses may not be working directly with many of their employees, friendships do exist among team members that resemble small business employer attitudes towards their staff.
Two integral components of a healthy workplace are the health of employees and the performance of workplaces [ 41 ]. Productivity is linked with profitability and when workplace health promotion is presented as a productivity measure, employers view it as a financial return on investment decision [ 9 ].
However, there is at best modest and not well quantified evidence that implementing a health promotion initiative in the workplace increases productivity or profitability [ 9 , 17 ].
With financial barriers removed, participants did not consider the financial return on investment and shifted their focus to generating a range of workplace health strategies and how they might be implemented, rather than focusing on the productivity justification for introducing these types of initiatives.
Given the wide range of workplace health promotion strategies that can be introduced with little or no cost, further investigation into the potential for moving away from a return to investment approach is warranted. This may lead to gains in workplace health promotion uptake. Finally, the morale of the workforce was an important perceived benefit associated with healthy workers, they were more likely to consider their implementation if they believed these types of initiatives would improve the health or morale of their employees and whether the company could afford the implementation costs.
These findings support efforts to be clear about the benefit of each strategy as well as the non-financial rewards of implementing strategies.
As the findings presented are qualitative in nature, it is not possible to generalise the information provided beyond the scope of the sample participating in the research. In particular, the views expressed may not be representative of employers from other areas within the country or internationally. However, the data generated provide important information that can assist health promoting organisations, researchers, practitioners, insurance companies, occupational physicians, various government departments, and labour unions to more effectively generate interest and action from employers.
Future research could be directed towards testing and quantifying these themes so as to advance an understanding of the pathway to successful workplace health and wellbeing initiatives, programs, and policies. This would help to improve the capacity of workplaces wanting to effectively implement healthy changes and generate information that more clearly explicates the drivers of this type of change in the workplace. Further, information on the potential benefits of the promotion of workplace health and wellbeing aligned with perceptions relating to healthy and unhealthy workers may be necessary to contextualise information provided.
Finally, different workplace circumstances must be given consideration when designing initiatives and interventions. Chronic diseases: chronic diseases and development 1: raising the priority of preventing chronic diseases: a political process.
Article PubMed Google Scholar. Chronic diseases 1: preventing chronic diseases: how many lives can we save? Preventing chronic disease in the workplace: a workshop report and recommendations. Am J Publ Health. Article Google Scholar. World Health Organisation.
World Health Report , Reducing risks, promoting healthy life. Sadag: World Health Organization; Google Scholar. Are workplace health promotion programs effective at improving presenteeism in workers? A systematic review and best evidence synthesis of the literature.
BMC Public Health. Workplace health protection and promotion. A new pathway for a healthier and safer workforce. J Occup Environ Med. Implications of the results of community interventions trials. Annu Rev Publ Health. The health and cost benefits of work site health-promotion programs. Meta-analysis of workplace physical activity interventions. Am J Prev Med. Employee assistance programs: a review of the management of stress and wellbeing through workplace counselling and consulting.
Aust Psychol. Danna K, Griffin RW. Health and well-being in the workplace: a review and synthesis of the literature. J Manag. The effectiveness of worksite nutrition and physical activity interventions for controlling employee overweight and obesity.
A systematic review. A systematic review of workplace health promotion interventions for increasing physical activity. Brit J Health Psychol. Systematic review of active workplace interventions to reduce sickness absence. Occupat Med.
Systematic review of the impact of worksite wellness programs. Am J Manag Care. PubMed Google Scholar. Workplace health promotion. A meta-analysis of effectiveness. Do workplace health promotion wellness programs work?
What is actually measured in process evaluations for worksite health promotion programs: a systematic review. BMC Pub Health. Manager beliefs regarding worksite health promotion: findings from the Working Healthy Project 2. Am J Health Promot. Barriers and facilitators to implementation of an occupational health guideline aimed at preventing weight gain among employees in the Netherlands.
A great way to integrate walking meetings into your employee wellbeing programme is to challenge employees to organise at least one walking meeting per week. This makes company exercise challenges a great addition to a wellness programme. They'll get employees motivated and moving, but also contribute to a healthy corporate culture and foster employee engagement around something that isn't purely work-related.
You can try different kinds of exercise challenges depending on your employees' tastes and interests, but here are some ideas:. One of the biggest contributors to employee happiness and wellbeing in the workplace is authentic friendships between coworkers.
They provide trusted sounding boards for new ideas, increase engagement and trust, act as support systems, decrease workplace stress, and increase productivity.
What's not to love? You can't force your employees to be friends, but you can set up social activities that encourage them to get to know each other. Try organising after work meet-ups or drinks, starting team traditions, planning company trips, and establishing a buddy system for new hires.
Employee satisfaction in the workplace revolves around more than just financial compensation. It's also highly dependent on employees finding their purpose, feeling that they're dedicating their work to a meaningful cause, and working towards their professional goals.
Generally speaking, performance reviews aren't seen as a positive thing. Many people find them intimidating, and they've definitely contributed to a blood pressure spike or two.
Nevertheless, a great wellbeing initiative is transforming performance reviews into positive things and focusing them on professional purpose and career development. This will help greatly with morale and long-term employee retention. If you work in a managerial or human resources role, centre performance reviews around how employees feel in their current role.
After all, any performance problems likely also stem from this. Once in a while, we all want to be told that we've done a good job.
All too often, workplace feedback is limited to the negative. However, a much more effective approach to promote wellbeing in the workplace is focusing on the positive and recognising employees for a job well done. There are many ways to incorporate employee recognition into your organisation. Here are just a few ideas:. Provide company swag that actually contributes to employee wellbeing.
Lots of companies give out company swag, however, it's often not overly exciting. Think pens, cheesy t-shirts, and stationary. If you want to give your employee wellbeing a boost with your company swag, try gifting items that people will actually benefit from. A few ideas include:. Put simply, organisations should be giving regular raises to employees they value and want to have on their team in the long term.
This doesn't mean you have to give everyone working at your company a raise, but regular raises do wonders in terms of employee satisfaction and staff retention. Let employees know when you review salaries and what criteria you look at when considering giving them a raise. Providing employees with a clear path to more compensation and responsibility in the future will foster motivation and trust.
In order to maximise employees' professional health and wellbeing, show them that you care about their personal and professional development. Make this a workplace wellness initiative by regularly providing staff with training opportunities. Training can be related to work skills and competencies that need to be developed, but it can also be completely unrelated to the workplace and focus on personal development. Think about training on mindset, financial literacy, and languages, for example.
Organising regular team building activities is great for employee wellbeing. Despite their cheesy reputation, they've been shown to build trust, reduce stress, increase collaboration, and prevent conflict. Done well, they'll encourage staff to get to know each other on a personal level and break up their regular work weeks.
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