The conundrum of balancing productivity with the wellbeing of your employees is a major issue facing companies today. When an employee is happy with their work, it can have a congruous effect on their health. The inverse is also true. When employees are both physically and mentally healthy, they report feeling happier with their work. An important aspect of this is the engagement level that every individual feels from their jobs. People who are actively disengaged are being negatively affected by their jobs and its having an impact on their performance. Research done by the analytics firm Gallup, suggests that 70% of US workers don’t feel like their jobs are engaging. A healthy and happy person is much more likely to feel engaged by the work that they do.
If you are only attempting to solve the issue of a few unhappy and unengaged people, you’re treating the symptom and not the cause of the problem. By investing in wellness activities, encouraging positive behavior changes, and rethinking the way you communicate with and support your staff members you can improve your corporate culture and help develop a more engaging workplace.
Develop A Culture of Wellness
If you think there’s an issue with low engagement, it might be important to orchestrate an entire paradigm shift. While developing an engaged workplace can be a daunting task, it’s not as difficult if you think about it on a macro scale. You are attempting to redefine your company culture to invest in the health of its individual employees and encourage them to adopt new healthy behaviors. This can be done in a few ways.
Consider the whole person. Wellness can’t be simply narrowed down. It’s affected by every aspect of a person’s health. This includes the usual and obvious factors such as mental and physical health, sleep habits, and eating habits, but also financial health, social well-being, and stress management. By offering a variety of resources and activities you can service all of these elements.
Establish wellness and productivity goals. The beginning of the year is a perfect time to encourage this, but it can be done at any time. Because the feeling of wellness so often affects one’s productivity, by encouraging healthy behaviors you can expect to see improvement in both wellbeing and work performance. Encourage regular healthy breaks, such as walks or other exercise, and offer nutritional snacks in the breakroom or cafeteria.
Approach these changes as a team. Everyone should see their coworkers or supervisors participating in the same activities and practices. They should also feel encouraged to open up about what aspects of their position is causing them issues, so that they can be addressed. This is only possible if every individual feels comfortable within the company.
Embrace change. Don’t try to solve existing problems with the same solutions every year. Try new things to help positively affect your company culture. Consider rethinking your corporate values and figure out what is beneficial and what can be improved.
The Effects of Wellness on Engagement
Less Stress
Stress is an incredibly detrimental factor on motivation and employee engagement in the workplace. And it’s one of the most prevalent issues facing both workers and companies today, with a reported 23% feeling burnt out often, and an additional 44% feeling the effects of stress sometimes. When utilized properly, things like stress management classes and chair massages can help prevent these burnouts. Encouraging seated stretching exercises or planning walking meetings can have marked results.
Work Relationships
Workplace loneliness is a growing issue in America and those employees without positive connections to their colleagues are much more likely to grow disenfranchised and lose motivation to work. Loneliness also has a significant negative effect on mental and physical health. By finding ways to encourage social interaction within the office, you can help develop new supportive relationships. Consider setting up fitness groups and planning activities that encourage teamwork or group participation, such as walking challenges.
Mental and Physical Wellbeing
No one can be fully engaged and productive while dealing with complications with their mental and emotional health. By addressing mental healthcare in wellness initiatives and activities, employers can help bolster their employees emotionally and breakdown the barriers and stigmas that often surround and hinder the conversation about mental health.
The same applies to their physical health, as well. Sleep habits, nutrition, and exercise are all well known to have a strong effect on mood. It follows that someone who doesn’t feel great at work isn’t going to perform great, either. By providing educational resources on nutrition or exercise, you can help promote healthier habits.
Personal Improvement
The feeling of staticness or being stuck professionally can have a profoundly adverse effect on an employee’s sense of accomplishment. Without the ability to improve, it’s difficult for anyone to imagine a future at their company. By including some form of development system for your employees, you can provide a means of personal growth. Offering the ability to gain professional designations is a great start, but you can also offer classes on personal finances and other means of self-improvement.
Strengthened Morale
Company morale is one of the more complex issues related to an employees overall wellness. It can be affected by any number of other factors depending on the individual in question. However, low morale has a universal and compounding negative effect on engagement. By improving overall company culture and working to create an open and comfortable office environment, you can boost morale over time. This increased morale will help create more engaged employees, but also lead to increased future retention.
There are no automatic paths to fixing a lack of engagement, but it’s important to remember that the goal is to improve the lives of everyone within your company. By developing a system that promotes healthy habits and self-improvement, you’ll find that people are more likely to be productive and to come to work in a positive mood and spread that positivity to their co-workers.
