Employee Wellbeing: Non-Negotiable For Workplace Culture

The organizations that prioritize wellbeing experience a distinctive edge over their industry peers

Wellbeing has occupied mindshare of people and featured consistently in most conversations across the globe during the last couple of years. While the world is rife with discussions around wellness, there is a need to reconsider if there is enough action around it. As per a recent report released by the Global Wellness institute, the current workplace wellness spends cover only around 10.2% working population and India does not feature among the Top 20 markets that contribute to around 85% of the total global spending. This provides an irreplaceable opportunity for Indian corporates to take the lead and be proactive about making employee wellbeing an integral part of their business strategy.

The organizations that prioritize wellbeing experience a distinctive edge over their industry peers. However, holistic wellbeing is not about organizing a set of activities across the year.

So, what does one do to institutionalize employee wellbeing and create a workplace culture that fosters holistic wellbeing? Best Workplaces adopt a framework-based approach to employee wellbeing.

Here is what we have learnt from our research on workplace wellness and studying what best workplaces do differently.

1. Make workplace wellness a business priority

There are six key levers that drive the culture of employee wellbeing forming the Workplace Wellness IndexTM: Responsible Leadership, Health, Supportive Managers, Sense of Community, Enabling Work Environment, Autonomy & Fulfilment. As per annual research conducted by Great Place to Work® India, organizations that keep a pulse on their Workplace Wellness IndexTM , and have incorporated employee wellbeing as an integral part of their organisation strategy experience significant business benefits.

Employees in these organisations are 3.9x more likely to continue working with their current organization for the next 3 years.

In the current context when organizations are struggling with the challenges of employee burnout, lack of psychological safety and great resignation, the focus on creating a culture of holistic wellbeing definitely provides a clear competitive advantage.

2. Leaders take ownership and role model the right behaviours

Leaders at best workplaces lead by example especially when it comes to empathy and providing an environment of psychological safety for employees.

Employees who feel they can speak up about feeling stressed or burnt out, without feeling judged are 2X more likely to feel happy, inspired, successful, and find meaning in their work.

Similar multipliers are visible in key culture indicators of a workplace viz: Advocacy, Retention, Motivation and Discretionary effort.

Simple examples like defining time zones beyond which no work calls or meetings should be scheduled, incorporating conversation about employee interests and wellbeing along with review of business numbers, normalizing mental health conversations by sharing personal experiences of experiencing stress or burnout have a huge impact on both employee engagement and productivity.

3. Personalize wellness programs and involve families:

In the current hybrid working environment, the unit has extended from the employee to the family. Organisations are looking at creative ways of involving and engaging the family members of their employees in the initiatives they conduct. There are amazing examples of how organisations have built a sense of community not just within the organisation but across families of their employees. Many benefits like medical checkups, access to doctors and counsellors cover family members as well. There have also been more conscientious polices introduced by corporates – like supporting caregivers, young mothers, providing flexibility to employees to be able to manage both work and home well etc.,

4. Enable People Managers to manage their own wellbeing and support their team:

People managers are the key pillars that bring the culture alive for an employee through their day-to-day interactions with the team members. The expectations and demands on managers have only gone up in the current business environment. Best Workplaces ensure that they enable and equip their managers to take care of their own wellbeing and also be able to support their teams.

5. Consistently track employee wellbeing and take relevant action:

We all know that what gets measured gets done. It is important to track the effectiveness of wellness programs implemented in an organisation and also seek continuous feedback from employees. Different employees have different requirements with respect to wellbeing based on their personal context and situation. The needs can also change with time. Best workplaces create an enabling environment and an ecosystem for the employees to choose what they want and when they want. They track employee wellbeing like any other business metric and are also open to reviewing and making changes as required based on the feedback they get from their people.

Well-being is not something that we should focus on only as a response to a crisis. It must be a business imperative for creating sustainable, high-performing cultures. The cost of ignoring employee wellbeing can run into trillions of dollars, but the cost of managing it does not require a huge budget. Leaders at Corporate India have the opportunity and responsibility to create an environment of genuine care in their organisations, where people feel respected and are inspired to give their personal best.