by Greig Rightford, Strategy & Development, HealthFit Collective.
It’s a stoic philosophy, to see every obstacle as an opportunity, but even to a pessimist, there is some truth in this. If humans did not have challenges in life, I fail to see how we learn and develop into retrospective people who can help others. It’s the same in the modern day work environment, the very reason we have growing absenteeism, stress or depression is because things are out of balance, and it's life’s way of letting us know that we need to do something about it.
Most responsible employers understand this and know they need to do something but don’t know where to start or what to do. Well there are a few simple big hitters that work, no matter what environment you are trying to shape.
Many of you out there would be surprised to find just how few employers have a wellbeing plan for their staff. While a growing number are getting compliance on the safety aspects, many are stopping there and not focusing on keeping the people around them healthy and happy.
Why is this a big deal?
It’s a fatal flaw because being compliant does not mean you’re being preventative and you can guarantee that psychological and physiological disorders will occur over time.
The key to forming any plan is to ensure you know what objectives you have for your staff. Quite often, creating a health committee to do this is smart as it represents the wants and needs of staff and reduces confirmation bias. Key performance indicators can be determined and do not need to be overly complex and abundant but rather simple and effective.
Do not underestimate the potential of your people and what they can contribute to the plan. Leverage internal relationships so that staff can help influence others around them ensuring that engagement is its optimum.
The great thing is that most of the measures suggested above are not expensive and ensure people within your workplace are engaged in the process. At some point however, drawing on knowledge of industry experts can save a fortune in unfocused expenditure.
Subject matter experts can help develop a strategy into a highly effective plan that gets results. Experts can include diagnostics and reporting back to management so that a plan becomes even more focused toward getting people healthy.
Bespoke Nature of our Engagements
We help many of our clientele create and modify their workplace health strategies to ensure we have a truly customised approach to each workplace. We help these workplaces decide on what key performance indicators matter to them. This means we are able to create more effective interventions that address what the workplace actually needs versus what people think it needs - this eliminates any confirmation bias.
Concerned about your workplace? Ask us for a call HERE.