The recipe is simple, for a thriving business, you need thriving employees. In this article, we explore why employee health and wellbeing matters to a business. Yet more importantly, why it should matter to management.
It’s been said that success at work leads to happiness, however we now know that this model is flawed. Because although success can bring happiness, to create great work, the employees’ health, wellbeing and happiness is the most important factor.
For a business, it’s always important to have those who work for you to be fit, healthy and happy. This is done through creating a work culture that promotes health through all aspects of their lives. Since most people spend most of their adult life at work, it’s no surprise that they want to be happy.
Underlining the importance of health will help employees is important. There is no doubt that placing an emphasis on employee health and wellbeing contributes heavily to an employee’s overall engagement within the business. Promoting health is no longer seen as an initiative that yields ‘soft’ results. Instead, health promotion ensures that your staff actually want and like to be at work. Over time, this has a drastic effect on the businesses performance. Often health improves many areas of the business. Areas that not only improve production, but make money.
Continue reading below to find out more reasons why businesses should care more about employee health and wellbeing and how it can benefit everyone.
Lower turnover
For a thriving business, you need thriving employees. So it’s no surprise that when an employee is thriving, engaged and enjoying their work, they’re less likely to look for another job.
When it comes to running a business, turnover should worry you. This is because turnover can only mean negative effects on a business. When staff members quit, there are a few reactions that can take place in a business. Firstly, work doesn’t get done, leading to clients potentially being left waiting and/or their work being placed further down the list of importance.
The next pain that comes from turnovers is the cost of hiring somebody new. This can be unexpectedly pricey for a business, especially when there can sometimes be a shortage of talent, in the local talent pool. This can make for a long time to find the best person. If, like many other businesses, you cant find the best person, you’ll have to settle. This means hiring someone who can only do parts of the job, then training them up.
So from here, it’s true that a work culture with more engaged employees are less likely to observe regular employee turnover. Prompting businesses to want the happiest people as possible in the office.
Image: rawpixel.com
More productive and hard working
As an employer, employee health and wellbeing does more than just making them happy at work. It’s proven that promoting health at work can make an employee more productive, too.
Happier and healthier employees are shown to regularly outperform those who are in organisations which do not promote health and wellbeing. This is important to note, because for a long time, management believed investing in employee health schemes to be a waste of money, yielding little rewards for the business.
In recent years, this has changed. Through people like Richard Branson, Bill Gates and other influential figures advocating corporate health and happiness, health has become a more widely accepted part of the corporate culture. However, beyond this anecdotal evidence, studies are showing that the healthier your employees, the more productive and harder working they become.
This can be confirmed through a number of measurements and studies. For example, the Queens School of Business and the Gallup Organization found that absenteeism, workplace accidents and errors go up when employees are disengaged. From this, it’s reasonable to assume that through the greater health of employees, these issues would lessen.
“Take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business” – Richard Branson
Bottom line benefits
As we’ve stated previously, it was once thought that promoting health didn’t necessarily add to the bottom line. However, we now know this to be false. Research shows that there is a new trend in business, today. A trend that says good health is good business. When it comes to the bottom line, few tactics is as beneficial as implementing a health scheme. Proving that employee health and wellbeing can improve the businesses ROI, all businesses could benefit. So go beyond just healthy eating tips with your team, and create a whole program.
Thickening out the bottom line is generally what most businesses want. And given that most employees want to be healthy and happy at work, it appears to be a win-win situation. Still, there are many businesses that don’t implement health into their business.
In Summary
A large part of adding value to your employees comes from their engagement within the company. Providing employees value and a culture that supports them mentally and physically is vital whilst getting the best work from them. This can come through many employee engagement tactics, including paying for employee’s to upskill, providing a nice place to eat or by implementing health schemes.
Because implementing powerful employee health and wellbeing schemes into the workforce can bolster the bottom line, improve general employee engagement and afford you less turnover. It’s fair to say that the health and happiness of your employees matter. Remember, providing value is what you do as a company. Allow your employees the same courtesy and watch them flourish as they find more meaning in their work.
