There is a particular cognitive dissonance that employers face in regards to employees. When it comes to the physical health and mental wellbeing of our loved ones, we are prone to take great care and go to any measure to help where we can. There is an old-world ethos, however, in which employees are treated as assets rather than people. It is to counteract this disparity that you should be thinking about starting a wellness program for your employees.
It is not only the ethical and morally correct thing to do but also a prudent business decision. There are merely innumerable studies showing that employee satisfaction is directly correlated with a sense of feeling valued.
Fostering A Sense Of Appreciation
Minor displays do not as quickly appease employees as you may think. For an individual who has put in 100% to receive a ‘thank you’ card can easily be interpreted as an afterthought. This result demotivates employees and leads to a measurable decrease in productivity. Therefore careful consideration should be invested when rewarding an employee.
Motivating Company-Wide Incentivised Activities
Now you may be thinking, how does a company-wide incentive program to foster employee wellness act as a better motivator to an individual than direct recognition? The answer lies in the doctrine of social psychology. Individual employees do still identify themselves as members of staff, and particularly as members of their division.
Unifying Incentivised Departments
By incentivising an entire team with a spa day or team building activity, you not only actively contribute to the physical and emotional wellbeing of the individual but solidify the bond between these individuals who most likely spend the majority of their working hours in close proximity. This is proven to bring people working together in the same departments closer and even promote professional friendships.
Encouraging Physical Health
While this may seem a costly investment, depending on the scale of your business, it may be one of the best measures you can take to increase employee satisfaction and productivity. Exercise is known to enhance cognitive function and elevate mood. The payoff is that your staff will not only be at their most productive but also contribute to a positive working environment.
One of the additional considerations you must take before installing an office gym is to have locker rooms. This might sound like a tremendous undertaking, but you can connect two showers in the bathrooms and have a locking cabinet to serve as lockers.
Strengthening Employee Mental Health
The idea of an in house counsellor is all good and well, but rarely effective when delegated the role of assisting employees with matters pertaining exclusively to work situations. Should you be able to provide a counselling service that caters to the personal emotional and mental health needs of your staff, you will easily foster an environment of trust and decreased conflict.
Ethically it is non-negotiable that you allow every member of staff a non-disclosure agreement with the said counsellor and that information that they do share by making use of this service remains strictly confidential between the counsellor and individual. Crossing this line in terms of making any enquiry regarding communication between an employee and counsellor is a criminal offence.
