Six ways to boost employee wellbeing

Employees are undeniably the most valuable asset a business can have, playing a critical role in driving success and fostering growth. Ensuring their well-being is not just a responsibility but a strategic imperative. We explore effective strategies to prioritise and continuously improve the state of employee well-being, creating a healthier, more engaged workforce.

Psychologists define wellbeing as the combination of feeling good and functioning well. It’s the experience of positive emotions such as happiness and contentment, developing your potential, having some control over your life, having a sense of purpose, and experiencing positive relationships.

You may think this is an employee’s responsibility to manage, but employers are primarily responsible for determining their employees’ life circumstances and emotional states. For example:

• How much you value an employee affects their self-esteem
• How much pressure you put an employee under affects their stress levels
• How much time you give an employee outside of work affects their capacity to exercise and rest
• How much you pay an employee affects their financial security and ability to provide for dependents

Getting these areas right is vital if you want your workforce to feel happy and content. It may have a positive knock-on effect on decreasing absenteeism, increasing retention and engagement, promoting career satisfaction, and improving your company’s overall reputation.

So, what steps can employers take to boost workplace wellbeing?

1.     Hire enough staff to cover workloads

When employees have unmanageably high workloads, they may rush, produce poorer-quality work, and feel under pressure to work additional hours.

According to research from HR software provider Ciphr, the average UK employee works just over three extra hours per week more than they are contracted and paid for.

This adds up to 18 days of unpaid overtime a year, which Ciphr estimates to adds up to an unpaid £2,356 worth of labour per year for a full-time worker on a £33,000 annual salary.

Legally speaking, this is bad news, as it means many employers are potentially violating Working Time Regulations and minimum wage laws.

Working overtime is especially common in SMEs where employees tend to undertake multiple responsibilities. However, prolonged unpaid and unappreciated overtime can lead to resentment and affect employees’ perceptions of the business.

“Unpaid overtime could also result in working time issues if employees are, for example, not getting sufficient breaks. Poor morale and fatigue are also possible knock-on effects which might lead to businesses finding it difficult to retain employees,” says Alan Price, Chief Executive Officer at BrightHR, regarding the survey’s results.

Ensuring employees stick to their allotted working and resting hours protects their health, safety, and wellbeing. The best way to do this is to ensure you have enough staff to cover the level of work your business requires.

But recruiting and training more staff comes at a cost. It may be cheaper and more efficient to reduce workloads by outsourcing administrative work, like customer service representation and diary management.

2.     Promote a work-life balance

Giving employees enough time to rest, recharge, and do what they want with their lives is key to making them feel happier and more productive.

As an employer, you have a duty to encourage staff to take their entitled time away from work. Familiarise yourself with UK rest breaks at work laws and ensure your organisation meets these at a minimum.

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Some staff may worry that taking breaks and days off hinders their chances for progression. Unfortunately, this culture is formed from the top – if staff see managers working through lunch or while on holiday, it shows that that’s what it takes to get promoted in their workplace.

So, ensure senior leadership enjoy a healthy work-life balance, too, by leaving the office on time, taking breaks, and not contacting workers outside of office hours.

3.     Ensure fair compensation

Uncertainty around money and affording living costs is a leading cause of stress and anxiety. According to a survey of 6,000 UK adults by the Mental Health Foundation, 32% have felt anxious within the past two weeks over being able to pay their bills.

Living with this stress can make it hard to focus on daily tasks or enjoy life, especially when it causes physical symptoms like headaches, sleepless nights, and high blood pressure.

As an employer, you are responsible for paying staff a fair living wage and a competitive market rate.

People often want to leave their jobs when they find out they’re not getting paid enough. A new survey report from Boston Consulting Group asked 11,000 employees from eight countries (US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, and India) the reasons they would leave a company to take a new job. Pay and compensation topped the list, with 63% selecting it, more than double any of the other options, including work-life balance, doing work that I enjoy and better career opportunities.

While regular raises and bonuses go a long way to boost people’s morale, other financial benefits may be more cost-effective for your business.

For example, sharing educational resources or financial workshops can help people make the most of their salaries and plan for a more secure future.

You can also offer employees interest-free loans to give them a lower-cost means of borrowing than a costly payday loan.

Childcare also takes up a significant chunk of parents’ salaries. Not all companies can provide a workplace crèche, but you can consider offering a childcare salary sacrifice scheme to make it more affordable.

Travel costs add up significantly, too, with the average commuter spending £17.23 a day to commute to and from work, according to a 2022 YouGov survey of 2,119 UK adults. A car scheme, subsidised season tickets, and a cycle-to-work scheme can help your employees manage this expense. It may also motivate more staff to be present in the workplace and form stronger connections with their colleagues.

4.     Provide a supportive work environment

The atmosphere of a workplace often influences an employee’s mindset. You can create a positive environment by promoting honest communication and helping employees feel comfortable and safe.

Respect and empathy between all colleagues, regardless of hierarchy, helps employees feel understood and valued. Managers should lead by example by taking an interest in people’s projects, asking if there’s anything they can do to support them, and congratulating them when they succeed.

Leaders who communicate frequently with their teams are more aware of who’s overloaded and who has more capacity and can distribute workloads more fairly. They also provide better feedback to staff as they have greater insight into their strengths and the areas they need to work on.

All these attributes contribute to a more supportive and compassionate workplace that helps improve employee wellbeing.

5.     Use an Employee Assistance Programme

It can be hard, and sometimes inappropriate, for employees to express their worries to those they work with. When an employee needs to talk to an impartial professional about their wellbeing, your business can provide a confidential support service called an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), such as Health Assured or Wellbeing Solutions.

These give employees access to counsellors and resources to help them cope with work and personal problems, such as unmanageable stress, relationship issues, and bereavement. Getting support is free and immediate, and employees don’t need a GP referral or to join any NHS waiting lists.

This gives employees an outlet to address struggles without impacting their workplace reputation. Remind employees frequently that this resource is available to them whenever they need it.

6.     As a bonus: introduce wellness perks

Once you’ve sorted the above essentials, consider these benefits to encourage employees to take initiative for their own health and wellbeing.

• Health insurance and cash plans
• Gym memberships and discounts
• Running clubs, yoga classes, five-a-side football
• Healthy, balanced snacks and drinks in the workplace
• Non-alcoholic options at company social events
• An annual leave purchase scheme
• Train a member of staff to become a Mental Health First Aider
• Book guest workshops on nutrition, sleep hygiene, and stress management
• Form an employee social committee to organise events for staff to connect informally

How to ensure continuous improvement

Offer employees an opportunity to give feedback on their workplace wellbeing to see what you need to work on and whether your initiatives have been effective. The best way to do this is through regular anonymous employee sentiment surveys. You can use a service to help you track this data over time, such as HiBob or Culture Amp, or you could do it yourself with a Google Form.

Listen to their feedback and openly share how your organisation intends to make reasonable changes to improve. This will help employees feel heard and valued.

Also, keep track of other HR data. See how factors like redundancies, retention, absences and productivity change over time and note if there are any correlations – for example, are there more absences during periods of high pressure? Are many employees taking leave simultaneously, leaving working staff overloaded? Use this data to indicate changes you can make to improve working conditions.

Your checklist for improving employee wellbeing

Here’s your quick checklist to ensure you’re doing everything you can to make your employees feel happy and content at work. Save it and come back to it whenever you need.

• Hire enough staff to cover workloads: outsource administrative work or telephone answering
• Promote a work-life balance: senior leadership should lead by example
• Ensure fair compensation: offer financial benefits, like subsidised childcare and travel costs
• Provide a supportive environment: leaders should have regular contact with their teams to understand their needs
• Use an Employee Assistance Programme: remind employees it’s free, confidential support
• Introduce wellness benefits: encourage employees to take initiative

Thank you for reading.