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Employee wellbeing is one of the hottest topics in HR – but what’s often missing is tangible steps for businesses to take.
Supporting team members health (both mental and physical) is hardly a straightforward task, and it can get expensive. With that in mind, here are three easy, low-cost ways to improve the wellbeing of your team members.
Watch our video on this topic HERE!
Offer Flexible Schedules
One of the easiest and most common ways to improve employee wellbeing is to offer flexible schedules. In today’s day and age, many jobs can be completed anywhere you have internet access. A lot of work can be completed any time of day, too.
You can offer as little or as much flexibility as you want. You could allow people to choose their own start and stop times for work. Alternatively, you can establish some “core working hours” to ensure teams can still collaborate, then allow teams to complete the rest of their work any time they like.
With remote work, you don’t have to take an all-or-nothing approach – many teams are satisfied with hybrid options to split the week.
Let Employees Own Their Work – And Their Process
Another great way to support employee wellbeing is to let employees control how they work. The reality is that for many tasks, there are multiple ways to successfully handle the issue. By empowering employees to make their own decisions and use their discretion, you actually lower their stress and improve their performance on the job.
If you want employees to own their results, you have to let them own their process too. Unless there’s a problem with the results of an employee’s process, it pays to let them get the job done how they see fit.
Encourage Managers to Support Employees’ Personal Needs
Several studies have indicated that team members with managers who accommodated their family needs were healthier, had a better work-life blend, and performed better on the job. Furthermore, these individuals were more likely to be retained long-term.
Managers should strive to be accommodating when team members have to handle family emergencies, pick up or drop off kids at school, etc. The key is to make sure it’s not getting in the way of business results, serving the client or other key goals, as unfortunately flexibility is sometimes abused.
