How to Stop Paying Lip Service to Employee Wellness

Employee wellness has been a buzz term for a while now, with many companies touting wellness perks like mindfulness programs, free flowing spa water, onsite yoga classes, and standing desks as a way to attract new talent.

And don’t get me wrong – these are all great programs. It’s a worker’s market out there – your company needs to pull out all the stops to attract and retain great employees.

But as an expert who advises companies on their HR strategy, too often I find employee wellness is treated like “ticking the boxes”. The benefits of your employee wellness programs quickly fall apart if you’re not paying attention to the basics, like effective leadership, clear communication, and manageable workloads.

Sure, Kale Smoothie Day might be a great hook to attract health-conscious A+ employees. But once they’re hired, what type of workplace culture are they actually going to experience?

Are your employee wellness programs simply hype, and have you set expectations too high? How long until the honeymoon wears off, and that star employee finds themselves overloaded, unproductive, and desperately searching for a new job?

Get Back to the Basics and Focus on your Culture

Employee wellness programs only work long-term if they are backed up by a strong corporate culture, and true care for an employee’s wellbeing.

A pre-pandemic survey from Gallup highlighted the cost of employee burnout, focusing on five key factors, all of which are under management purview.

Those factors are:

1. Unfair treatment at work
2. Unmanageable workload
3. Lack of role clarity
4. Lack of communication and support from their manager
5. Unreasonable time pressure

And the pandemic put even more pressure on businesses and workers.

If your employees were honest, how would they rate your company on these factors? Are they getting support from their manager, and your organization?

What We’ve Got Here is a Failure to Communicate

This famous line uttered in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke is one that most of us have heard, even if we haven’t seen the movie. It’s a good one – the words are spoken by a prison captain who communicates only top-down.

His idea of communication was “my way or the highway”. That’s one way to manage a business.

Some employees will respond to a top-down approach. But your work is not a prison – your people are free to leave for a better environment.

If your communication is only top-down, and you’re not giving your employees the freedom to act independently, speak up, share a different opinion or idea, and collaborate with you to improve workplace wellness, then you might find them desperately tunneling to escape.

Do You Have a Retention Crisis Brewing at Your Workplace?

If you’re experiencing a retention crisis, you need to know why. And you need to fix it.

It’s critical to open up a dialogue with your employees to find out what’s really happening.

You need to:

• Take a hard look at your company culture, and ensure your recruitment promises match reality.
• Work with your managers to ensure they are living your company’s visions and values.
• Develop and promote the importance of continuous feedback and effective performance feedback. 
• Take a deep dive into your compensation, wellness and benefits plan.
• Focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives (DEI).
• Prioritize vacation time and mental health supports.

You need to get back to basics.

Employee wellness programs are merely band-aids over an open wound if your organization is in a retention crisis.

HR Professionals: Put Employee Wellness Centre Stage with a Complete HR Diagnostic Review

A comprehensive, holistic HR Review sets the groundwork to rebuild your HR strategy/ people plan and focus on what really matters to your organization, and to your employees.

Unless you truly understand your gaps, weaknesses and threats, align your HR strategy to your company vision, and communicate that vision clearly and consistently, you will continue to apply band-aids to your workplace wellness challenges.

You need to take a 360° approach to employee wellbeing from hiring and onboarding, to employee experience, total benefits packages, management training and succession planning.

Great organizations do this right. They infuse their culture into every step of the HR process, creating an incredible employee experience.  Wellness programs are not just employee perks, they are integrated into every interaction, activity or program throughout the entire company.

You can’t promote your workplace as an employee-centric company with a superior wellness focus if you don’t allow your employees downtime (including on weekends), if you require immediate responses to every email always, if employee opinions don’t matter, and employees don’t feel supported by their managers.

Not Sure Where to Begin?

Download our handy tip sheet below, or reach out to People+Culture Matters for a free consultation.  We are here to help you get it right.

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