Workplace Wellness is Tied to Productivity – Part II

A Gemisode™ Series – Part II

As highlighted in Part I, workplace wellness is a crucial aspect of overall well-being, and organizations that fail to prioritize workplace wellness often experience significant impacts on productivity, innovation, revenue growth, retention, and workplace culture. Companies with strong cultures are more profitable because they understand the importance of investing in workplace wellness as an ongoing effort. By doing so, they reap benefits such as higher productivity, engagement, retention rates, and better customer satisfaction.

If you’re looking for insights on how to optimize for wellness and productivity, we’ve got you covered…

1. Assess Yourself: Know where you are to know where you can go. Assess well-being determinants for your organization through surveys, focus groups, and policy and practice reviews to understand the needs and concerns of employees, identify potential stressors and barriers to workplace wellness, and determine what investments are (or are not) possible.

2. Provide Mental Health Education and Training: Embed mental health education into your culture, seek partnerships with qualified mental health experts to provide training to employees, managers, and leaders around stress management, speaking up, developing coping skills, and identifying and reporting mental health concerns. Why? According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), every $1 USD invested in mental health education and training yields a return of $4 USD in improved health and productivity.

3. Comprehensive Benefit and Health Wellness Programs: Provide programs that are inclusive and expensive, designed to support all communities represented in your workforce. Ensure that your programs are inclusive of non-traditional therapy methods, and your provider network is expansive and equipped to support the intersectional identities of the communities represented in your workforce. Keep in mind that user adoption may be low if systems are cumbersome.

4. Align Organizational Values to Support Employee Wellness: Promote life-work balance, create policies that allow for flexible work arrangements, such as telecommuting and flexible scheduling, encourage open, honest, and kind communication and feedback, recognize, and communicate the importance of mental health and wellness in the workplace, and demonstrate stated values by exiting toxic employees and leaders.

5. Establish KPIs for Business and Leader Performance: Prioritize employee wellness by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to metrics such as employee engagement and retention rates, absenteeism and presenteeism rates, and the effectiveness of mental health programs and resources. Leaders can also be evaluated on their ability to promote a culture of support and understanding around mental health needs and address mental health concerns in the workplace. Organizations that prioritize employee wellness and track related key performance indicators (KPIs) experience significant benefits.

6. Lead by Example: Leaders can set the tone for a supportive culture around workplace wellness by modeling the behaviors they expect and leading by example. To support workplace wellness, leaders can take time off to address mental health needs, highlight and encourage the use of available resources, and, if comfortable doing so, share their own experiences of using wellness resources. Additionally, providing anonymous methods to report unsupportive behaviors can contribute to creating a safe and supportive environment,

In summary, when you optimize for wellness, you optimize for productivity. When you take care of your employees, they will take care of you, your customers, and your shareholders so it’s not only the responsible choice but also a strategic one that yields long-term benefits for everyone involved.