Now, more than ever, the health and wellbeing of your workforce is considered one of the most crucial elements towards a successful company and let’s not forget, it’s also morally imperative.
After all, happy employees are going to, in turn, be more efficient and productive, so it begs the question:,why aren’t more businesses finding new, innovative ways to enhance their health and wellbeing strategy?
According to Mates In Mind, sickness absence costs companies £8.4 billion every year, but presenteeism is a more costly issue, accounting for 1.5 times the cost of absenteeism.
In other words, if your only focus is for your people to come to work, as opposed to actually enjoying themselves at work, you could have a health and wellbeing crisis just around the corner. So, with this in mind, here’s how to leverage the capability of an HR system to transform your outdated processes and reinvent employee wellness.
Why is employee wellbeing important?
As seen, the wellness of your employees can have a monumental effect on the overall attendance of your organisation, but it can also have a corresponding impact on other important elements such as productivity, morale and retention.
According to an in-depth CIPD study of more than 1000 HR professionals, senior leaders who take employee health and wellbeing seriously enjoy a healthier and more inclusive culture (35%) while experiencing lower staff sickness (31%).
The study delved further into every aspect of the workplace and identified that workplace mental health awareness has increased from 31% in 2016 to 51% in 2018. While no doubt, this is a promising sign, there is still an ever-present gap which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Employees who carry more stress on their shoulders, are continually run down and disillusioned will not only disrupt the morale of the organisation but ultimately affect the company’s bottom line. So, as an HR professional, how could you develop your employee health and wellbeing strategy via HR software?
- Create and maintain higher employee morale
- Prevent employee burnout
- Provide ample learning and development opportunities
- Reduce the damaging trend of presenteeism
- Improve productivity and reach higher employee retention.
Allow employees to switch off
As HR professionals know, technology isn’t just evolving the workplace, it’s also having a major impact on our personal lives. This is shown as the CIPD reported an astonishing 87% of HR practitioners reported that the most common negative effect is an inability to switch off outside of work hours.
This trend outlines the misalignment between people’s work and domestic responsibilities, which may see employees bringing their personal issues and emotions back into the office. It’s HR’s role to be aware of the complexity of people’s lives and understand when is the right time to intervene.
With HR software by your side, you’ll be able to efficiently monitor your employee’s working hours, targets, absences and annual leave. Thus, being able to outline any excessive overtime and spot unrealistic goals set by line managers, presenting HR with valuable information to understand the employees who may need to take personal time off.
To enable your employees to switch off outside of working hours, cloud technology like Natural HR, integrates industry leading applications such as Slack and Workvivo to encourage more of an informal approach to collaboration and communication, discouraging employees from logging onto their work email outside of work hours.
Ease anxiety
Especially in today’s current situation, mental health is a common buzzword and it’s no wonder why. Research conducted by Raconteur found that 1 in 3 of the UK workforce have been formally diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point.
To add to this distressing matter, it has been identified that 1 in 10 people are likely to have a disabling anxiety disorder at some point within our lives. If you do the maths, this equates to 6.6 million people, which is likely to include multiple people within your workforce.
As an HR professional, it’s becoming increasingly important to understand how to deal with mental health issues like anxiety, but it’s not a matter you can prepare for unless you’ve experienced the issue first hand.
With Natural HR, features like the employee pulse can be used to provide staff members with a platform to express their emotions and feelings every day of the week. This is presented through three faces expressing different emotions, one sad, one indifferent and one happy. Employees can click on these faces, include a message and inform HR about their current situation without having to do the dreaded knock on the door and formal one-to-one discussion.
Improve employee morale
According to Forbes, highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability with 89% of workers at organisations that support well-being initiatives, more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work.
These statistics show the direct impact employee morale has on a person’s wellbeing but the success of a company. In using HR software, companies will be able to touch every single employee in your business, from managers and executives to apprentices and the newest member of your team, helping to boost employee morale from the off.
Natural HR comes with an integrated social stream – built for employees to share, collaborate and celebrates each other’s success, ensuring everyone is rewarded with the right recognition for their contribution. In addition, HR are presented with the ability to give their team a voice by distributing engagement surveys and gathering feedback to gain actionable data based on your employees’ morale.
Keep employees focused
In a recent report by the CIPD, it was revealed that 88% of high-performing learning organisations ensure there is a communication plan in place for all key stakeholders and that 91% of them have a learning and development strategy that is fully aligned with the strategic goals of the organisation.
Training is an essential factor for boosting workforce morale; when employees are learning new skills, they feel great and ultimately develop as an individual. Throughout the years, research has highlighted that the more engaged an employee is, the stronger their mental wellbeing will be. From HR’s perspective, it’s crucial that employees know they can improve their skills and learn to perform different tasks to further their career.
In using HR software, you’ll be able to oversee the whole learning and development cycle – from the first initial training course to compiling feedback related to the training, helping to progress an employee’s professional development.
Providing the right rewards
The majority of global employers have health promotion strategies and according to Ho, an estimated 70% of employers provide wellness programmes to their workforce. This tactic enables employers to cater for personal needs and is a fantastic way to promote good health behaviours in the workplace.
Research has shown that workplace wellness programmes help create a win-win situation for organisations with the Harvard Business Review stating, 79% of employees who participated in a health and wellness program said they were extremely satisfied with the innovation. To boot, the study found employees who participated in the venture were more likely to stay with the company compared to non-participants.
If your company offers any form of benefits or wellness perks such as gym memberships, discount on health equipment and free healthy food options, an HR system can be used to provide a 24/7 total reward statement that efficiently communicates the value of an employee’s total benefits package.
