You have a duty of care to your employees, and you can set policies and procedures to help improve their health and wellbeing, both inside and outside of the workplace.
In this post we’ll outline why employee health and wellbeing matters, along with some of the benefits of prioritising employee wellbeing. We’ll also explore some key areas to focus on, along with some tips on how you can help your employees live their best lives, at work and at home.
For more information about how we can help you and your business, call us on 020 8290 9080 or email business@anthonyjones.com.
Why Employee Health and Wellbeing Matters
Healthier and happier employees tend to be more productive, more invested in their work, and less likely to miss work due to illness and other reasons.
Research shows that, because employee wellbeing schemes can reduce absenteeism while raising productivity, any business that invests in its employees can see significant improvements to their bottom line.
One study found that businesses with employee wellbeing initiatives report:
- 18% higher productivity
- 23% greater profitability
- 81% decrease in absenteeism
Improving your workplace culture could also help reduce staff turnover, while making recruitment much easier should you ever need to hire.
Key Areas to Focus on to Improve Employee Health and Wellbeing
- Physical health
- Mental health
- Health and safety in the workplace
- Working environment
- Lifestyle
- Financial wellbeing
Below we will outline how you might help your employees with each of these aspects of their health and wellbeing.
Physical Health
- Provide healthcare cover as part of your employee benefits package. This could include cover for eye tests and dental care. You could also allow employees to add their family members to the scheme.
- Introduce schemes to help your employees stay physically active. This could include subsidised gym memberships, cycle to work schemes, organised lunchtime walks, company sport teams, and matched donations to charity runs and other events.
- You could also help your staff to eat healthy. You could provide free fruit and water in the workplace, encourage people to share recipes, and organise occasional health “fuddles”, where everyone brings in some healthy food to share with the rest of the team.
Mental Health
- Remember that there are strong links between physical health and mental health. The initiatives we listed above could help your employees strengthen their mental health as well as their physical health.
- Encourage conversations, and go for an “open door policy”. Employees should feel like they can talk to you about anything, at any time.
- Make the Mind Mental Health at Work Commitment. This is a pledge to maintain six key mental health at work standards, and a suite of resources to help you achieve your goals.
Read our full guide to mental health in the workplace. We also have a guide to managing mental health and stress for fleet drivers.
Health and Safety in the Workplace
- Perform a thorough risk assessment for your workplace. Outline all of the key risks, along with who is most likely to be affected by these risks, and the likelihood of each individual risk.
- Devise a plan, once you have completed your initial risk assessment, to plan how you will manage, mitigate, or eliminate each risk.
- Remember that risk management is not a one-and-done thing. You should periodically revisit and review your risk management policies, which will help you respond to any new or emerging risks.
Read our guide to writing a risk assessment. We also have a specialist guide to fleet risk management.
Working Environment
- Your workplace risk assessment should help you identify, and remove, all hazards in the workplace. But you should also consider environmental factors, such as the noise and light levels, and the air quality.
- Also consider the temperature. Though there is no law defining the maximum or minimum workplace temperature, HSE does stress the importance of “thermal comfort”. Read our full guide to maintaining a healthy workplace temperature here.
- Think about how you can make the workplace environment a more pleasant place to be. This could be something as simple as filling the place with plants, or inviting employees to choose some artwork for the walls.
Lifestyle
- Think of ways you could support your employees’ work/life balance. This could be with flexible working arrangements, time off in lieu, job sharing opportunities, and so on.
- Invest in training and development, and give employees a clear idea of how they could advance in their role.
- Consider how you might enable your employees to pursue their interests. Provide paid leave for volunteering, and offer sabbaticals for any employee who wants to spend time in further training or education.
Financial Wellbeing
- Open conversation, as we mentioned above, is important so employees can feel like they can talk to you about anything that might be troubling them, including their finances.
- Offer training and support on savings, budgeting, investing, and any other areas where employees might need support.
- You could also invest in a financial wellbeing platform, to allow employees to keep tabs on their spending and saving.
Get Tailored Support From Anthony Jones
Steve Blackmore, Director at Anthony Jones says:
“There are significant benefits for any business that invests in its employees’ health and wellbeing. But this isn’t the sort of thing you can achieve overnight. It’s a long-term, ongoing commitment to building a more positive and supportive workplace culture.
“At Anthony Jones, we can support you with some aspects of your employee wellbeing plan, through advising on a dedicated risk assessment for your workplace. We can also show you how to evidence your risk management procedures to your insurers, which may help you make a saving on the cost of cover.”
For more information about how we can help you and your business, call us on 020 8290 9080 or email business@anthonyjones.com.
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