Workplace Wellness - an integrated approach | February 1, 2006 |
‘ People are an organisation’s most valuable resource,’ is a fairly common phrase and you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with it in principle. It’s something of a truism.
Sadly, it’s also something of a cliché – an obvious idea, stated so often it becomes taken for granted by all, but practiced by few.
When it comes to workplace wellness we need to examine some of these ideas more closely…more practically.
Organisations rely on healthy workers – not just to remain competitive, but simply to function. Successful businesses ensure that their assets (technology, buildings and processes etc) are optimally profitable and maintained to perform at the most efficient capacity. Surely the same high standards should be applied to human assets. Workplaces that invest in the wellbeing of their employees are investing in their own vitality.
The organisations that flourish in today’s environment will, among other things, be those that treat the health of their workplace, or ‘workplace wellness,’ with some seriousness.
This article will give you a general introduction to wellness and outline some of the key things to keep in mind when exploring this topic in your workplace. And so you’re under no illusion, what we’ll be suggesting to you is that a comprehensive ‘wellness’ approach to workplaces is a sound business strategy.
So what is it?
Workplace wellness looks at the organisation as a whole. Just like any system, including our own body, organisations do not function properly unless they are healthy.
From this view, wellness is about much more than just a good dental plan or even an EAP programme. It extends to everything that is part of that system.
A comprehensive wellness programme can address everything from the physical environment to health and safety, work-life balance, workplace culture, conflict resolution, morale, team-development and more.
And it is inextricably linked to productivity.
A good wellness programme also promotes self-responsibility among staff – it’s not just an employer’s role. In fact, an employer’s responsibility is simply to create an environment that encourages and assists staff to maintain their wellbeing.
At Seed, we’ve defined a well workplace as one that has “strategies, policies, practices and procedures that enhance and protect the organisation, the individuals and the groups within it, so that they can achieve organisational purpose and individual well being."
An organisation-wide approach
Developing a wellness policy is a good place to begin to pull together all the programmes an organisation already has in place to help promote a positive working environment.
Most workplaces already have a number of initiatives or policies that address some of these areas, but they often operate in isolation and are held by different parts of an organisation.
Seed believes companies need a more comprehensive, organisation-wide approach, strongly connected to the wider business strategy and evaluated for its contribution to productivity. An organisation-wide approach provides greater consistency, and can also reduce costs.
The services you have in your organisation today might include initiatives covering issues such as health and safety, nutrition, employee assistance, problem solving, work-life balance and a family friendly environment. How do you tie all of these together (perhaps with some additional services) to create a cohesive wellness programme?
Seed can help by acting as your wellness consultant. Seed has the expertise required to facilitate and co-ordinate your wellness programme. We also have the capabilities to deliver some of the services provided through the programme.
We’ll help make sense of the bigger picture for you. We can advise you on your wellness strategy, and help assemble a comprehensive programme that is specific to your needs and aligned with your business strategy. Creating a ‘wellness blueprint’ with you, we’ll help design a more efficient way of operating that will ensure greater consistency in the way the overall wellbeing of your workplace is supported.
Let’s look at how this works.
Workplace Wellness – getting started
The first thing to do is identify where your organisation is currently at, and use that as a starting point. How ‘well’ is your workplace? It’s a bit like going to the doctor and beginning with a check up.
This can be done by using a range of personal and organisational health evaluations. There are plenty of tools available to help with this and we will be able to help you to identify some of the key gaps and then explore ways to address these. Once we’ve benchmarked your workplace’s wellbeing, we will present our findings to you. This initial report will also serve as a baseline for measuring progress along the way.
The next step is then to pull the various support services you need into an overall wellness programme and put it into action. As we’ve said, it may combine healthy living strategies with work-life balance policies, health services, workplace culture strategies, training and development strategies, or general work environment policies. The exact nature of your wellness programme should be tailored to suit your organisation’s unique needs.
Once you’ve launched the programme, the final component is ensuring we evaluate its effectiveness regularly, measuring this against the initial benchmark.
Finally, the responsibility for workplace wellness is something that needs to be owned jointly by an organisation and its people. Strong communication processes are the key to building a shared sense of ownership and will be vital to the success of any wellness initiatives. Seed can offer advice and assistance with this process.
In closing…
You should now have a general overview and introduction to workplace wellness but, like the opening cliché about people and organisations, understanding doesn’t produce results by itself. It must translate into activity. We can help you with this.
Please contact us if you’d like to learn more about workplace wellness or explore ways to meet the wellness needs of your workplace. We would be very happy to help.
