At ethOs, we’re all about employee wellbeing. We believe your company culture doesn’t create great employee experiences; your employee’s individual experiences create the collective company culture. If your culture needs a lift, it’s very likely your employees do, too.
When we help clients create great places to work, we focus on what exceptional employee experiences means to their own workforce. Employees who feel seen, valued, and encouraged in the workplace are also more likely to be loyal, productive, engaged with their colleagues, and eager to see the company succeed.
It’s important to acknowledge that the experiences employees have when they’re not at work still considerably influence their ability to focus when they’re working. Challenges and stress felt at home are also felt at work, causing:
- Increased distraction
- Illness
- Emotional strain
That’s why employers have more recently incorporated wellness initiatives alongside their more traditional benefit offerings like health insurance and retirement plans.
Unfortunately, corporate-sponsored wellness programs usually focus only on physical health through strategies for improving nutrition, exercise, and sleep habits. While these can all be beneficial, research proves a holistic sense of wellbeing is the most effective.
Building a Life Well-Lived
Through years of researching people from around the globe, Gallup has identified five important elements of wellbeing needed for humans to live their best lives. The “Five Essential Elements of Wellbeing,” are consistent among people found to be living a life they enjoy across continents, countries, and cultures. Gallup asked individuals what a “life well-lived” means, and the happiest and healthiest respondents felt fulfilled in five general areas.
- Career Wellbeing: This is as simple as liking what they do every day.
- Social Wellbeing: They have strong relationships and feel a sense of belonging and love.
- Financial Wellbeing: They are economically stable and can manage their finances.
- Physical Wellbeing: They are not experiencing ongoing illness and have the energy to do various things every day.
- Community Wellbeing: They are involved with the people and places where they live.
While each of these elements is meaningful on its own, the people researchers identified as thriving felt fulfilled in all five. Therefore, wellness programs that only encourage physical wellness are not addressing struggles that may be felt within the four other areas.
Challenging the Traditional Wellness Program
When we understand there are five areas needed for a person to feel happy, healthy, and energized for life, it becomes logical for leaders to consider how they can expand support resources for a customized approach. An employee could be extremely healthy in one area of wellbeing and be distressed by and preoccupied with another, creating barriers for career and performance improvements.
Imagine a coworker named Josh who prioritizes a well-balanced diet and exercise. Josh looks physically fit and arrives to work on time, dressed to impress, and always smiles with his colleagues and clients.
Behind the scenes, Josh is in debt and consistently behind on loan payments and utility bills. Anxious about his financial situation, he works a second job four nights a week, meaning he’s exhausted most of the week. Because of his busy schedule, he has very little time for family and friends who now feel he doesn’t make time for them. He feels overwhelmed and worries constantly about paying his bills and disappointing his loved ones but puts on a happy face every day because he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s dealing with a crisis.
People are struggling with challenges like this every day. Research shows that even though 66% of individuals report they’re thriving in at least one of the areas essential to wellbeing, only 7% are thriving in all five of them. What’s more, Gallup compared U.S. adults who were thriving in all five areas with adults who were only thriving in physical wellbeing and found that the latter are:
- 68% more absent from work annually due to poor health
- 3x more likely to file a workers’ compensation claim
- 5x more likely to seek new employment within the next year
- 2x+ more likely to change employment
In contrast, Gallup reports that employees who believe their employer is supportive of their overall wellbeing compared to those who don’t, are:
- 69% less likely to actively search for a new job
- 71% less likely to report burnout
- 3x more likely to engage at work
This research proves how important it is for employers to focus on supporting whole-health wellbeing for improving employee engagement, productivity, and a healthy workplace culture.
Transition to an Overall Wellbeing Focus
The distinction between wellness and wellbeing highlights our team’s mission as employee experience experts: helping our clients support employees in the five elements of wellbeing.
Supporting wellbeing also accounts for how multigenerational demographics play a significant role in the health and wellness of your workforce. Think about your own life through the decades — what did you value most in your twenties? Maybe you were working to find the “right” job, considering the next step for your relationship, or saving up to buy your first home. What about your mid-30s? Maybe there’s a new marriage or kids in your life, you started leadership trainings, or even discovered that what you thought you wanted for a career wasn’t the right fit. As many of us transition into our 40s and 50s, we’re sending our kids off into adulthood while finding that aging parents need a lot more help, and much more of our time, than we expected.
The importance of understanding the diversity of your workforce, including current life challenges, is key to determining how you can offer the support they need to succeed.
Unleash the Power of Employee Wellbeing
We’ve found the key to understanding how you can improve your employee wellbeing is conducting research and listening to your employees at every level of your organization.
What we learn from asking the right questions and providing a safe space for honest answers helps identify the resources that companies are already providing and areas for additional support opportunities. Only then will your support for employee wellbeing be strategic, on-target, and productive for your budget and ideal culture.
Need help? That’s what we do! We’d love to work alongside you and your team to create a workplace focused on the power of wellbeing. Reach out today!