Where are we going wrong with employee wellbeing?

There is a global crisis in staff health and wellbeing right now, particularly with regards to mental health. In a year, the average UK business loses 128 working days to staff sickness, and workplace sickness costs the UK economy more than £100 billion each year.

Why are we in this situation?

Excessive stress and a lack of ability to switch off seem to be the biggest culprits. The statistics around employee stress are staggering:

When you consider that 55% of workers feel pressured to check emails outside working hours and 31% of staff say their workloads are excessive, that’s probably not surprising. Then there’s the 75% of UK employees who have experienced a toxic workplace culture – it doesn’t get much more stressful than that.

When did we stop thinking of staff as people?

Why did we start calling workers “human resources”? That set the tone, really, for treating employees as commodities to be used until they were used up.

Although organisations have had to, to a certain extent, accept that they have a responsibility to their staff’s health, the attitude towards inclusion that still pervades so many workplaces – that it’s just a load of “woke” fluff, and not relevant for serious business people – betrays the continuation of the Victorian factory owner approach to burning through a workforce. Which is why so many of them are burning out.

When we don’t see our staff as people – fully rounded individuals who are valuable and worthy of respect in themselves – then we don’t treat them as such.

It might seem more pragmatic and efficient to focus on getting the work done and hitting the targets, and expecting employees to either contribute to that or get out of the way, but it’s actually very damaging to a business’ bottom line.

In addition to the costs of staff absences mentioned above, presenteeism (staff struggling into work when they’re ill) costs UK employers around £28 billion per year. That’s because it takes them longer to get better, when they don’t take time to rest and recover, meaning that their productivity is lower for longer. Meanwhile, if their illness is contagious, they’re spreading it around the office and taking a bunch of colleagues out with them.

Productivity, performance, engagement and retention are all suffering because we don’t take care of our staff as people.

The benefits to looking after staff wellbeing

When we prioritise staff wellbeing and take care of the entire person, our organisations reap huge benefits.

Up to 70% of staff productivity can be attributed to mental wellbeing – imagine how much more effective your team could be if their mental health was being nurtured at work.

Not only that, but organisations that actively promote health and wellbeing see a 17% increase in employee retention (Gallup) and a 41% reduction in staff absences.

When staff are off sick, or when they leave because a job is impacting their wellbeing, the organisation loses out on skills, knowledge and experience, and has a gap that needs to be filled. Either existing staff need to cover the gap, adding more stress to their plates, or a costly recruitment process ensues.

We have to start to look after our staff better. The way to do this is to create cultures of inclusion – working environments that ask about and respond to the needs of all team members, that proactively look to remove barriers and issues, that encourage positive and supportive behaviours, that nurture each person’s personal development, and that foster psychological safety and work/life balance.

Inclusion really does make a difference – staff at inclusive organisations are 1.6 times less likely to say that their job impacts their wellbeing. If you want your staff to be at work, doing their best work, then you need to prioritise inclusion.

How to build cultures of inclusive wellbeing

Here are the top things to consider when building a culture that nurtures inclusion in a way that supports staff wellbeing:

  • Ask staff about their needs – understanding the barriers, challenges and issues that staff deal with is the first step to supporting your people in the way that will enable them to fulfil their potential.
  • Audit access – review what is in place to allow staff equitable access to physical spaces, digital tools and work processes.
  • Training – do your staff all understand about elements like neurodiversity and disability? Do they recognise how to support a staff struggling with mental health, or how to approach someone experiencing, for example, a bereavement? Do they know how to act as allies for one another to challenge bullying or unfair work practices? Make sure your staff all have the necessary knowledge and skills – a workplace culture is created by everyone who works there.
  • Leadership – your leadership team, in particular, need to understand how to support different types of people, how to build cultures of psychological safety, and how to respond to varied needs.
  • Legal obligations – looking after your staff’s wellbeing isn’t just the right thing to do. Disability, neurodiversity and certain health challenges are all protected by the Equality Act, under the legislative definition of disability. So failing to understand and respond to your team’s needs could have serious consequences.

If you want to learn more about creating workplaces that support staff wellbeing, email us at hello@watchthisspace.uk

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