In the same way that you now have ‘new normal’ ways of working; new ways to have meetings, new routines and new expectations; you also have new employee wellbeing challenges to tackle. This means your wellbeing strategy is possibly redundant, or at least not delivering the benefits you have hoped for.
These new times require new thinking.
At the height of the pandemic in 2020 Damien Barr wrote a poem which said,
“We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat.”
We are all still learning about our new world, there are no ‘experts’ in it yet. And whilst research from the ONS and CIPD starts to offer insight into the challenges people are experiencing at work and home in this pandemic;
- 19% of adults were likely to be experiencing some form of depression during the pandemic, almost double the proportion (10%) from before the pandemic
- 45% of workers were anxious about returning to work.
- 44% of people say social connections at work have worsened;
the poem reminds us, our teams are people all in different boats, so the only way to understand is to ask them. Listening has just become your biggest tool to success.
The Pandemic has brought health and wellbeing to the fore; with 7-in-10 reporting that their line manager has checked in on their health and wellbeing since the start of the pandemic and a majority of workers are satisfied with their organisation’s response during the pandemic (69%) and agree that their employers have been supportive (67%) (CIPD, 2020); let’s keep it there.
You have an opportunity to break bad habits and build better cultures. If you haven’t looked at how to adapt and improve your Wellbeing Strategy yet, or you don’t have one, now is the time to do the work.
4 considerations to future proof your wellbeing strategy:
- Stop guessing and start listening
Run surveys and/or focus groups that will give you the full picture on wellbeing. Give your people a voice, and listen! Not only is this beneficial in empowering your teams, but will lead to better outcomes, and avoid you spending money on things that your people don’t care about.
- Treat your people like individuals
Approach wellbeing on an individual needs basis. Give people choice and targeted support rather than delivering all wellbeing as blanket activities.
- Communication is king
Having effective ways to share health and wellbeing information so messages don’t get lost in to do lists, ignored or never passed on is the key stage where many businesses fail, especially where teams are spread out (such as working from home). More than three-fifths (62%) of workers who haven’t felt adequately consulted are anxious about returning to the workplace – this drops to 42% for those who have been adequately consulted. (CIPD, 2020)
- Leaders lead by example
When it comes to culture there is nothing more powerful than your leaders and managers. These relationships are fundamental to your wellbeing strategy working or not.Leaders are the stewards of organisational energy [resilience]…they inspire or demoralise others, first by how effectively they manage their own energy and next by how well they manage, focus, invest and renew the collective energy [resilience] of those they lead’ (Loehr and Schwartz 2003).