Phone
01798 890 021Phone
01798 890 021At a conference I attended recently, I heard an HR Director speak about how their organisation had fully embraced the importance of wellbeing, and how they had created a diverse and inclusive ‘wellbeing strategy’ to enhance the health and wellness of their staff. I wanted to share some of their insights and successes with you here, as an example of a well-managed approach to creating a wellbeing strategy.
A ‘wellbeing strategy’ is a comprehensive plan designed to promote the health, happiness and overall wellbeing of staff within an organisation. It typically will encompass a range of initiatives, policies and practices, aimed at supporting employees across various aspects of their lives, including their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing.
There are a number of beneficial reasons behind why an organisation might want to invest time and energy into creating a wellbeing strategy.
At a basic level, it can positively support employee engagement and productivity – because when your staff feel valued and supported, they are likely to be more motivated to perform at their best. It can also help to foster a positive organisational culture, improving collaboration, encouraging creativity and even helping to attract high level talent to your organisation. And of course, there are legal factors as well, as all employers have an obligation to ensure the health and safety of their employees.
According to ‘Great Place to Work’, a great employee wellbeing strategy is rooted in data, and is built on an understanding of the current sense of wellbeing at work, and any gaps in this experience.
During the recent talk I attended, the HR Director laid out the steps they took to create, roll out and evaluate their wellbeing strategy.
They ensured that their wellbeing strategy and approach aligned with their organisational values. One of their core values was ‘experience freedom’, and this was at the heart of their strategy, as they wanted employees to feel free to be themselves.
They also linked this value into their diversity and inclusion policy and practices, as they wanted to ensure accessibility and inclusion for all employees.
With this in mind, they did the following:
Following further research and internal discussions, the organisation then looked at rolling out a number of key wellbeing initiatives to support their current workforce and their needs.
These included the following:
The organisation also spent some time considering how to support their staff through their approach to flexible working and interactions between management and employees.
For further support on this topic, you can read our blog about Flexible Working Legislation here.
To support general day to day working, and encourage good conversations between management and staff, 1:1 formats were switched around to be led by employees rather than management-led. The organisation also moved to a more hybrid working approach.
Employees are able to ‘dress for the day’, depending on their responsibilities and tasks, and even taking into account weather conditions. Visitors to the organisation are advised that there is a more casual dress approach, so that they don’t feel conspicuous and over-dressed.
With the assistance of all of their initiatives, the platforms available to them and the insights from the D&I Steering Committee, the organisation created a yearly calendar of regular events covering a variety of topics. Furthermore, quarterly ‘cheers awards’ were introduced to recognise staff successes and positive contributions for those that reflected behaviours in line with the organisational values.
Finally, an annual reward statement was given to all employees to remind them of the wealth of wellbeing resources, services, support and benefits they had access to.
Once you have successfully rolled out a wellbeing strategy, it’s important to gather feedback on the effectiveness of the initiatives you have in place, and identify any areas of improvement.
To measure if they met their objective of making their staff feel more included, the organisation implemented an annual survey to monitor the ongoing success of their wellbeing strategy.
In their most recent employee survey, 74% of employees said they felt included and respected, and 80% of employees said they felt they could be themselves at work.
If you’re ready to get started with implementing your own organisational wellbeing strategy, we can support you.
Here at Metro HR, we’re well-versed in how to successfully and efficiently implement wellbeing initiatives, policies and practices. If you’d like to discuss receiving our help and expert guidance through the process, book in now for a free 30-minute consultation.
We’ll review what you have in place already and help you to determine the next step forward. We’ll also talk through how we could support you and some options for working together.
Click the button below to book your call now:
Responsive site designed and developed by
