A Gallup report reveals that more than 76% of employees are facing stress and burnout, so it is an issue that organizations must urgently address. But normally when talking about taking care of employees' well-being, many organizations often think that just providing comprehensive medical treatment benefits should be sufficient. But from the above statistics, it is clear that taking care of physical health alone may no longer be enough, because even if physical health is good but mental state is terrible, it would be difficult to make employees have complete well-being and work efficiently. Therefore, paying attention to employees' life in other aspects such as providing mental health counseling, creating good work atmosphere and society at work to be livable is important. And what role can the organization play to make employees happy with their work until wanting to stay together for a long time.
How Employee Wellness Program is good for employees and the organization
Increases Productivity
Poor health and stress are one of the main causes of low Productivity. Promoting Employee Wellness in the workplace helps change habits for employees to pay more attention to their own health, and when employees have good health, it will result in having better concentration and motivation to perform their roles and responsibilities better.
Increases Employee Engagement
Employee Wellness makes employees work efficiently, have motivation to work, and have more participation, because when employees feel they are cared for, they often feel attached to the organization and want to dedicate themselves to work better to reciprocate the organization's care.
Reduces medical expenses
Of course, organizations that support employees to maintain good health and well-being will reduce medical expenses, because employees with good health and happiness will have less chance of getting sick than, making health costs for both employees and the organization decrease. In addition, emphasizing preventive care is also a more effective method than paying treatment costs later, because it helps save both money and time in the long term.
Reduces leave days
Does everyone know that small illnesses like stomach disease, colds, fevers, headaches are the main reasons that make people absent from work, so if employees have good health, absences from work that occur from these causes can be avoided, and of course will send work to continue without interruption.
How to create Employee Wellness at work
Find causes that create stress
If we don't understand the root of the problem, it will be difficult to fix it. The first thing the organization can do to take care of employees' mental health is to find what factors at work cause employees to have stress.
Stress at work has many causes, and some causes are easier to fix than other causes. For example, if the problem comes from an office that is not conducive to work, adjusting lighting, changing to use Ergonomic chairs, arranging new desks to not be narrow cubicles might help. But if the problem is employees don't get along with the boss, it may require more delicate problem-solving methods.
Other causes that create stress among employees include:
- Boredom or work that is not challenging, or the organization has no Dynamic
- Spending too much time on work, not Working Smart
- Feeling lack of freedom in work, boss just points and commands
- Equipment or environment at work is not quality
- Lack of opportunities for advancement or promotion (Career Growth)
- Job insecurity
Support physical health care
Nothing indicates maintaining health better than exercising. This is why many organizations are starting to have activities that promote physical health within the company to stimulate and help employees move their bodies more, whether it's playing yoga in the office to changing to use height-adjustable desks for employees to change to stand and work sometimes occasionally. But if it's not convenient to do activities in the office, the organization can always support employees to access external activities, such as giving monthly fitness benefits or Vouchers for exercise classes they are interested in. Like Ngern Tidlor itself focuses especially on employees' health, by promoting exercise activities for employees to choose to join, such as NTL CLUB activity or various sports clubs, and this year we have organized TIDLOR RUN activity that encourages employees to join running 10 km. (total accumulated distance to convert to donation money), and also has vaccine procurement, health check-up programs, and various health insurance that differ according to each employee's body condition, or at Accenture that supports employees to exercise more by giving discounts on both onsite and online fitness packages, and also rewarding employees who successfully achieve the health goals they set for themselves.
Organize mental health care programs for employeesInvesting in programs that focus specifically on mental health is definitely a worthwhile investment, because from an Alfac report, a major American health insurance company, revealed that 70% of employees who registered for mental health care programs at work were more satisfied with work compared to employees who did not register.
Taking care of mental health can be done in many ways, for example, having employees pair up in a buddy system to exchange talk and support each other, giving leave days to go take care of one's own mental health separate from sick leave, including organizing workshops for employees to practice managing stress by themselves, such as Journaling or meditating. An example from Ngern Tid Lor PLC is organizing the Hotline Care Line activity that gives employees the opportunity to call to consult with psychologists about problems or concerns they have about work, and Microsoft that has the Microsoft CARES program to provide counseling with employees facing personal problems or family problems, ready to give advice for stress management.
Organize fun activities to energize employees
Having employees do fun activities together whether it's creating a room for playing games, going on Outings not related to work, or organizing parties at work occasionally, are all ways that help employees relax and have interactions with colleagues outside of work time. Having fun times in the office is an important part in creating a balanced atmosphere and not too stressful, and also makes employees feel they are part of the work society that is not just sitting working at computer screens and then going home, such as every year Ngern Tidlor will organize NTL Culture BootCamp activity for employees from all departments, which will be an activity that is both fun and strengthens relationships between employees, or going big like Yahoo! that has employees divide into teams to do Food Truck Challenge by doing everything from thinking of team names, designing logos, thinking of menus, making food with their own hands, to decorating food trucks.
Have a reward system
Rewarding when the team does work well will make the team have more motivation to work, both increasing work efficiency and reducing stress at the same time. The rewards given don't necessarily have to be something big, depending on how much budget the company has and how much Impact the work has. If the work has a lot of Impact on the organization, it should receive a big reward to be commensurate. If it's small work, it might give one extra leave day or coffee shop discount card to be encouragement for work, such as at Zappos, an Amazon subsidiary company, will have a peer-to-peer reward system between employees themselves called Coworker Bonus Program where employees can give bonuses to colleagues they see deserve to receive once a month of 50 US dollars.
Summary
The success of an organization arises from many factors, but the most important thing is 'people' in the organization. Therefore, the important key to making our employees able to work at full efficiency is paying attention to taking care of both employees' physical and mental health to make the organization a place worth working at and happy. Therefore, must say that Employee Wellness is not just additional benefits that are just trendy anymore, but is an important matter that every organization must fulfill for employees.
If you want to learn more about methods of taking care of employees' well-being, come join TIDLOR Culture Wow and exchange learning about values with NTLers.
Interested contact 02-792-1990 or fill in information here to wait for a callback from Culture GangsterSource:
https://www.actiplans.com/blog/employee-well-beinghttps://www.loophealth.com/post/why-health-and-wellness-is-important-for-employees
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/288539/employee-burnout-biggest-myth.aspx
https://www.meetreflect.com/blog/5-ways-to-improve-employee-wellbeing/
https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/companies-good-wellness-programs
https://recognizeapp.com/cms/articles/companies-with-the-best-employee-recognition-programs
https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/team-building-methods/