“It is not mung beans and gym membership” *
Health and wellbeing good practice encompasses a wide range of issues and focus areas, taking it much broader than just encouraging healthy eating and physical fitness.
In fact, research has found that employers consider health and wellbeing to cover issues such as stress, security and morale.
A key determinant of people’s wellbeing and at the heart of health and wellbeing is how well people are managed and supported. The role that line managers and teams play in providing this to employees, particularly in today’s changing climate, is therefore extremely important.
“Employers are becoming increasingly aware of the performance benefits of investing in the health and wellbeing of their people. There are strong links with improving employee engagement. In the current economic climate, companies need to adapt and be innovative. Health and wellbeing programmes are proving to be very effective at helping organisations gain the buy-in of their employees, maintain their commitment and build their resilience.” Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work
The Benefits
By imbedding good health and wellbeing practices, overall performance improvement can be encouraged rather than just minimising sickness and injury. Indeed, having a health and wellbeing programme in place can support a culture of happy and healthy employees, in turn providing improved productivity, attendance and motivation.
Recent research from PriceWaterhouseCoopers has also found that for every £1 an organisation invests in health and wellbeing, they could see a return of over £4 due to benefits such as reduced sickness and improved productivity – a statistic which highlights the importance of encouraging happy and healthy employees.
| Health & Wellbeing Improves | Health & Wellbeing Reduces |
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“All enterprises seek to be in a healthy state. If their employees are in a good state of health and wellbeing that must surely contribute to successful performance.” Miles Templeman, the Director General of the IOD (2006)
Next Steps
At idg, we are passionate about making a difference and committed to supporting organisations in exploring health and wellbeing as a strategy for performance improvement.
From working with you to define your health and wellbeing strategy and designing and delivering management development to support it, through to looking at practical ways to measure the impact and encourage continuous improvement, we can help.
As the Investors in People Centre for the North of England, we can also work with you to engage with and be assessed against the Health & Wellbeing Good Practice Award from Investors in People.
If you want to focus on health and wellbeing within your organisation to improve employee engagement and overall performance, please get in touch to find out more.
You can also find out more about workplace wellbeing and the business case for adopting health and wellbeing strategies from Dr Ian Kenvyn in our short video below.
As programme leader for Workplace Wellbeing at Leeds Trinity University, Dr Kenvyn’s background is in Higher Education, Employer Engagement and Management. He has been involved in the development of workplace wellbeing skills for champions in a range of industries, with recent experience including the NHS, financial and third sector providers.
* Black Report review group member