These ideas may help a provider, employer, practitioner or volunteer champion sense check any plan they might have in order to get management support for a new initiative. I’ve been in consulting since 1992 and have consulted with many international companies on a range of various transformation projects. I’ve also been involved at delivering workplace wellbeing programmes using Transcendental Meditation over the past 5 years, so I thought I would share my ideas of what I think is needed in this article. I’ve never seen a Workplace Wellbeing Strategy document so I thought I would have a go at laying out what I would like to see. These are just my ideas, please send any comments.
1. Approach a workplace strategy from the perception of the employee.
The key foundation of any wellbeing strategy of a business is to come at it from the perception of the employee. Any strategy developed based on top down goals will fail. Any programme that is in essence advising employees on their health by its very nature must be a caring service. There will be business imperatives such as the ‘Great Resignation’, staff absences, staff turnover and lack of staff retention that you may wish to present. You could be tempted to build a strategy around them. If you attempt to do this then you are reinforcing the sceptical view that employees sometimes have of their employer as just being out for themselves.
2. Only a bottoms up strategy is going to work.
It is essential that early discovery processes are led by a wellbeing expert with experience of delivering wellbeing programmes. A meditation teacher, nutritionist, psychotherapist or lifestyle doctor would have the shop floor credibility to engage with employees. There are a number of different ways a bottom up approach could start.
In a strategy document come at things from the perspective of the employee using their own words. They will talk about wanting career progress, being healthier, being fitter, losing weight, improving libido, and also about overcoming life changes like the menopause, coping with job responsibilities, bereavement, threat of job loss, stress, boredom, management by fear, disruptive shift word, lack of consultation, lack of engagement etc.
2. Not an Employee Survey
It is important to engage employees at the earliest stage, and you need their views. However, when staff hear the term Employee Survey they tend to groan because it’s a classic employer ‘tick-in-the-box’ approach to applying a band-aid to a problem. It may be that employees have many ideas already and that a clear solution based on common sense could be a better approach. Another approach would be to position a programme as a request for ideas and solutions, or a sharing of experience and concerns. Don’t do something that’s is called an Employee Survey!
3. Create a Social Media Channel
Using your existing or a new enterprise social network – Yammer, MS Teams, Facebook Workplace hosted by an external workplace wellbeing expert you can introduce a social media posting schedule that will illicit a response. These could be short videos on a wellbeing concept, self-help lists, self-help posts, polls and competitions. This will enable requirements and solutions to be collated organically. It lacks the perceived vigour and pseudo-scientific accuracy of the employee survey, but it’s a much more nurturing approach and essential to start the process of ‘business change’ that your workplace wellbeing strategy will need.
4. Focus Groups
This might come after the first wave of discovery and it is a useful way of testing ideas & ‘propositions’ that emerge from your discovery process. Invite a small group of say 6-7 team members from across your business with a range of seniorities and disciplines. With everybody’s permission video the session. The language used by contributors will be useful to explain certain topics and video vignettes could form part of a strategy pitch that might follow. You have to give an undertaking that no video or verbatim comments will be used without the consent of the contributor, and that only the named members of the project team will see the videos. When you launch your initiative you have to promise that no individual idea, comment or other contribution will be shared without their express permission.
5. Collate current common sense ideas
Until you have been working with a company for over 3 months, I don’t think an outside consultant would be prudent to make personal recommendations. So much needs to be known about a company before you can act like an executive of that company.
The best way to identify key elements of change is to talk to a company’s management, executives, shop floor, customers and partners. This interaction will provide many ideas, broken down in a number of different ‘propositions’.
6. Build a business case
In order to build a business case you will have to work with an internal project team to refine the propositions into a prioritised list of business requirements. This list can then be used for further drill down into the company’s operations and derive the value of each idea in terms of revenue enhancement and or cost reduction. Each idea must then be evaluated for it’s business case and the benefit would be weighted by the likelihood that the proposition would be successful and the benefits would be realised. The weighted list of benefits can then by used to work out the Return on Investment of the project.
Typical business case elements could include looking at bottoms-up ideas from the perspective of company objectives – these can be benefits such as increased revenue or reduction in cost.
Example business case benefits of reducing staff turnover
- More attractive workplace improves staff recruitment
- Reduced recruitment fees for the replacement staff
- Cost of replacement induction
- Reduction of costs related the time the recruit takes to come up to speed
- Reducing the risk of the new hire
- Reducing the loss of know-how, loss of relationships with customers, & partners
7. Emphasise the benefits to employees
The fundamental issue with a wellbeing strategy is to make the approach employee centric. The strategy needs to talk in terms that will find rapport with the staff that the strategy is intended to benefit.
Unless the employee benefits from a programme then the company will not either. Only a programme which implements features in a caring, thoughtful, friendly and feeling way will find resonance at the level of the employee.
The importance of both physical and mential wellbeing is important. But, also there may be a need to give staff the ability to cope with challenging change issues at work such as a recent acquisition or merger.
There are important benefits from wellbeing programmes that may difficult to measure such as happiness at work. Happy workers are motivated, more naturally good leaders, and also loyal. So looking at a benefit in a granular way helps identify the business benefits for the employer.
8. Include a focus on the development of ‘Inner’ wellbeing
A wellness programme must focus on the inner values of wellbeing – we need to talk about how by lowering levels of stress for an employee we can bring out emotions such as caring, compassion and a desire to coach. To ‘move the dial’ at developing these ‘inner values’ there ideally needs to be a meditation element to every programme.
9. Address any business management cultural issues
Any wellbeing programme will have work harder in a stressful management environment to show results. So launch any wellbeing programme to the management first as a pilot. This will then give management team members confidence and the vocabulary to talk about what they have experienced and recommend it to the rest of the team.
10. Include in any plan the development of ‘Soft Skills’
Any strategy project must include an inventory of life and workplace skills. If team members are struggling in life in general then a wellbeing programme benefits will not be fully realised.
Example Relevant Soft Skills
- Stress management
- Time management
- Delegation
- Communication
- Financial wellbeing
- Handling bullying
- Managing your manager
I hope these ideas may have been of help. Good luck with getting investment for your programme. Any ideas and comments please get in touch at andrew@wwaeurope.com
Andrew Wilmot
Chair Workplace Wellbeing Association
www.wwaeurope.com
