How to Improve Your Employees' Wellbeing
Employee wellbeing is an important part of every business. By looking after employees, businesses create a greater sense of employee loyalty which means they’re more likely to stay. Businesses can then benefit from employees’ skillsets for longer and not have to go through lengthy hiring processes to replace their best employees. Here’s a few suggestions on how to improve your employees' wellbeing.
How to Improve Your Employees' Wellbeing
Jeremy Bourhis
Employee wellbeing is an important part of every business. By looking after employees, businesses create a greater sense of employee loyalty which means they’re more likely to stay. Businesses can then benefit from employees’ skillsets for longer and not have to go through lengthy hiring processes to replace their best employees.
But how do you improve employee wellbeing? What steps can you take? Here’s a few suggestions.
Automate simple tasks
It’s estimated that businesses lose as much as $13,000 per year per employee thanks to tasks that can be automated but aren’t. These tasks often appear small but quickly add up to significant financial costs.
From meeting room bookings to booking paid time off, the more simple tasks you allow employees to automate, the more time they have to get things done. This means they’re more productive and your business grows faster as a result.
Connect their schedules
Keeping several schedules up to date is a pain. The more of them an employee has, the more likely they are to double book themselves. While this isn’t intentional, it can cause all sorts of issues.
Connecting employees’ schedules to booking software of any kind ensures that when someone books a meeting with them, they’re definitely free. There’s no room for human error, nor appointments that are listed in the wrong calendar being left out when working out someone’s availability.
Listen to them
Whether it’s employees listening to their bosses or bosses listening to their employees, great listening is a two-way exchange of information.
When employees passively listen to their manager, tasks get missed or confused.
When managers don’t listen to their employees, it can result in frustrations for team members and a high employee churn rate.
Encourage them to take a break
Sitting at a desk, staring at a screen all day isn’t good for our minds or bodies.
Encourage your employees to take a break and get some fresh air at least during their lunch break. Even just a short walk can be good exercise and, by taking a break, they may even solve a problem that’s been bothering them for a few days.
Go for a walk
Steve Jobs was a big fan of walking meetings. That’s because walking has been proven to help jog creativity.
Going on a set route also means that a meeting has a clear end, stopping it from overrunning and interfering with time that could be spent on other tasks.
Walking meetings are also a great form of exercise and gives everyone’s eyes a break from looking at a screen, too.
Only do meetings when they’re 100% necessary
It’s so easy for meetings to go off on a tangent and end up running over. But the thing is, most meetings aren’t even necessary.
Instead of falling into the trap of unnecessary meetings, make sure that each meeting has a clear purpose. Stick to the time allotted to it, and pencil something in afterwards so that you can’t overrun.
Some problems are a lot easier to fix and don’t require large amounts of time blocked off in someone’s calendar.
Don’t expect them to take their work home
It’s estimated that as much as 43% of employees take their work home with them. What’s worse is that this is often expected of them.
While sometimes there are unavoidable deadlines, expecting employees to take their work home with them every night is unrealistic.
Employees need downtime. They need time to themselves, time to spend with their family, and time to socialise. All these things improve an employee’s mental health and mean they’ll perform better at work.
Putting unrealistic or unhealthy deadlines onto employees, on the other hand, creates unhappy and disengaged employees. They then won’t stay as long – they may not even complete the onboarding process – meaning that hiring for certain roles becomes a regular (and expensive) process.
Conclusion
All of these tasks add up to make employees more productive, more relaxed, and happier in their roles. This makes them more engaged, and this engagement has all sorts of benefits for employees and employers alike. From a greater feeling of purpose to a stronger employer brand, happier employees means a better experience for everyone.
