Your employee well-being is critical to your business well-being. To give your best, you have to be at your best, and while healthy and motivated employees can have a positive impact on the productivity and effectiveness of a business, the opposite is also true.
Here are eight sure-fire ways to boost your team’s well-being;
- Place employee well-being on the business agenda. Have a well-being strategy that shows you value and care for your employees, in and outside the workplace. Individuals are not just looking for the highest salary or the biggest bonus on offer — they’re looking for businesses who can help them achieve a work-life balance, leaders who care about what’s going on in the inside (their emotions) as well as the outside (their productivity).
- Unlock a motivational environment and understand your people’s personal goals, and how being successful at work can be one of the vehicles and enablers in helping them realize their goals. The moment we create the bridge in their mind — the link between their personal goals, business goals, and what they do daily during work — self-motivation kicks in. This is the defining moment when a person changes from someone with a job to someone with a purpose.
- The urban myth that says the more hours you work, the more you will get done is simply that, a myth. In reality, the more hours you work, the less productive you become. Why? Because we all need quality downtime, and with 24/7 connectivity, it’s tough to switch off completely. Put in place stricter after-hours work policies, such as no emails before 8.00 a.m. or after 6.00 p.m,. or limited or no weekend working, will ensure it’s not just an add on, but a fundamental part of your culture. Downtime is vital to an individual’s well-being. And in fact, some of our best thinking will be done in the quiet space of downtime, when we’re relaxed, and at peace. Don’t allow these moments to be compromised.
- Give your people access to gym memberships, weekly meditation or yoga classes, place fruit baskets around the office and working space to promote healthy eating. When you understand your people’s health and happiness is not a luxury, but it’s the energy source powering their performance, you place their emotional well-being on an equal footing to their physical well-being. When it’s low, their performance is low, which has both a short and long-term impact on the business.
- Take a good look at your working environment — is it clean, tidy, and minimalist or cluttered, messy, and disorganised? Our internal environment (mindset, thinking, and actions) will only ever be a reflection of our external environment. A cluttered office equals a cluttered mind!
- Ensure your people treat “appointments” in their personal lives with even more urgency and importance as they do business meetings. Children’s sports day, Christmas nativity play, special birthdays — all those occasions and times you can never get back. Don’t let work be the reason it was missed as the employee loyalty account will start to erode.
- Empower your people to say NO to the unimportant things, so they have more time to say YES to the important and value-added things. Sometimes we end up being so busy because we’ve said so many “yes”s that we’ve actually stopped being productive. Show you value your people’s time by enabling them to say no. No to meetings for meeting’s sake, no to emails after 6.00 p.m. (see #2), no to emails full-stop when a quick five-minute phone call will nail it. If you show your people you value their time, they will too.
- Promote the 8 x 8 rule. Drink 8 x 8-ounce glasses of water a day to keep hydrated. Water helps transport nutrients giving you energy and keeping you healthy. If you’re not hydrated, your body can’t perform at its highest level. You may feel tired, have muscle cramps or dizziness.
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