Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an organizational buzzword for the past decade, as consumers increasingly hold company’s accountable for their social and environmental footprint.
While the core of CSR applies to multiple stakeholders and the organization’s effects at large, there draws the question of an organization’s responsibility to its employees – particularly and specifically, to employee health.
According to Payscale, in aggregating total employee time spent at work over a 50 year time span, employees spend an average of thirteen years and two months of their lives at work. On a micro level, with an average workday of eight hours, there is a tremendous amount of day-to-day time spent working.
With all the time dedicated to work, happy and healthy employees should be one of the top priorities for organizations – yet only 69% of organization’s with over 50 employees offer corporate wellness programs (RAND Corp.) and many of these programs solely focus on short term employee well-being.
The issue with short term programming is that they simply put bandaids on greater underlying issues. Implementing holistic corporate wellness programming that focuses on both short term and long term health benefits (such as mindfulness meditation) is key to developing a happier and healthier workforce.
While current organizational models are far from fully committing to employees, as people continue to spend more and more time at work it’s important to hold corporation’s accountable for their impact and responsibility to employees.
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