The quickest path to increased productivity comes from focusing on health & wellness.
For generations, the health & wellness industries have grown exponentially every year.
With the rise of technology, and the ready access to information globally, the health & wellness industries are continuing to expand rapidly.
Despite this, people around the world are more unhealthy than ever before, and they’re facing more serious diseases and health crises than previously seen.
Stress, and in direct correlation, exhaustion and burnout are on the rise, and their effects are impacting the productivity of every organisation.
It is estimated that stress and burnout cost business around US$1 Trillion per year. The most alarming part of this figure is that it’s likely only the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated that almost 50% of stress and burnout occurrence is never reported. The true cost of this unwellness epidemic therefore remains unknown.
What is it costing your business?
Almost every workplace is suffering, but what is it costing you?
While every organisation is unique, there are a number of common themes arising:
- Almost 60% of employed adults do not believe they are working productively most of the time.
- Managers with direct reports are more stressed than those without direct reports.
- More than 40% of workers believe that poor leadership is the most stressful part of their job, and will seek to change their employment.
- More than 40% of workers believe that they feel a lot of ‘negative energy’ in the workplace, and will seek to change their employment.
- Over half of all workers believe that change and complexity at work is correlated with job dissatisfaction and more frequent, high levels of stress at work.
Do you know what your employees really feel about working for you?
There is often a big gap between how the senior leaders believe their employees feel and the reality of those feelings.
With the overload of information in the public domain, it’s easy to see how it’s become normal to believe that the world is stressful now, and that every workplace reflects this. But the reality is that people now feel that they’re on a ‘fast track’ to dying young and they’re priming themselves to jump ship.
It’s no longer enough to manage the mental health of your organisation. If you want different results, then you have to step up and start leading!
Stress, exhaustion and burnout are realities now. They can’t be managed anymore; they now require true leadership to role model a completely different way of being.
That starts with you committing to a focus of health and wellness in your organisation, from the top down.
Understanding the value of health and wellness to your organisation, and then infusing that value throughout the organisation, is critical. It involves role modelling its importance from your most senior leaders right throughout the organisation.
It also involves pinpointing where your organisation’s health and wellness issues actually lie. Ask your workforce to give you these answers – they’re unique individuals and collectively they’ll give you the information you need.
Individual problems can’t be addressed with group-focused solutions.
One of the hardest aspects of providing health and wellness solutions within your organisation is that your workforce is made up of unique individuals. They all have their own stressors, reactions, filters and coping mechanisms. They’re all experiencing different levels of stress and are coping with different situations in their home life, too. The result: each individual can be at very different stages within their own individual health and wellness journey.
Group-focused training rarely touches the surface in an individual’s life. They need tools and activities that provide them with solutions that assist them. Stress and burnout have moved on, and generic basics no longer meet the grade.
How can you change the way you move forward?
The best way forward is to create a bespoke wellness plan that is as unique as the people you have working for you.
So how do you do this – without it breaking the bank and being a distraction from the every day purpose of your business’s existence?
Start with creating an organisational health and wellness plan. Tailor it to the needs of your organisation and include it as a significant part of your strategic business plan.
Invest in your wellness plan at all levels of the organisation. This includes:
- Representation at board level.
- Regular reporting against specified metrics at board level.
- Appropriate research.
- Employee engagement.
- Employee participation.
Ultimately, you have to genuinely believe that a health and wellness program is right for your organisation. Doing anything in a half-hearted and/or half-committed way will create even further discontent and discord amongst your employees.
Need more before you can create your health and wellness plan?
Every organisation is different, so they need unique and tailor-made solutions to suit their requirements.
If you’re confident in putting together your plan but need a framework to work within, then the ‘Organisational Health & Wellness Planning Kit’ is a great solution for you. You can purchase yours by clicking here.
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