64 HEALTH AND WELLBEING
TAKING AN INDIVIDUAL APPROACH ‘One size doesn’t fit all’ when it comes to the issue of wellbeing in the workplace.
The conference’s panel of experts spoke of the need for individual, tailored support for people and the importance of open communication and conversations. For those conversations to happen ‘safe spaces’ are required.
Delegates also heard that a healthy, happy workforce will deliver more for businesses, but that wellbeing isn’t just about productivity.
Dave Scholes is founder of Six Connections,
launched in 2020 as a legacy for mental health change
The big change we have seen over last
18 months is that it is not one size fits all.
A lot of businesses put things in place with the right intentions but have now recognised that everybody walks through the door on a Monday morning in a different place.
Something that might work for one person might not be the solution for others. People are trying to be more creative with their thought process. And they are starting to ask questions rather than assuming what the answers are.
The topic of mental health still makes people nervous. As a business, if you are trying to get people into a room to break down the whole stigma of mental health, the hardest thing is to get people into the room.
Our work is around normalising the whole topic of mental health, bringing it into the everyday conversations you have about football, family and everything else in between.
We also help businesses create the space for those conversations to take place so that individuals within that business can understand
a little bit more how to look after themselves and at the same time be in a position to support someone else. We can all support the people around us if we can understand where we are at and where they are as well.
If you’ve got healthy people turning up to work on Monday morning, they are going to be present in your workspace and delivering in your workspace.
Sometimes things we bring to work on Monday morning have nothing to do with work at all. The bigger picture is about supporting people and their families, it is around how we connect with the people around us.
Lee Chambers is founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing
Over the past year we’ve found it has become less about
reducing sickness and absence rates and more about support in retaining and attracting talent. That has become a real driver and a more positive way of bringing health and wellbeing in as an entry point.
You can measure the impact of health and wellbeing - you can see it from a performance perspective directly. Then there is the knock-on effect of people that are not in a good place, in
terms of errors in work, in client relationships and in relationships with fellow employees.
Sometimes we need to take a step back and realise it is not just about pure productivity, it’s the quality of life for a business and the people within it.
The arc is moving towards individual tailored packages. We are in quite challenging times and there are quite a few companies where the first budgets to go are training and wellbeing, those development needs.
That’s a mistake as these things are often not the quickest to have an impact. But over time they have a significant impact on the culture of an organisation. Longer-term benefits can’t be generated if we have a short-term view.
People have been through different things. Every employee will have had a very different experience of Covid. Some will have found the flexibility and the freedom liberating, others will have struggled incredibly and still might not have expressed what they have been through.
From our research, what we are seeing this year is that psychological distress is going to come to the fore. This is very much the year to invest in different pillars of wellbeing and to do that in a strategic way, so there is something there when people need it.
It is also knowing that different people have different needs. And it is not just HR, wellbeing is everyone.
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