Why is wellbeing important?

What do we mean by ‘wellbeing’?

Wellbeing, and wellbeing in the workplace, go beyond just the concept of “wellness”, or healthy living. While these are important, wellbeing is a complex blend of the physical, psychological, social and relationship aspects of employees’ working lives. It includes factors such as their working environment and how they get on with their colleagues.[1]

Why is improving wellbeing in the workplace important?

Research has proven that the wellbeing of each individual employee can affect the performance of the:

• individual
• team(s) they work in
• team(s) they work with
• organisations

Research by Aon Hewitt in 2012 established that companies with highly engaged staff reported taking an average of 50% fewer absence days a year than those who were not.[2]  CIPD evidence in 2014 highlighted that some organisations were achieving an average of 2.9 days.

It therefore comes as no surprise that organisations benefit from improved wellbeing and should be investing in it.

What are the benefits to investing in employee wellbeing?

Recent critical research has highlighted that organisations who consciously strive to improve employee wellbeing and engagement, improve their employees’ quality of life and reduce the cost of healthcare and absence to an organisation. [3]

Dame Carol Black’s seminal “Review of employee health” [4] highlighted that the most common benefits of investing in employee wellbeing include:

• Increased productivity
• Reduced number of sickness absences
• Reduced staff turnover
• Increased retention of skills
• Improved staff morale
• Reduced recruitment and training costs
• Improved company reputation
• Improved financial performance

As experts in workplace wellbeing, Wellbeing Works have spent time crafting the ‘7 Key Elements to Wellbeing’ to make it easy for employers to actively and effectively improve wellbeing amongst their employees, across which ever key areas they feel need addressing, in order to achieve the above benefits outlined by Dame Carol Black. Click here to find out more about our approach and the ‘7 Key Elements to Workplace Wellbeing.’

Take our wellbeing survey, to find out if your organisation is ‘thriving’.