"Your Well-being is Not My Problem": A Recipe for Disaster

Leadership

Feb 2

There are 2 things that the modern leaders need to do to be successful.

Firstly, you will need to put your people at the heart of your business

Secondly, you need to model wellbeing.

The modern world of work requires a different style and focus for business leaders. In the knowledge age, successful leaders can no longer ignore the importance of employee wellbeing to the achievement of business success. More than ever, leaders in every business need to ensure that their workforce is agile, adaptable, flexible, innovative, solution and customer driven.

Ensuring employee wellbeing may very well be a key reason that some business flourish in the future while others flounder.

Today’s Business Challenges

The range of business challenges has never been as broad and deep as they are today. From adapting to changing consumer behaviour and keeping up with the rapidly advancing technological innovations (such as AI) to managing flexible work in an increasingly insecure economy, leaders and businesses today are faced with an exponential number of challenges.

No one leader or even small group of people in any business can hope to successfully address all these challenges. The ability of every employee to support and drive solutions will be what ensures business success in the face of the wide-ranging challenges today.

To ensure your employees are positioned to drive the business into the future, they have to be not only intellectually capable but also physically and emotionally capable. This is the focus on human sustainability and wellbeing that should be a priority for businesses.

What’s Happening Around Wellbeing

While inroads are being made into improving employee wellbeing, there are some statistics that show that we have a long way to go. For example:

85% of employees are experiencing work-related stress, and nearly half of employees say that their work stress has increased over the past 5 years (American Psychological Associate)
Burnout affects 25% of workers globally (World Health Organisation)
Only 15% of employees are engaged at work (Gallup)
The direct and indirect costs of workplace stress in the US are estimated to be as high as $190 billion per year (The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health)
The total cost of absenteeism due to health-related reasons is estimated to be $225.8 billion per year (The Center for Disease Control and Prevention)

While we know, accept, and expect that work can be and is stressful, there is a tipping point between “productive” and “unproductive” stress. Productive stress is when you can still operate at a high level and be effective. But too much high stress, too much of the time, impacts your ability to be effective and has harmful health outcomes.

The Negative Impact of Work

“Dying for a Paycheck” (Jeffrey Pfeffer) explores the negative impacts that work can have on employee health and wellbeing.

Some key takeaways from this book include:

The long hours and high demands of work can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and depression, which is turn can lead to physical health problems such as heart disease
Lack of autonomy and control in the workplace contributes to negative health outcomes and creates a lack of sense of purpose and meaning for employees
The lack of life integration and the expectation that employees be available 24/7 can lead to burnout, which can further contribute to negative health outcomes
The lack of diversity and inclusion in the workplace can also negatively impact employee health and wellbeing, as can a lack of career development and advancement.

This highlights the importance of the employer’s role in providing a healthy work environment that supports well-being, and this extends beyond “free lunch” kind of perks. It talks to the necessity of shifting focus from short-term profits to long-term investments in the comprehensive and individualised well-being of employees.

This is not just a moral obligation – although that should be incentive enough – but also a business obligation since holistically healthy employees are more productive, more engaged, and more committed to their work.

Why You Should be Concerned with Wellbeing

Businesses where wellbeing is not a priority will suffer in the long run. These businesses will experience levels of:

Decreased productivity and engagement among employees due to high levels of stress, burnout, and other health problems
Increased health care costs due to higher rates of illness and injury among employees
Increased absenteeism and turnover, as employees leave the company or take time off due to health problems or burnout
Decreased employee morale and loyalty and damage to the company’s reputation
Difficulty in attracting and retaining top talent
Decreased innovation and creativity compounded by increased risks and liabilities

All of these things will lead to reduced competitiveness in the market. Those companies not paying attention to employee health and well-being can have a significant negative impact on the bottom line.

The Historical Focus

In the past, there has been limited focus on employee wellbeing as a business imperative in any meaningful way.

In some cases, this has been the result of a short-term profit focus or a lack of awareness about the importance of wellbeing to the bottom line.

Some often cited reasons for this lack of focus includes limited resources, lack of regulation, and a limited understanding that there is a positive ROI for effective wellbeing programmes.

In large part this comes down to company culture.

Where productivity and profit are prioritised over people, employee wellbeing and human sustainability will never the true focus

And going back to the start of this article, leaders play a crucial role in creating a culture where human sustainability is a focus.

What Leaders Can (and Should) be Doing

Leaders play a crucial role in ensuring employee wellbeing within an organisation.

First and foremost, each leader has to role model the behaviours related to wellbeing. You must embrace the notion that your people will do as you DO and not as you SAY. Unless they see you “walking the talk” and taking the action, they will not believe what you’re saying about wellbeing being a priority.

Your actions create the culture in the business.

If you’re talking about the importance of living an integrated life but your teams see you living at the office, working weekends, sending messages and mails late into the night, then you’re not going to be able to create a culture of wellbeing.

If you don’t share how well you take of your own wellbeing you won’t create the safety people need to be open about what they need.

Once you’re really walking the talk and providing a positive example you can focus on the other areas to support employee wellbeing, such as:

Making employee wellbeing a priority in organisational purpose, policies, and practices
Promoting open communication, collaboration, and trust
Providing support in the form of mental health support, physical fitness programmes, and financial education
Involving employees in creating company specific solutions and approaches
Recognising and rewarding wellbeing

Leading a healthy business is more than the numbers on a spreadsheet in the Board report, and it starts at the top.