It's only been a few years since employers started giving thought to their employees' well-being. It's only now that they've realized that the driving force behind their company's business is their employees' hard work. Without the active contribution from the employees, the business wouldn't really stand anywhere.
Let's look at it this way; you've got a production unit with 25 employees, each of which is responsible for producing 15 units of a product in a day. This means, with all 25 employees working actively, you produce 375 units every day. If one of the employees falls sick and fails to show up at work or gets injured on the premises, you'll be short by 15 units for the day, which will directly impact your business outcome. Long story short, your employees drive your business forward every day, and the more you invest in their well-being, the better it will prove to be for your business.
This blog post highlights how ensuring employee well-being can benefit your business and how you can ensure the health, safety, and overall well-being of your employees.
How Ensuring Employee Well-Being Benefits Your Business?
Employers who still have a typical employer mindset and follow a traditional approach would want to know how investing in employee well-being can benefit them. Why should they do anything extra for their employees when they're already paying them market-competitive salaries? Well, the corporate dynamics have changed big time, and so has the employee attitude. If you don't put your employees first, you'll start to lose them, and your business will suffer.
Every ounce of effort and every ounce of money that you spend to ensure your employees' well-being will directly impact your business positively. Let's look into how ensuring employee well-being benefits your business in detail below:
Ensuring Employee Well-Being Promotes Higher Employee Productivity
One of the biggest benefits of investing in employee well-being at work is increased productivity and efficiency. Employee well-being doesn't only mean providing employees with a physically comfortable workplace but spreads far beyond that. Ensuring employee well-being also means ensuring the employees are fit and healthy emotionally and psychologically.
When employees feel good (read: happy, healthy, and comfortable) at work, they'll be able to focus on their work better. With better focus come higher quality, error-free results. The employees will deliver tasks on time and of the finest quality. And this means higher profits for the business as more work is being done in less time!
Ensuring Employee Well-Being Reduces Absenteeism
If your workplace is safe and comfortable for the employees, the risk of the employees falling sick or injured due to poor workplace layout and ergonomics will be significantly reduced. Employees will call days off less often. Reduced absenteeism benefits the business tremendously. When an employee doesn't show up to work, all the work they were supposed to complete that day goes pending, and the delivery is delayed, which can cost business and clients. However, healthier and fitter employees are less likely to be absent from work which means timely deliveries on committed deadlines.
Ensuring Employee Well-Being Improves Employee Retention
Another benefit of ensuring employee well-being is improved employee retention. If your employees know that you care for them and actively take measures to ensure they stay fit, healthy, and comfortable at work, they'll be less likely to leave your company for another. A company invests time and resources to onboard employees, and when an employee leaves, all that the company has spent is wasted, and the company has to start from square one. Improved employee retention would cut down the company's losses that are associated with the loss of employees. Ensuring employee well-being will ensure that your employees stick around for longer and in all good spirits!
Ensuring Employee Well-Being Reduces Healthcare Costs
A business spends millions of dollars on employee healthcare. The benefits of ensuring employee well-being are most prominent in this area. Hundreds of studies have proven that investing time, effort, and money in ensuring employee well-being at work reduces healthcare costs.
Employees are exposed to various risks at the workplace. From the risk of developing work-related injuries and disorders like musculoskeletal disorders due to poor workplace ergonomics to workplace injuries due to a poor office layout, anything that affects the employees' health and well-being will result in the company bearing healthcare costs. However, with the right measures in place, you reduce the risk of workplace injuries and health conditions and this eventually results in a significant reduction in healthcare costs.
Ensuring Employee Well-Being improves Employee Mental Health
If your employees are exhausted, frustrated, stressed, and burned out, you can't really expect maximum efficiency from them. Poor mental health will impact performance at work directly. By ensuring your employees are physically comfortable and mentally relaxed at work, you can prevent them from feeling burned out and stressed, and when they're feeling good mentally and psychologically, they'll be able to work with greater dedication and deliver higher quality results. Happy employees are truly an asset for any business, and if you manage to crack the code of happy and satisfied employees, you're in for massive gains!
How to Ensure Employee Well-Being?
As we said earlier, employee well-being isn't limited to physical well-being, but it's a much more comprehensive term that encompasses physical, mental, emotional, and psychological wellness. It's not uncommon for employees to feel tired, exhausted, stressed, and even depressed at work. If you don't address this challenge right away, you may either start to lose employees or business, both of which aren't something you would want.
Let's look at ways to ensure your employees are physically fit, mentally active, emotionally stable, and psychologically dedicated to their work.
Don't Micromanage Your Employees
One of the biggest mistakes employers make without realizing they're making a grave mistake is micromanaging their employees. They feel the urge to take follow-ups and dictate how they want the work to be done at every step. You may think you're only ensuring the work gets completed on time, but in reality, you're only causing the employee immense psychological stress. Not everyone can work well under stress. Most people make more errors when they're under too much stress. Some even panic. None of it is going to end well for your business.
You should give your employees some space to work their way. The more ownership they feel, the more dedicatedly they'll work. Only intervene when you think you need to correct something or guide the employees in the right direction. Don't expect your employees to work the way you do. Everyone has got their ways of working, and the more space you give, the better they'll perform.
Ensure Good Workplace Ergonomics
Another extremely effective and promising way of ensuring employee well-being is to ensure good workplace ergonomics. If your employees aren't comfortable at work and they're working for long hours sitting in poor ergonomic conditions, they're at a high risk of suffering from work-related health conditions and that'll only affect their performance.
You must provide your employees with ergonomic working conditions, including ergonomic furniture and equipment, adequate lighting, comfortable temperature, and a stress-free environment.
You can start by replacing your office furniture with ergonomic desks like Kana Pro Bamboo Standing Desk and ergonomic chair to ensure every employee is working comfortably. An ergonomic desk ensures the correct working height for every employee so that they don't have to sit in awkward postures. An ergonomic chair ensures that the employee is seated comfortably in a neutral posture with their back resting on the backrest, feet placed flat on the floor, and elbows resting on the armrests such that there's no strain on any part of the body.
Provide Flexibility
Another way you can ensure the well-being of your employees is by providing them flexibility. Allow them to make workplace choices, such as whether they want to work from the office or home. You should also provide flexibility in work schedules. Offering flexibility improves employee satisfaction levels and enhances productivity.
Don't Overburden Your Employees
Many employers overburden their employees so that they don't have to hire additional staff. While you may think that you're saving money, you're actually not. An overburdened employee is highly likely to fall sick or quit, both of which are going to cost your business some serious money! Make sure your workplace is adequately staffed so that your employees don't feel exhausted and drained out.
Closing Word
Ensuring employee well-being starts from the realization that your employees' matter. If you don't think your employees are important, you'll never feel the need to work toward ensuring their well-being. Once you do realize how happy and healthy employees can benefit your business, you'll know how much growth potential you've been missing out on. Every bit of time, effort, and money that you spend for your employees' well-being will be well worth it. From improved brand image to tremendous profits, you'll get to experience everything you've ever wanted for your business.
