14 Apr 2023

Are your benefits still relevant in the face of today’s challenges?

That was the question considered by HR leaders at a recent roundtable event

We all live and operate with a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty and change, with increased living costs, the threat of recession and potentially redundancies to name a few worries. In such challenging times, wellbeing initiatives implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic may no longer meet the challenges and needs of today’s workforce.

According to the British Medical Association, the number of adults accessing mental health treatments has risen by 71%. Yet one in three managers feel out of their depth supporting their team with mental health concerns.

As a result, many HR leaders are taking the decision to reevaluate their workplace wellbeing offering to ensure that they are supporting their employees in the most appropriate and relevant ways.

Engaging employees in their wellbeing

In the latest of a series of roundtables held by Global HR Executive and supported by Tictrac, a group of HR leaders came together for peer-to-peer discussions to look at where their own organisations are with workplace wellbeing post-pandemic.

These insights have been summarised in an exclusive report on how to Engage, empower and enable employees to enhance their health, happiness and wellbeing looking at these core themes:

The macro environment we live in as organisations and employees
Demand on leadership is growing and evolving
Employees are facing a myriad of choices
The work environment has changed forever

Below we explore some of the points discussed about the role of leadership teams in empowering employees’ wellbeing as well as how employees’ requirements have shifted over the years.

Champions of wellbeing and engagement

During the roundtable conversations it became apparent that today’s leaders are seen as the champions of wellbeing within many organisations. It was also recognised that high performing teams are looking for leaders who:

Prioritise wellbeing
Build credibility with employee advisory groups
Understand and trust employee engagement data
Keep an eye on high stress events such as mergers and acquisitions and restructuring
Supporting data driven decisions over employee wellbeing initiatives

It was also recognised that leaders may sometimes suffer from perception biases. For example, one participant mentioned that “some leaders felt that their remote staff were less engaged and that this also led to high turnover. Yet the data said otherwise: remote employees were actually more engaged and experienced less turnover.”

It was therefore agreed that in times of change, it is important for HR leaders to:

Trust the data as much as the team leader when assessing the impact of workplace initiatives
Use data to support decision making
Use data to bring a new perspective to assumptions being made
Employees have greater demands and more fragmented requirements

Roundtable participants all agreed that employees face many challenges day-to-day. From a reduced sense of resilience and belonging, to employee isolation or the difficulties that come with hybrid working. With this came the question: Where does the responsibility of a business for the welfare of its staff start and stop?.

While there is no simple solution to these challenges, some of the ideas shared were that employers need to consider a range of factors including financial assistance, lifestage considerations, general health and career guidance to name a few.

Workplace wellbeing

As employees continue to face several stress factors, organisations can play an important role in supporting them with their physical health, mental wellbeing and overall happiness – which in turn benefits companies. This touches all levels of the organisation.

To access the insights from the 2023 roundtable discussions on how to Engage, empower and enable employees to enhance their health, happiness and wellbeing, download the executive summary report here.