How to balance employee wellbeing with productivity

Why the employee voice can guide the route to productivity

Our recent debate, Performance vs Empathy: do Employers have to Choose? hosted by our client Hogan Lovells, explored whether productivity and wellbeing are competing agendas.

The Covid pandemic escalated the attention paid to wellbeing and the volatile jobs market that followed dialled-up employer emphasis on positive employee experience. Some perceive that power is now shifting back towards employers, in these more uncertain times, where talk turns to efficiency and productivity. Or are employers still focused on the need to engage, empathise, and support a workforce whose eye is firmly on work-life fit?

The view in the room was that productivity and empathy are compatible and indeed that it’s hard to have optimum productivity unless we first listen and respond to needs. Kate Holden, UK Head of HR at Hogan Lovells finds that great performance follows when we do this. She outlined the provisions in place at the firm which tie in with its view that to get the best from people, employers need to empower them in their work and home life needs.

Cristina Galindo, International Business Director at Birdeo, reminded us of the multigenerational workforce – with expectations of work-life balance at all stages. She also drew on Prof Lynda Gratton’s concept of the 100 year life, meaning that career is no longer a single, linear phase, sandwiched between education and retirement.

With more fluid and cyclical working lives, if employees cannot see their values and aspirations matched by their employer, they will leave.

Family-friendly legislation update

Ed Bowyer, Partner in the Employment Team at Hogan Lovells addressed the coming regulatory changes relevant to family life. In some aspects, legislation is tending towards more choice for employees, with a day one right to request flexible working and a simplified process. While greater family-friendliness through the Carer’s Leave Act provides longer protection from redundancy following parental leave; neonatal leave and pay, carer’s leave and slightly more flexibility around paternity leave.

So, there is some obligation on employers to further evolve family support, simply to keep pace with public policy. Leading employers will of course be ahead of this and setting the tone for legislation, rather than catching up.

On the subject of parental leave, the statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental leave and parental bereavement leave pay rates have been published and will rise from £172.48 to £184.03 per week next April. Like last year, these increases are in line with inflation (6.7% this time) though a lower uplift than the previous year when being in line with inflation meant a much bigger hike.

Managers and messaging

The performance vs empathy debate highlighted the need for skilful, well-supported managers, who can remove barriers to performance that arise when family needs clash with work demands.

Here are some helpful tips suggested during the debate:

Training in overcoming bias – this is especially important where managers have been promoted for technical achievements rather than people skills.
Checklists for key conversations – e.g. new parents, becoming a carer
Story-telling – the power of individuals sharing insights into what it’s like to be them, most powerful when it takes place in open networking events.
Reverse mentoring – or having a shadow board to scrutinise strategy and policy against diversity, equity & inclusion standards.

There was also an interesting discussion on inadvertent messages: is there a line between supporting and being seen to dictate a certain lifestyle when it comes to life stage choices and policies? With a policy intended to be helpful such as egg-freezing, might we be giving messages about delaying family? Making this part of a wider family-building programme with broad choices softens that unintended message.

Both employers and employees are squeezed

The debate about productivity vs wellbeing was a reminder that empathy should not only go one way. Employers are squeezed too. The National Living Wage (NLW) will increase by more than £1 an hour from April 2024, and although this higher wage is clearly a positive for workers, where for many the cost of living is still having a detrimental effect, it also impacts employers.

There are cross-sector concerns about rising costs and wage inflation. Within the early years sector, representative voices are warning that the “increase in the NLW by almost 10% will risk the livelihood of many early years settings”.

Any further reduction in the availability of childcare would also be a worry to employers who rely on this as part of the business infrastructure. The promised expansion of funded childcare places is being relied on to enable more families to enter the workforce or extend their hours. Large providers such as Bright Horizons are able to make sustained investments in career development, wellbeing, pay and benefits; however smaller providers, having struggled to keep pace with uplifts in the costs of energy, food and salaries may be unable to offer the funded places at the planned rates.

There is never only one side to a debate and as we work through these extraordinary times, we can hope that the quality of conversation between employee and employer, which became much more candid and personal during the pandemic, will be sustained so employers can continue to relate to the employee voice and see this as the route to productivity.