Why having well, happy employees is an integral part of an engaged workforce, and how to achieve it

Employee engagement, at its core, is the level of commitment and loyalty your team has to your organisation’s culture and success.

Employee wellbeing and employee engagement are fundamentally different, as wellbeing focuses on the needs of each team member, whereas engagement looks at how people interact with your team as a whole. The two are intrinsically linked, however: happy, healthy employees are more likely to be more committed to meeting your objectives and embody your values.

Why do I need to consider wellbeing in my engagement strategy?

Tech company Basecamp made recent headlines for making controversial subtractive changes to their benefit structure and company culture, effectively eliminating “paternalistic benefits” (including wellbeing allowances) and banning “political and societal conversation” on the company account.

This caused a third of their employees to leave the business.

Doing more to boost the mental and physical health of your team is proven to increase engagement and loyalty across your workforce – as Basecamp learned, the flipside is that neglecting to use it as a guide to inform strategy will have a negative knock-on effect throughout the business.

However, despite increasing focus from leaders and expectation from employees, the responsibility for employee wellbeing doesn’t lie solely with the employer. Your team’s happiness and wellbeing depend on lots of variables outside of work too. This is outside of the control of the organisation and, sometimes, even the employee themselves.

What can HR leaders do for engagement and wellbeing?

It is best to have wellbeing resources in place so that you don’t simply depend on your employee assistance programme (EAP). Your EAP is just one of many tools that can help support people and, in many cases, has too high a bar to access for people who have general wellbeing concerns. Be proactive and ensure you have a comprehensive offering in place that covers touchpoints that best suit your team, as well as looking at ways to remove barriers to access.

However, having the right tools in place might not mean increased uptake and engagement without senior stakeholder buy-in and the right policy behind it. Train managers to effectively manage their team’s wellbeing by recognising and escalating struggling employees for further support and communicating what available resources are right for them.

As HR leaders, more needs to be done around signposting mental health resources. While some of your team still deal with stigmas around mental wellbeing, signposting your resources in the same way you would with physical wellbeing benefits – for example, “prioritise your wellbeing and get healthier” – might improve uptake. Consider how you communicate benefits like a subsidised gym membership or cycle to work scheme.

How can you measure wellbeing and engagement impact?

When measuring employee engagement, wellbeing needs to be top of mind when trying to understand the context behind the numbers and using them to inform strategy for further resources you’re looking to bring in.

Wellbeing is a source of context for engagement, one that businesses are increasingly using to drive business change with the hope of seeing considerable differences in these metrics:

1. Turnover - For HR professionals who are looking to reduce staff turnover and improve the employee experience, engagement has become a priority. A 2015 Gallup survey found that engaged employees are 59% less likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months.

If this is true, also consider how disengagement increases turnover. Work-related stress, burnout, depression and anxiety can all attribute to poor mental health within the business and can cause them to become disengaged. In 2019, Mindshare partners, SAP and Qualtrics found that around half of millennials and 75% of Gen Z employees had quit their role due to their mental health.

2. Absence - Poor health (both mental and physical) can feed into absenteeism, which can create a negative cycle of disengagement in the wider team. A 2018 Kronos survey found 63% of survey respondents feel poor employee engagement has a big impact on unplanned employee absence.

3. Employee net promoter score (eNPS) - Those that feel like their employer looks after their wellbeing and happiness will be more likely to stay with a company and contribute to the business objectives. Mental Health Charity Mind found that 60% of employees are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work if they did more to support employee wellbeing. It’s not just future employees that your people speak with either. Your people can be some of your strongest promotors to prospective customers – or biggest detractors.

Considering health and wellbeing as part of your employee engagement strategy

Welfare and engagement go hand in hand for employees, so organisations should have measures in place to uphold high standards of wellbeing with a robust strategy that covers different facets, which in time will influence overall levels of engagement.

However, understanding the limitations and extraneous variables beyond the workplace is also imperative for employers looking to provide the best support for their team. Approaching employee wellbeing with empathy and ensuring they have easy access to everything they need will provide a solid foundation and help you to see measurable results within your team without shouldering sole responsibility for employee wellbeing.

The author is Robin Lewitt from Togetherall.

This article is provided by Togetherall.