Organizational Wellbeing – Is this Your Weakest Link?

Organizational Wellbeing – Is this Your Weakest Link?

Consider this… you’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money to develop a great competitive strategy related to a new product and service launch. You’ve invested wisely in the best equipment and software to optimize quality and productivity. Your sales team has been trained and all is set for a successful launch. You’re convinced you’ve done all the right things to position your company for a successful rebound from the impact of the pandemic. 

Question… what have you overlooked? What is the biggest risk to your success?

Before you answer let me give you some clues – 

• Workers in the U.S. and Canada reported the highest rate of daily stress in the world during 2020. (Gallup, 2021)
• Globally, one in two employees know what is expected of them at work. (Gallup, 2021)
• Globally, the cost of employee turnover and lost productivity due to employee burnout is $322 billion. (Gallup, 2021)
• 15% – 20% of total payroll is lost due to voluntary turnover costs related to employee burnout. (Gallup, 2021)
• Only about one in three U.S. employees are engaged at work. (Gallup, 2021)
• One in four adults experience mental illness throughout their lives. (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2020)
• A Gallup 2016 engagement survey found that 82% of employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring. 

I could provide several pages of additional statistics, but I think you get the point. The greatest threat to the sustained success of your organization is related to employee wellbeing. 

Let’s begin with a working definition of wellbeing from George Mason University’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being: “A life of vitality, purpose, resilience, and engagement”.  According to Gallup, there are Five Elements of Wellbeing including, “Career”, “Social”, “Financial”, “Physical”, and “Community”. 

The good news is that creating and managing a comprehensive program to develop higher levels of personal and organizational wellbeing does not need to be expensive. A trained professional can lead you and your management team through a process that will enable you to begin and sustain wellbeing practices and competencies. 

Still not convinced of the business case and justification for investing in wellbeing? I’ll close with a few more statistics – 

• When companies approach Wellbeing as a core business strategy, and not with the exclusive purpose of reducing healthcare costs, it can lead to measurable ROI through higher engagement, lower turnover, and better productivity. (Gallup)
• 45% of Americans working at small to medium-sized companies say they would stay at their jobs longer if there were good employer-sponsored wellness programs (SHRM, 2010) 
• People with higher levels of wellbeing become more engaged with their jobs and work harder (HBR, 2014)

But I think Anjali Patel summed it up best in her book, Humanity at Work when she wrote, “Although it’s important to address the business case for wellbeing, it’s worth asking: do we really need a ‘business case’ for treating people well? Shouldn’t we help our employees simply because it’s the right thing to do? Employees are going to start interviewing their employers the same way employers interview them, and they will start saying: ‘If you really care about our wellbeing, don’t just help us deal with our problems. Help us prevent and solve them.’”