Getting the balance right at work

Current research shows that employers who help staff achieve a better balance in their working lifestyle are rewarded with a happier, more productive workforce. They also benefit from more loyal employees, are more appealing to new recruits and enjoy significantly reduced absenteeism rates.

Research carried out on behalf of Ibec division Food & Drink Ireland (FDI) by Behaviour & Attitudes in conjunction with National Workplace Wellbeing Day earlier this year showed that health and wellness are very high on the agenda for Irish employees.

“There is a lot more focus on health and wellbeing among employees now,” says Dermot Doherty, programme manager for the FDI health initiative. “Our 2017 research showed that 49 per cent of employees would consider leaving an employer who doesn’t show an interest in their health and wellbeing while 60 per cent are more likely to stay longer with an employer who does show an interest.”

Doherty also points to PwC research on the subject. "The research covered 55 companies in the UK with wellbeing programmes and it showed that 45 of them had reduced absenteeism by an average of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent. Eighteen of them had reduced staff turnover by an average of between 20 per cent and 25 per cent."

Balance is also important, according to Ann O’Mahony, operations director with professional services recruiter Morgan McKinley. “Wellbeing and work-life balance are now pretty crucial for recruitment and retention,” she says. “We recently commissioned a white paper on the millennial generation and we asked them about what motivates them to take jobs and what would make them want to move on. What we found is that they aren’t motivated by the same factors as previous generations, such as a job for life, but instead they value opportunity, flexibility and a good work-life balance.”

The World Health Organisation lists a range of benefits to be had from workplace wellness programmes for both employees and organisations. For the organisation, these include improved staff morale, reduced staff turnover, reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, and reduced healthcare and insurance costs.

Employee benefits include enhanced self-esteem, reduced stress, improved morale, increased job satisfaction, improved health, and improved sense of wellbeing.

There are also well-established links with productivity and job performance. A study carried out for the UK Department of Business, Innovation & Skills in 2014 found there is a considerable amount of evidence to indicate there is a positive association between wellbeing and an employee’s job performance.

Interestingly, the study pointed to the need for a whole workplace approach to wellbeing instead of tackling it at individual level. “There are also reasons to think that the relationship between subjective wellbeing (SWB) and job performance at the level of the employee may not necessarily be replicated at the level of the workplace. One reason is that low levels of SWB among a small number of workers may spill over to negatively affect levels of SWB (and thus levels of job performance) among the wider workforce,” the report stated.

Subjective wellbeing was defined as the evaluations, positive and negative, that people make of their lives, as well as their reactions to experiences. How we feel about ourselves, in other words.

Doherty is not surprised by these findings. “When you have a happy, healthy workforce, productivity increases as well,” he says.

Other benefits flow from reduced absenteeism. According to Ibec's Employee Absenteeism: A Guide to Managing Absence, 11 million days are lost through absenteeism every year in Ireland at a cost of €1.5 billion, or €818 per employee.

“There are considerable benefits from reducing absenteeism,” says Doherty. “You have lower overtime costs and use less agency staff, for example. We are now seeing a push from both employees and employers when it comes to workplace wellness. We are seeing the level of interest in Workplace Wellbeing Day explode. That must mean the message is getting out there.”

Presenteeism

But sometimes turning up for work can actually be the problem. Presenteeism, a phenomenon where people turn up for work even though they are sick, is becoming an issue in many Irish workplaces. People are afraid that not turning up for work will affect their career prospects or, even worse, put their jobs at risk.

However, these people are more than likely harming both themselves and their employers. Researchers in the US have found that presenteeism can cut individual productivity by one-third or more and that it can cost a business three times as much as the absenteeism of the employees who do ring in sick.

Mindfulness at Work founder Joanne O'Malley works with a variety of large companies, including the Kerry Group, Lufthansa Technik, IDA Ireland, ESB, and Ervia Irish Water, as well as partnering with VHI in offering solutions to help deal with this costly problem.

“Presenteeism is prevalent in organisations where long working hours are the norm and the organisation is more important than the people,” she points out. “Job insecurity contributes to it and leads people to go to work even though they are not functioning at all. We all know that there are organisations which have that long hours’ culture and then there are others who genuinely want to take care of their people.”

But the employers are not necessarily entirely to blame. “Often it can be the people involved and it’s not the organisation’s fault,” she says. “They stay long hours at their desks just to look good and often admit that they are not productive. That’s a result of the environment we are all working in. Globalisation and technology are not going to go backwards and the pressure they are creating is increasing. The environmental changes have changed workplaces beyond recognition and people are doing their best just to keep up.”

One company which has been committed to employee wellness since its foundation in the late 1990s is Salesforce. "One of our key tenets and core values is wellbeing and we do a lot of unique things and special things in that area," says employee success director Terri Moloney.

The company runs a number of wellbeing programmes, one of which is the Aloha Wellness Journey. This utilises one of the company’s own customer relationship management products to send daily email to all employees. The email asks them a few questions about their health and wellbeing in both their personal and work lives, such as did you get enough sleep? Did you switch your phone off when you went to bed? “We also ask them about wellness at work and their physical and nutritional wellness,” says Moloney. “They get a score on how they are doing and if something shows up we support them to address it. It’s a simple little idea but it works. We also have a couple of wellness rooms in the building where people can switch off and go for a few minutes to chill out or meditate.”

And it’s certainly having an impact on recruitment. “I interviewed a candidate recently and they spoke about our wellbeing philosophy as something they found appealing.” Employee feedback through staff surveys and dedicated apps on phones show it has had a positive impact on retention as well, with the company consistently scoring highly on questions relating to wellbeing.

“I think all companies are going that way,” Moloney adds. “Just some more quickly than others.”

Dermot Doherty believes many companies are needlessly missing out on the benefits of their workplace wellbeing efforts. “Preliminary results from the latest Ibec HR survey show that only 20 per cent of employers have a formal wellness strategy in place,” he notes. “But very many companies are doing an awful lot without having a strategy and that means they are missing out on some of the benefits both for themselves and their employees. They need to be able to take an overview of what they’re doing and be able to track the results, and that means having a strategy or overall programme in place.”