Firstly, thanks to our amazing and engaged community of readers for all your responses to our last piece about the impact of mental ill-health and low wellbeing, and how if left unmanaged it may lead to a whole range of distress and loss of function for the humans in our workplace, and suboptimal consequences for business performance.
It really got us thinking about how we tackle this issue – and we felt the best next step would be to continue this conversation with you directly.
So…I’ve created an easy-peasy four-question survey where I’d like you to share some of your observations and insights around how to lead workplace wellbeing.
We’ll reveal detailed findings as part of a webinar I’m leading in December which I’d love you to attend – but you’ll need to register a place to reserve an allocated space.
You can skip straight to the (quick) questionnaire here.
But first, let’s get a bit more context on the issue.
The facts and figures on workplace wellbeing
As we’ve mentioned before, wellbeing isn’t just for the distressed – it’s for 5 out of 5 employees.
Wellbeing needs to be a whole-istic (get it?) consideration to succeed – no ifs or buts – inclusive, relatable and meaningful for everyone in the organisation. Otherwise, all we’re doing is unintentionally marginalising the vulnerable and ignoring the biggest majority of us who, whilst hopefully not unwell per se, are potentially far from feeling our best selves.
How do we help those of us who are clinging on by the skin of our teeth, struggling but so far valiantly coping? How do we make it less about striving and more about thriving? Then there’s the big trick we’re missing – not galvanising the myriad upside benefits associated with high wellbeing and positive mental health, such as higher productivity, engagement and innovation.
Despite the corporate regulators closing in on the behavioural and cultural aspects of conduct, our organisations, boards and risk professionals are well-advised to resist their natural temptation – to write more rules to manage these non-financial risks. The more rules, the less autonomy and less control. The less freedom and self-efficacy, the lower our wellbeing. The lower our wellbeing, the worse our behaviour, performance and conduct.
