The Importance of Well-Being in the Workplace
The Importance of Well-being in the Workplace
As a leader, is personal well-being a top priority for you? When you think about your team and organization, are you prioritizing your team member's well-being and thinking about it regularly? Companies are seeing the benefit of focusing on well-being and hiring chief well-being officers as part of their leadership teams. Company well-being is vital in the workplace. For your team to solve today's problems and be at the top of their game, you need to encourage your employees to prioritize their well-being.
I led teams for 14 years in the luxury hospitality industry. For the last five years, I have been working with leadership teams and companies in different sectors, focusing on leadership, well-being, leadership, happiness, and team happiness. Over the last five years, I have seen an increasing trend of managers dealing with burnt-out and overworked employees all too often.
Here are six strategies to help you change your workplace culture to prioritize employee well-being so you can get the most out of your team members during work hours.
People are not well if they are overworked. Look at how many hours your team members work and adjust expectations if you notice skewed workloads. The happiest people, the people in Scandinavia, work about 37 hours per week. Businesses implementing workdays from 32-40 hours have found that their team is equally, if not more productive, than a team working 40+ hours per week. If people are overworking consistently, they are not in a positive headspace.
Everyone should take their MEDS daily. MEDS stands for meditation, exercise, healthy diet, and sleep. If your team is sleep deprived, if they are not eating healthy food, if they do not have time to move and exercise, they are not going to be well.
Encourage your team to prioritize their health. Organize meditation sessions with your team so they learn to prioritize their MEDS.
Flexibility is crucial for people right now, especially those with young children, taking care of elderly parents, or having other personal obligations. The old way of punching a clock no longer works for knowledge workers. You must give people flexibility, which will help them balance everything going on in their life. Reducing that stress will help someone with their well-being.
Your organization has a purpose. Your team has a sense of purpose, and the work you do, and everyone does, is meaningful. As a leader, you must communicate your team's and organization's mission/purpose monthly and share it with everyone. People's progress in meaningful work is the number one driver of motivation, and people want their work to be purposeful.
Allow time for Community and Socialization. The number one predictor of happiness around the globe is human connection. Leaders should allow time for people to connect and get to know each other to create a sense of community.
Help your team have financial well-being. If people are struggling with debt or in their family life, it will be tough for them to be their best selves at work. Talk about these things, provide training and resources, and help people have financial well-being.
As a leader, implementing these strategies will help your team prioritize their well-being, increase productivity, and team happiness. Happy leaders make successful leaders! If you would like to learn more techniques to help your team, contact Tia today!
Arrive At Happy's mission is to inspire transformation through the science of happiness. Tia Graham, founder, partners with organizations and individuals to increase their daily happiness and success in all areas of their lives. Relying on science-backed empirical data, she has gained the insight needed to prove and teach that happiness indeed leads to success.
Tia has a Certificate in Happiness Studies and a Certificate in Teaching Happiness from Harvard's Tal Ben-Shahar and The Happiness Studies Academy. She is a Certified Chief Happiness Officer from Woohoo Inc., Europe's premier Happiness at Work organization.