Employee Well-Being Is More Important Than Ever Before

As employers scramble to address workforce challenges, investing in employee well-being could be the key to solving the most common problems.

Right now, employers are facing one of the most significant challenges when it comes to their workforces. From the Great Resignation and quiet quitting to a tight labor market and shifting attitudes regarding remote work, businesses are feeling pressure like never before to satisfy employee expectations while driving engagement, productivity and retention. These may seem monumental but the solution to many may be found by emphasizing and investing in employee well-being.

“When you focus authentically on well-being, you show your employees that their needs and wants are important,” said Xan Raskin, Founder and CEO of Artixan Consulting Group LLC. “We’ve known for years that when employees are happy and feel valued, they’re more productive, more engaged and more likely to stay.”

Well-Being Is The Expectation

It isn’t just that employers can benefit by focusing on employee well-being; it is becoming a deciding factor for many employees whether they take a job offer, stay with a company or go above and beyond their work obligations. 

As more and more workers come to expect employers to deliver well-being initiatives, those businesses that fail to make it a priority will be at a disadvantage in attracting and retaining top talent, as well as see decreased productivity and disengaged employees.

According to the 2022 Indeed Workplace Happiness Report, conducted by Forrester Consulting, 67% of respondents believe that well-being at work is a right, not a privilege, and 57% believe that employers are responsible for an individual’s happiness in the workplace.

“It’s likely that the emphasis on well-being in the workplace will only increase as the youngest generations enter the workforce and exert their influence. Generation Z has become known for dismantling the stigma associated with discussing mental health, sharing salaries and changing jobs frequently. They will have twice as many employers as their generational predecessors but will seek out and embrace an organization that shares their values and meets their needs,” said Linda Leonard, who specializes in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) strategy development and implementation at Artixan. 

Finding Wellness

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for workplace well-being, and managers and employees will often have different—or outright conflicting—ideas about potential solutions. To make matters more complicated, the issues that are important to employees can vary widely, even within the organization, so solutions can be wildly different from business to business.

While higher pay is generally considered foundational to well-being, there are many factors that can impact it. The Indeed Workplace Happiness Report found that feeling energized by work tasks and feeling a sense of belonging in a company continue to be the top drivers of well-being at work. Research from BetterUp underscores the importance of belonging and has shown that it leads to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% reduction in turnover risk and a 75% decrease in employee sick days.

In its simplest form, to belong is to matter: employees matter to the company and the company matters to employees. It means that the tools and resources most important to an employee’s well-being can be found somewhere in the company’s offerings.

“Importantly, having at least one ally or close colleague at work will dramatically increase an employee’s sense of belonging. This is particularly true for employees who are, or feel, underrepresented at their company. Overcoming an individual’s feeling of isolation or marginalization is a critical first step in creating an optimal workplace and can open the path to greater career achievement,” said Leonard.

“If you have 100 employees, you may have 100 ideas. Or more. That doesn’t mean you put 100 solutions in place. You need to prioritize them. What’s often helpful is to think through where the intersection is between those solutions that are at the higher end of value to employees and those that might be on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of cost or time to implement—the proverbial low hanging fruit. It’s a good place to start and then see the impact it has before continuing or trying other options,” said Raskin.

Delivering What Employees Want

While there is no magic pill for creating and sustaining excellent workplace well-being, the solution to meeting the needs and expectations of employees can be remarkably simple. What matters is giving employees what they want—within reason—not just what leadership thinks they want. That often starts with asking them in a way you can get candid and direct feedback.

For example, one of Artixan’s clients was preparing to roll out an expensive 401(k) program to their warehouse employees. While this benefit seemed attractive and well-intentioned to the managers who proposed it, when Artixan conducted confidential focus groups to ask their employees what was important to them from a company benefits perspective, the results were nothing what management expected. The #1 ask by employees was to bring up their level of professionalism so they were comparable to their colleagues at competitors. They wanted standard uniforms that would keep them cool in summer and warm in winter in the warehouse and enhanced training on equipment.

These requests were simple and sensible, and ones the managers had never thought of. Instead of relying on their own assumptions of what would have the greatest impact, the leaders were able to prioritize what their employees wanted and also let the employees know that their opinions were important.

Another tech client learned from an anonymous Employee Wellness survey, conducted by Artixan, that employees were having a lot of stress and mental health challenges, particularly in light of the instability in the macro environment due to mass layoffs in the industry and the economic downturn. The company’s Employee Assistance Program and health insurance plans only went so far to provide low-cost support, and finding good mental health professionals externally was daunting and expensive. By quickly putting a psychologist on retainer that employees could access confidentially and on an ongoing basis at no cost, the company was able to significantly reduce attrition and quickly respond to employee needs. Artixan also recommended they measure success through a follow-up survey or another employee touchpoint so they could confirm their investment was well spent.

“Well-being isn’t simply providing snacks or organizing team-building activities,” said Raskin. “It’s listening to what employees really want and need and delivering it—to the best of your ability. It’s holistic. It’s supporting an employee’s mental, physical, social and spiritual health.”

Remote Control

A looming challenge—and opportunity—sits on the horizon for many businesses: the future of remote work as the COVID-19 pandemic winds down. How companies approach this issue could have an outsized impact on employee wellness.

“Businesses spent two years thanking employees for their dedication and focus as they transitioned from the office to an unexpected and unprecedented work-from-home situation. Employers then praised employees for their resilience as they continued to meet and exceed expectations in this new, evolving work environment,” said Karen Johnson, a Senior Consultant at Artixan Consulting Group. “It’s difficult to sell the notion that employees must be physically present in the office for maximum effectiveness when most demonstrated that they not only embraced but were thriving in the work-from-home environment.”

The rebound effect being seen where some companies are pushing towards an inflexible, “everybody back to the office” approach has a profound effect on certain groups within companies from a DEI lens, as well. When companies first started returning to the workplace, a Future Forum poll found that 97% of Black women wanted to remain remote or hybrid (versus 79% of white workers), and almost half of Black men feel more included when working remotely. Additionally, a Clarify Capital survey of more than 1,000 remote workers found that 79% of Generation Z workers would look for a new job over returning to the office.

Listen & Be Flexible

Making a real commitment to employee well-being isn’t easy, but it can have a big payoff. It starts by asking employees what they care about, what they need to be to be productive, to be engaged, to be happy. Then, employers have to deliver on it—or articulate why they can’t or have decided not to.

“I’m a big proponent of Stay Interviews,” said Raskin. “Don’t wait until someone quits to figure out what you could do better. Ask employees what makes them stay, what would make them leave and how you can keep them engaged and committed. It saves time and money in the long run when you consider the costs of recruiting new hires and the loss of institutional knowledge and momentum, and it shows employees you care about their well-being.” 

But remember that one size doesn’t fit all. Like with the current remote work debate, instead of sweeping dictates for all employees to return to the office full time or for a specific, yet seemingly arbitrary, number of days per week, employers may be best served by continuing to trust employees to make good choices about how, when and where they get their work done. This trust will yield increased retention, dedication and results in the long term. 

“Rather than mandates across the board that feel punitive and unfair to employees, leaders should reward those who are successful and manage the performance of the few who are not meeting expectations in the new model,” said Johnson.

When committing to employee well-being, it’s important that employers don’t treat it as a one-time process. The goal is to create a continuous feedback loop. Employers should also deploy multiple methods to gather input from employees. While some may answer a survey, others may prefer a private discussion, focus group or brainstorming session. And the task should not fall solely to HR; business leaders and managers—the people who most frequently interact with employees—should be involved and regularly solicit feedback to learn what employees need to be engaged and productive and then be prepared to measure whether those efforts have been successful or not.

There is no denying that earnestly committing to employee well-being initiatives can be a lot of work, but it will pay dividends in the long run. By focusing on employee well-being, those common workforce troubles—quiet quitting, employee retention, labor shortages—may become just a little less painful, and your employees will reward you for it.