In the August issue of SHP magazine, Nick Bell, Colin Powell, Peter Sykes and Val Scholey argue that employers need to start looking beyond the health side of wellbeing, to make sure employees are engaged and happy at work.
Wellbeing is often used as a shorthand for physical and/or mental health. Someone’s physical health is relatively easy to measure – take their blood pressure, check their weight and height – and is a logical starting point for health and safety professionals. However, Bell argues that wellbeing is a much broader concept than how healthy we feel.
It’s all very well businesses offering health incentives such as free gym memberships or cycle schemes to their employees in an attempt to keep them healthy, but if they are then working long hours at a desk in a job they find unfulfilling, or with a boss who does not listen to their ideas, it is unlikely that their wellbeing will be very high.
The article examines how to look at wellbeing in a different way, and points to HSE’s stress management standards as a good starting point. Asking questions of your employees is also helpful: do they feel supported? Do they have control over their working arrangements? The answers can give a snapshot of wellbeing across an organisation.
Bell makes the case for going beyond the basics as an employer, not just looking at health but at how valued and engaged employees feel within an organisation. Employers that genuinely care about their staff and recognise them as individuals will better promote a sense of wellbeing at work.
This article will appear in the August issue, out at the beginning of the month.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
Have just read and completed the CPD feature ‘Wellbeing’ in this months edition of SHP August 2015 but have not been able to locate the answers which I was informed would be in the online version. Please can someone advise me where they are?
Thank you.
Hi Amanda, the article with the answers will go online on 10th August.