A revolution is needed in wellbeing to drive it up the corporate agenda.
That was one of the messages that came from the ‘professionalising health and wellbeing – setting new standards for wellbeing practitioners’ workshop at the Good Day at Work Conversation 2015 this week.
Hosted by Robertson Cooper at Altitude 360 in London, this year’s event brought together some of the most influential leaders in the wellbeing conversation.
In the afternoon workshop session Paula Brockwell, head of client delivery at Robertson Cooper, said that businesses were starting to experiment and test out wellbeing and that there was a window of opportunity for professionals to put it firmly on the business agenda.
However, she told the workshop that one of the challenges was that many businesses wanted to see a return on investment and this wasn’t always easy to do immediately.
Ms Brockwell explained that businesses needed to put a clear strategy in place if health and wellbeing was to be fostered successfully.
Kevin Roberts, executive chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi, provided the morning’s keynote address and gave a personal insight into inspirational leadership and how business can draw on emotions and work relationships to deliver sustainable value.
The morning then gave way to a series of interactive sessions, which gave delegates an opportunity to discuss how businesses could remove the barriers to engaging with health and wellbeing.
The breakout sessions featured contributions from Julia Hobsbawn, founder of the ‘knowledge networking’ business and author of the forthcoming book Social Health and Kim Wylie, change management lead at Google.
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No tihs squire, and so long as the mind-set and governance ethos remains “reactive” rather than “proactive” the occupational “health” cart is going to be stuck where it is with the horse trying to push it instead of pulling it…..
Too many employers seam to have adopted the governments “make work pay nudge campaign” by sanctioning everyone absent regardless, of whether sick or not, to the point where no one will take a sickie just be present like, you know, whether functioning optimally or not, just “working to live” and becoming increasingly disaffected even indifferent as they loose any real meaning and purpose apart from doing enough to keep their job whilst hoping something else comes up before they crash and burn..
Just like any other workplace machine human resources require a “given” basic set of conditions in which to perform optimally and without routine and planned maintenance will predictably break down especially if revved up to the max, red-lining it, all of the time.
A bit like ‘flogging the dead horse’ the stress and strain will shorten productive life of the unit and, user abuse will not be covered by any warranty and, surprise surprise, the unit will have to be replaced as by this time it will be beyond economic repair, depreciated and probably not recyclable……