How employers should approach wellbeing

Wellbeing has been a word that has become increasingly popular over the past five to ten years, and ever more so today. People talk about it in general life, GP’s and health professionals now include it in general conversation; social media has picked up on it and it has grown extremely popular within the workplace with company’s and businesses, employers and HR professionals mentioning it regularly within their circles – publications and the growing number of searches on the internet for wellbeing initiatives and team building has risen in these past years.

But on a recent search for my websites SEO, there were many more hits for team building in the workplace than wellbeing in the workplace setting, but, you could say that overall wellbeing encompasses team building.

So, what is wellbeing?

Well, I think if you ask anyone randomly what they think wellbeing means to them you would no doubt get answers like: generally being happy, feeling good, healthy in body and mind, or being prosperous. If you ask anyone what they believe workplace wellbeing is then you might get similar answers, like; having a healthy and happy and contented workforce, who work together well, or if you ask a broader question; what do you think the meaning of workplace wellbeing is? You will get answers like, it relates to everything from, how the workplace feels about their work; their working environment; the climate and the work organisation. But the key factors to remember are that it is known that there are direct links to long-term effectiveness, high productivity levels and the general wellbeing of the workforce.

And so to put wellbeing into two simple categories that will apply to the working environment:

Workplace Wellbeing and Health and Wellbeing

Workplace wellbeing is any activity or initiative that overall will contribute to the increase in teamwork, team moral and team spirit: and the main activity here is Team Building.

Team building is a critical tool for creating the right culture and allowing you to form a healthy work environment for you and your team. On every employers mind will be getting the team to perform at their best for increased productivity, work output and to achieve any deadlines set on time. But building and creating a healthy work environment is crucial in achieving this, and, at the end of the day contentment at work will go a long way in keeping your team members happy, enthusiastic and fulfilled in their roles and not where they dread coming into the workplace but have a sense of belonging and feel valued and happy.

Team building comes in two forms; internal and external.

Team building events are run up and down the country and range from wine and cheese tasting (culinary) to the physical (abseiling) and the escape rooms (challenging) all good fun and build better relationships. Internal workshops can be fun-filled with games, building or designing a structure or workshops that look at individual’s personality types with the aim to see who you really are and what your likes and dislikes are in order to build better working and social relationships.

Health and Wellbeing workshops will ask a OH (occupational health) advisor to come in or a fitness or nutritional professional to talk about the general wellbeing from a fitness and nutritional perspective and what the employees can do differently at work or on your days off to better your wellbeing.

The OH professional can approach the workshop from a more clinical perspective where the team members can have their blood pressure, cholesterol, lung capacity and their BMI (body mass index) calculated and then move into a slightly more physical check, where they can have a press up strength check; a plank core check, a grip strength test, a stretch test and to finish off a cardio test using the bleep test.

These health checks are not only fun and interesting for the team but do bring a competitiveness into the fold and not only can they discover a health complaint but overall prove to the team that their company has their best interests for their health and wellbeing.

So, to end,

Wellbeing encompasses team building which improves teamwork- bettering the team moral and spirit; improving the teams working relationships whilst fostering a better work environment and overall improving the work ethic, retention and boosting work output.

Matt