Wellbeing in the workplace is becoming more prominent within the corporate agenda. The pandemic has further highlighted the importance of employee wellbeing with businesses having to adapt to look after their employees in different work environments. Increased remote working has brought with it the challenge of ensuring the wellbeing of employees is still treated as a priority despite having less daily contact.
As more businesses begin to invest in wellbeing programmes, it’s important to know how to efficiently measure any changes and understand the impact it has on your employees.
Why measure employee wellbeing?
Measuring employee wellbeing helps your organisation to understand the impact of wellbeing initiatives. Wellbeing is an investment so you want to be able to appropriately measure the impact it has on your employees. Measuring wellbeing will help you to:
- Identify if there are any issues that need to be addressed
- Understand who is affected by them and how wellbeing could improve this
- Establish baselines to measure progress as you focus more on wellbeing
- Target key areas for improvement
- Track any improvements in business performance and absenteeism
Measuring wellbeing also helps you see a return on your investment and continue to make the case for how important wellbeing initiatives are. If you haven’t already, doing an audit of your current performance before investing further will help you get a thorough understanding of how these initiatives are impacting your business.
Ways to measure your wellbeing
Employee engagement
Measuring how engaged your employees are can give an insight into the wellbeing of your staff. According to the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, employee engagement and profitability influence each other over time.
How to measure: The most efficient way to measure the engagement of your employees is to regularly check in with them to get an understanding of their engagement levels. Undertaking a pulse survey with around 5-10 questions on a regular basis is a great way to capture how your employees are feeling and measure progress over time.
You should ask questions based on a scale to help quantify the impact your wellbeing initiatives are having. This will also help you see the impact of new initiatives and if there are any specific areas for improvement.
Productivity
Employees that feel happier in their jobs are proven to be more productive, which is why measuring productivity is a great way to understand how effective your wellbeing is. Our Future of Work report revealed that on average 29% of employees feel more productive due to wellbeing support they’ve received from work.
How to measure: You can measure how productive employees are by regularly tracking their performance against the goals and targets set for their role. You’ll likely spot a trend between an increase in overall business performance and the introduction of wellbeing initiatives.
Retention
People who are happier in their job are more likely to stay longer. Good wellbeing plays a large role in retention, with a 2017 study revealing 33% of businesses who invested in workplace wellbeing initiatives saw a reduction in staff turnover.
How to measure: To measure the effectiveness of your wellbeing strategy through staff retention, compare your staff turnover before and after you begin focusing on employee wellbeing. When employees do leave include a question in their exit interview about how happy they felt at work and if their wellbeing had anything to do with their choice to leave the role.
Investing in your company wellbeing
Investing in your wellbeing is about more than just ticking the right boxes. It’s important to make sure there’s a strategy in place that puts your employees at the heart of your business.
At Westfield Health, we have a range of workplace wellbeing solutions that are designed with your business in mind. Our focus is on both improving employee health and wellbeing and contributing to better business performance.
Our wellbeing solutions include:
- Health cash plans
- Private health insurance
- Mental health first aid
- Wellbeing webinars
- Wellbeing workshops
- Healthy extras
- Health calendar
- Active spaces
- Health and lifestyle screenings
Our consultative approach will help us develop a wellbeing package tailored for your business needs. Find out more about our different business solutions and how they can help with your wellbeing initiatives.
Measuring the impact of wellbeing
Having a thorough wellbeing strategy can greatly impact your business performance, but it’s important to quantify this over time.
If you are looking to improve the wellbeing of your employees, get in touch with us for more information on how we can help your business. You can book a free, no-obligation consultation with one of our Health and Wellbeing consultants to talk you through the solutions we offer.