Success Through Strategic Employee Well-Being
Success Through Strategic Employee Well-Being
Employee well-being is a powerful predictor of corporate success and financial performance.
Well-Being Improves What HR Delivers
As the most productive employees tend to feel healthy both mentally and physically, they are able to be more engaged and focused. For HR managers whose primary goal is making a business strategy work, it is essential that employee mental health and mental well-being become the foundation of any employee initiative.
Employee well-being permeates every facet of HR and what they deliver. In fact, the success of any HR team’s people operations is dependent on their capacity to foster resilient, engaged and fulfilled workers.
HR has become the caregiver of the workplace. Their role is to attract, retain and care for the workforce by providing what is most important to help them thrive.
When done right, employee well-being initiatives have a net positive impact on an organization’s bottom line. However, to accomplish this, teams must take a holistic approach that integrates well-being throughout the employee experience. In addition, they must account for the impact of outside economic and societal issues contributing to employee stress.
With the right pieces in place, along with the capacity to monitor and identify when employees are mentally strong and resilient, organizations can empower employees to thrive, enabling HR to build cultures where people feel valued, connected and set-up for success.
Understanding the Challenge
With burnout and stress still running rampant throughout the work environment and wreaking havoc on employee mental health, providing adequate access to necessary care and treatment demonstrates an active interest in supporting employee mental health and well-being.
50%
of employees have less than $1,000 in emergency savings.
The Future of Employee Mental Health and Well-Being
Employee mental health offerings like employee assistance programs (EAPs) have been instrumental in workplaces. Unfortunately, these types of offerings only serve the 20% to 30% of people with ongoing mental health concerns who need clinical support, and even then, most realize that a three-visit EAP model isn’t enough. Currently, many employees are spending money on a monthly basis to support their own mental health, with almost half reporting that mental health care has gotten more expensive in the past 12 months, adding to financial stress.
By going beyond the traditional EAP and offering both robust mental health care and mental well-being skills training in tandem, HR makes a clear statement about the importance of employee’s mental health, mental fitness and emotional well-being. Adopting this approach presents further opportunities to incorporate additional mental health policies and measures aimed at destigmatizing care, expanding access and nurturing resilience.
58%
of employees are interested in mental fitness programs like meditation, resiliency or stress management.
59%
About half of employees report that out-of-pocket expenses for mental health services increased over the last year.
While investments in employee mental health and well-being programs require an upfront budget allocation, the long-term returns in the form of healthy, motivated employees far outweigh the costs. As people are key to creating and sustaining long-term growth, profit and overall success, caring for their holistic well-being through comprehensive support is the wisest investment an organization can make.
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