Welcome back from a long weekend. I just asked someone if she enjoyed her long weekend off and she said she was bored and was happy to be back at work. Bored or not, she may not realise it but her body and mind got some rest. Rest is of utmost importance. Rest repairs your body and keeps you looking young and makes you alert.
Rest helps your concentration, your creativity and helps you refocus to relaunch. Rest restores and renews. Rest is essential. On that note I am going to talk about wellness today.
Wellness is defined as the state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal. So when we say wellness in the office, it is a misnomer because one cannot be well if one only actively pursues it in the office.
Today’s topic is about how the organisation can promote a state of wellness for their staff. Why is this important? A good way to understand this is to take another factor of production and use that as an example.
Let’s take hardware like a computer. Most organizations have people who maintain them to ensure optimum service delivery. They don’t just use them till the crash and die. They have to download updates and ensure they keep them in the best condition possible.
Nobody will leave their computers in the rain or use the computer to hoover the carpet or even as a dust pan.
Ensuring your workers have all round wellness is to ensure a robust bottom line at the end of the day. This will happen because the staff will be alert and excited to work. They will be focused, passionate and creative. They will be eager to learn and to go the extra mile. They will be entrepreneurial.
How do I know this? These things are the opposite of what happens when people are unwell. Research has shown that a lot of the complaints employers have about the behavior of employees is almost a direct correlation with the level of their wellness.
What then is wellness? We must understand that it is not just the absence of disease. Wellness includes the good state of the spirit soul and body. Wellness includes the quality of your sleep, quality and frequency of what you eat, your stress levels, the state of your finances, your exercise regimen and exercise levels. Finally your career and stress levels.
What can the organisation do to ensure wellness of staff actually goes back to the objective of the company? This cascades down to culture and finally job description, people specification and appraisals.
From the beginning you have to have your employees in mind when you are creating the objectives of your company. Ensuring there is a good reward system and a good conflict resolution system. Grievance procedures must be available and indeed you must have a detailed handbook so employees are not left guessing.
There are some objectives that clearly don’t have the interest of the staff at heart. If one of your objectives is to make money no matter what it may already be an indication the kind of culture the organization will promote.
Once a culture of doing things in extreme the wellness of staff will be threatened. The culture of the organization needs to give staff freedom to speak and be themselves. The culture needs to within reason allow staff to express themselves and allow creativity.
The job description should be properly crafted and adhered to. Like in my example above, nobody will use a computer as a dust pan; if they do, not only will the job be done improperly but it will also destroy the computer. Therefore don’t employ someone for one thing and then use them for something else.
Deadlines have to be reasonable. What is reasonable then needs to be worked out as per the industry, the level of the person and the job that needs to be done.
Appraisals have to be carried out as and when due. Many people don’t understand what an appraisal really is. They think it is the time to tell the employee what he is not doing right meanwhile it is a time to review overall performance Yes, give feedback but also lay down a plan of support and mentoring so that the next appraisal period will be even better. There should be a culture of almost instant feedback on the job just to ensure the confidence of the employee is built up and not eroded over time.
There are times we have made a mistake in hiring someone who does not fit the job nor the organisation. In such an instance to help the person’s sanity and the wellness of all the people who have to work with him, the best thing is to let the person go.
How do we ensure, staff are getting rest and enough sleep? Educating them regularly about what adds up to total wellness. Also telling them about exercise and all those things the office cannot control directly.
A fair wage for work done is also another way to ensure wellness. When people don’t have enough money they can become unwell. Some organizations don’t have a fair wage structure and you get paid what you can negotiate. Invest in a proper wage structure. This not only ensures the right amount is paid for quantity of work and responsibility but you also eliminate the office grape vine which in itself causes ill-health.
Deliberate team building helps sustain wellness. When an employee knows he is a legitimate member of a good cohesive team, he thrives because he knows he can rely on his team to deliver when the chips are down.
I remember many years ago when I ran a health maintenance organization. When we tried to sell the scheme to an organisation, the CEO said his people are never ill because he spends money on deliberately building a team and they never felt they had to pull any project off alone, they could always rely on the team. That said, it is good to get them good medical packages also.
The physical environment is important. Damp and musty places cause sickness. Dirty and disorganized spaces don’t help the mental state of the people. Too much clutter and broken down things all scattered everywhere and anywhere definitely does not help wellness.
Poor work tools also lead to being unwell because anxiety builds every time that tool needs to be used. Deadlines will not be met and the quality of work done will almost always be poor.
Recognising when someone is unwell and showing care also helps total wellness. We show care by allowing the person time off to get better and letting them know how much the organisation is relying on them.
This is not all we can do to ensure that our employees are well which in turn swells the bottom line. However, they are just some tips to help. Have a great weekend and think wellness.
Olamide Balogun
