Employee wellbeing - what would really help?

[paralysedbyinertia]

I'm starting a new job soon, and one of my first priorities will be to address the issue of staff wellbeing, which I understand has suffered over the last year for a range of different reasons.

Obviously, once I get started, I will be consulting staff about what they think would make the biggest difference to their experience of work, but I'm keen to get a headstart on thinking about this if at all possible.

So, I'm really interested to know what workplace initiatives have made a significant difference to your wellbeing at work, and/or what you would like your employer to put in place in order to make your work life easier and more enjoyable.

I will have the power to make significant changes to working practices, but not much financial resource to play with, if that makes any difference to your answers!

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

www.leapsome.com/blog/employee-net-promoter-score-enps-what-is-it-why-should-you-measure-it-and-why-does-it-matter

Just going back to the measurement idea, one model you could look into is ENPS - Employee Net Promoter Score. There are companies that will do it for you, but sure you could do something similar or Google the questions that they use.
Generally you can make it confidential so that people only add comments and their email address if they want to, but if it's a small company be careful as it might be obvious to work out if only a couple of people don't add email addresses!

Questions could be
How likely are you to recommend our company to friends and family as a good place to work
How likely are you to recommend our products to friends and family
My manager is clear about expectations
(scale of 1-10 agree-disagree)
I can manage my workload
I am given flexibility how to plan my workload
I am trusted to carry out my tasks in the way I find works best
My manager is supportive of my emotional wellbeing
Senior leadership provide clear direction & strategy
If I have a problem I can't solve I feel comfortable speaking to my manager

You get the idea... depending on company size you could analyse the results by department or team but obviously be careful if only a small team as then its less confidential

Think about what you want to find out and then organise your questions into categories

@Comefromaway

No compulsory team building/well being wacky initiative training days. They are especially difficult to those on the autistic spectrum or introverts.

Oh absolutely this. team building is the absolute worst thing about work. It makes me despair and we mostly just moan about it both before and after.

Make social events voluntary with no pressure.

I also agree thank yous - these are far too scarce and very perfunctory.

Thanks @NeverDropYourMoonCup, I like the idea of being inclusive by design, and will try to build that into my thinking.

@Familyspam

paid day off on their birthday (or the first working day after a weekend birthday) Would you not just prefer to be able to take your day off when you wanted rather than the company telling you it had to be your birthday or the first working day after. Our employees prefer to make the choice for themselves.

Agree I would hate this decision to be made for me. One year I had a bad break up before my birthday, being in work at least stopped me feeling lonely! What about people who are e.g. widowed?

No micromanagement

Apart from the pay, i have to say supermarkets and m&s are actually very good at staff happiness only my experience obviously.Regular surveys about managers who get pulled up if they get a low score. Managers expected to pitch in on shop floor man tills etc if very busy. Staff can always complain to the store manager about lazy section managers, and they set the stores up to discourage hanging about and talking. Most have a thank a colleague thing and the colleague then gets something.
What they are less good at is supporting staff from awful awful customers.

Oh and once you are trained the usually leave you aline to get on with things, and they have daily morning and evening team briefs where you are able and not punished for expressing your opinion.

A company we work with has a Birthday Gift - they give £100 to someone in the team to buy each person a Birthday gift - I can see how initially this would seem like a good idea - but I hate birthday gifts - hate buying them and hate receiving them especially in public - all that fake gratitude for receiving some piece of tat that I hate - and who would buy it - another job to do when you're already busy and I can see it getting old very quickly - I know I am probably alone in my hatred of this idea - I'd rather the company just paid me properly.

• Flexi time - we recently had our core hours removed so can work anything between 7 and 7, though during lockdown last year this was relaxed
• Option to wfh
• one thing that came out last week in my team is a "well being voucher" - we have all been given a "voucher" for an hour to do something we enjoy, to use in the next 2 weeks. I am really excited about it!

Don’t just send an email out each week with YouTube and web links, as well as helpful tidbits like ‘get outside’, ‘do some exercise’.

That is nothing more than a tick box exercise and does NOTHING to help staff wellbeing. And all the staff see it for what it is.

Fab @SouthOfFrance, that's really helpful.

Noting that people appreciate genuine thank yous and don't appreciate team building days!

Flexible working, the right equipment to do the job, IT that works...

@Familyspam

A company we work with has a Birthday Gift - they give £100 to someone in the team to buy each person a Birthday gift - I can see how initially this would seem like a good idea - but I hate birthday gifts - hate buying them and hate receiving them especially in public - all that fake gratitude for receiving some piece of tat that I hate - and who would buy it - another job to do when you're already busy and I can see it getting old very quickly - I know I am probably alone in my hatred of this idea - I'd rather the company just paid me properly.

Yeah, I can see how that's one of the initiatives that might backfire. I'd hate the stress of having to choose a present for someone and would be worried about getting it wrong. Better to just give people the £100 to spend on themselves, I'd have thought!

Trust in your employees - no micro management.

The wellbeing voucher sounds like a lovely idea @boydy99. Though I imagine that it wouldn't go down too well if people were really overworked!

Totally agree @Kindlingwood about not just sending out boxticking emails. Sounds crap.

I read a blog from an American manager Ask a Manager, and whilst it's obviously geared to the US workplace (and the horrors of having pretty much no employment law at all), some of it really resonates.

This recent post rang lots of bells (NB the linked article has a dreadful headline) about how there has been a great deal of emphasis of the difficulties people have had with WFH during the pandemic, whilst many essential workers, who are frequently low paid, never had that option, and feel invisible as a result. www.askamanager.org/2021/05/people-who-havent-been-working-from-home-feel-invisible.html

@RedFrogsRule

I’m NHS and am sick to death of well-being initiatives. We can’t actually go to any of them because we have no staff!! So they obviously exist for people who aren’t under stress and have time in their working day. (And obviously invented by the same people)

Workplace morale is the lowest I have ever seen right now. Rock bottom.

IT fails frequently
Procurement is a bureaucratic form ridden time consuming effort to buy staples.
Space...we fight over space, clinics space, office space, theatre space.
Monitoring...spreadsheets demonstrating performance which take longer than they should
I have more meetings this week than time. Each meeting is someone who wants oversight of what I’m doing from different angles. (Commissioner, finance director, inequalities lead, divisional director). This is in the time when I should be ‘managing’ the service. The rest of the time I’m delivering the service. So the meetings will want reports which I haven’t got time to produce because I’m in meetings... obviously I could manage time enter and cancel patients so that I can produce the reports ?

Give me what I need to do the job...pens, IT...oh and enough staff...
Stop peering over my shoulder

I so hear you!

The amount of bloody audits is ridiculous. Complete tick box exercise.

Everything is such hard work in my Trust and takes so many phone calls to sort out.

Thanks @Foofbrush. I'll have a look at that blog.

@Kindlingwood

Don’t just send an email out each week with YouTube and web links, as well as helpful tidbits like ‘get outside’, ‘do some exercise’.

That is nothing more than a tick box exercise and does NOTHING to help staff wellbeing. And all the staff see it for what it is.

Agree. Since lockdown every senior manager now sends out a weekly roundup, complete with corporate values and "be kind" speeches. Noone reads them.

Being able to work from home.

And, a general comment. If you're going to change something and you're confident it will work in the long run, then bloody do it properly - and stick at it for long enough to see if it actually works.

I have lost count of the number of change programmes or initiatives that get rolled out, launched with great fanfare then it's left to the teams to fathom what it's all about with no support.

The launch event does not equal success and job done.

Ask them

Praise. I work in an industry with a massive blame culture and no praise

@Candleabra

And, a general comment. If you're going to change something and you're confident it will work in the long run, then bloody do it properly - and stick at it for long enough to see if it actually works.

I have lost count of the number of change programmes or initiatives that get rolled out, launched with great fanfare then it's left to the teams to fathom what it's all about with no support.

The launch event does not equal success and job done.

Thanks, point well made.