Workplace wellness increases your competitive edge: 3 ways an ecosystem of wellness safeguards your company.

The benefits of prioritizing the employee experience and employee wellbeing has been empirically demonstrated – Thrive XM, The Global Workforce Intelligence Project, Qualtrix.

 

Analyzing millions of data points across Fortune 100 companies, these insightful reports prove that employee wellbeing directly impacts organizational resilience, productivity, and financial performance across critical KPIs.

 

And yet, many companies out there are stubbornly sticking to traditional frameworks that view people as the resource, rather than the source.

 

This perspective equates the workforce as expendable elements in service to the organization, rather than sources of power that if connected to meaning and growth will propel the business to new heights.

 

Shifting from the Great Resignation to the Great Migration, the trend is now curving toward the Great Inflation.

 

If you knew that if your people wore out you wouldn’t be able to replace them, how would it change your business strategy? In an inflationary job market, one of the secrets to staying on top of the market is internal mobility.

 

Organizations that survive this market shift treat their employees as irreplaceable assets, rather than disposable commodities.  Doing this, they invest in the wellbeing of their personnel, creating an ecosystem in which they can thrive and do their best work.

 

 

What does a supportive ecosystem look like?

 

Based on three fundamental components, it:

 

1. Is founded in trust.

2. Actively seeks to understand and tailor employee experiences to fit the individual.

3. Connects employees to meaning and growth opportunities.

 

Let’s take a closer look at why and then at how you can create a supportive employee experience that safeguards your most valuable assets.

 

Trust

 

The first part of creating an environment of trust relates to autonomy.

 

Presumably you hire your employees because they have a skill set you value. And one that you have identified you need and don’t currently have. Offering them a contract signals that you believe they are going to contribute.

 

If you truly held that belief, why then would you plop them in a micromanaged framework? Micromanagement suggests you hold the opposite idea – that your employee will not be able to use their skill to contribute unless you direct them in how to do so.

 

Given that you have identified that you and your team don’t have this skill, why are you best placed to direct the employment of that skill?

 

An environment of trust begins with the concept that as social creatures, people are innately built to help others. It starts with a belief that your employees want to contribute because it enriches their life, giving them a sense of purpose.

 

If you accepted those concepts, how would your management style change? Likely punitive performance review processes, cultures of slag and shame, and the concentrated focus on face time would disappear.

 

An ecosystem of trust comprises three parts. To start creating an effective system of management that accepts that your employees are intrinsically designed to help and they want to contribute, ground your methods in autonomy and focus on results.

 

First

Employees are given latitude to determine how and when they will develop deliverables. You didn’t hire the employee for hourly face time, so the focus is on what they produce, not the hours in which they did it. Try a new asynchronous style of work.

 

Second

Failure is reframed as a growth opportunity. Shifting from blame and shame to encouragement and learning, helps you get to the root cause of the issue. It’s in an environment of safety that innovative solutions are implemented.

 

Third

The organization must keep it’s promises. The employee experience is composed of moments – big and small – that are opportunities to reinforce or violate staff trust.

 

Asking employees to assume new roles and responsibilities without recognition breeches that trust. Management that actively seeks to understand employee perspectives and actions feedback strengthens the relationship.

 

In sum, you can create the experience of trust by assuming employees want to do their best and creating an ecosystem that makes them feel autonomous, safe, and valued.

 

Evidence-based tailored experiences

 

The second part of creating a supportive experience that safeguards your people assets involves understanding them and responding to their needs.

 

Measuring their experience gives you the data points you need to craft a holistic picture of the eco-system you have created.

 

Whether you use software, employee surveys, manager check-ins, measuring the experience should be easy for employees to give feedback and should be done regularly across all employee touchpoints.

 

Data on biological and physical needs to understand the safety and wellbeing of the environmental experience must be collected. Mental wellness data including cognitive needs and self-actualization needs to be gathered. Social wellbeing should be measured in terms of belonging and acceptance.

 

 

Once you have the data in hand, it must be actioned. Like your customers, your employees can be grouped into unique audiences and business segments. You would treat each of those external segments differently: the same practices must be applied internally.

 

Wellbeing is not a one-size fits all approach. An older employee with grown children will have different needs to thrive than a Gen Y-er entering parenthood. Tailor your solutions accordingly.

 

Meaning and growth opportunities

 

Employees are most loyal and productive when they are actively growing and when they are connected to their purpose and the organizational mission.

 

One of the most important aspects of the employee experience is growth. Employees want to be able to develop, learning new skills that not only keep them engaged, but increase the contribution they can offer.

 

On the other side, businesses also want staff to grow. Given that there are more jobs than skilled people, upskilling your personnel gives your organization the competitive edge.

 

There’s clear evidence that like your overall approach to measuring and crafting the employee experience, growth opportunities must also be tailored.

 

Offering generic e-learning or even role-based certifications don’t create the relevant experience for your employees to build specific capacities.

 

Enter Josh Bersin’s capability academy. This concept expands learning and growth beyond input and focuses on output. In an ideal growth environment, employees are able to put what they’ve learned into practice in real time.

 

Bersin define a capability academy “as a place, beyond a library of content, where employees go to grow.” Growth moves from simple memorization and uptake toward an embodied learning experience where new learning is refined and honed and truly absorbed through the fire of practice and experience.

 

 

This is where that ecosystem of trust – a culture that views failure as part of the process – becomes even more important.

 

As an employer, you may already support professional development, but to truly upskill your workforce – benefitting from their new capacities and engendering their loyalty – you must create avenues that are timely ad relevant to your staff.

 

If you don’t know what those are beyond what you are already offering, start by listening. This is one way you can both measure and simultaneously impact your staff’s satisfaction with the employee experience.

 

Salesforce Research shows that employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to perform to the best of their abilities.

 

A company environment that is open and safe and supportive is not only what you’d want for yourself, it secures your organization, making it a market competitor.

 

If you want to explore how to implement this culture in your company, schedule a free call with me.

 

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With gratitude to Tithi Luadthong for this incredible piece that so beautifully illustrates the bright ideas born in the right ecosystem. Find this and more at: https://tithi-luadthong.pixels.com/.