Employee wellness has been a buzzword for years—and in fact, for those paying close attention, it’s being replaced by employee wellbeing to accommodate an ever-broadening definition of what it means to achieve a healthy work/life balance. If you’re like most HR professionals, you’re focused on delivering benefits that add value to both your employees’ lives and organization’s bottom line. Employee wellness—or wellbeing—programs are an excellent place to start.
Grokker teamed up with SurveyMonkey to examine what most stresses Americans and how the nation is coping with the rising epidemic. Contrary to popular belief, the fears keeping Americans up at night are global or geo-political issues that are out of their immediate control.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of rising female businesswomen about my personal journey toward physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being. I am lucky enough today to work at my dream job, where I get to bring my whole self to work every day. But the shifts I made to create a happier and more fulfilling life required challenging the core belief system instilled in me since childhood.
I’m going to suggest something that to some of you may feel like I’m asking you to run through the cafeteria naked. Deep breaths. Here we go.
The key to creating a company culture that will attract and retain employees is remarkably simple, yet requires an enormous amount of courage. It runs against the core of most existing corporate norms and does not need to be displayed in your headquarters lobby. Plus, it’s free.
To create a winning culture you must do one thing above all else…
Grokker, the personalized wellness service for busy people on-the-go, today announced that SurveyMonkey will now offer Grokker’s engaging, flexible video content to inspire the company’s 800 global employees to be their best self.
“One of our biggest HR challenges is how to engage a dispersed, global team with corporate benefits that will ultimately attract and retain the best talent,” said Yuki Horiguchi, senior director of compensation and benefits at SurveyMonkey. “The fact that Grokker is available on any device, at any time and designed specifically for busy professionals means that all of our global employees can take advantage of this new benefit, and find the time to incorporate wellbeing into their everyday life.”
The old saying “my job is killing me” may really be true. New studies featured by Harvard Business School in “The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States” by Joel Goh, show stress at work is responsible for about $190 billion in healthcare costs in the United States.*
Every single year, there are at least 450 million days of missed work for full-time workers. The result? Lost revenue, to the tune of billions, and increased stress for workers and business owners, who all suffer under the weight of the sickening side-effects of stress induced illness in the workplace. Issues such as high-blood pressure, mental illness, drug abuse, alcoholism, and other stress created illnesses plague the American workplace.
Reap the rewards of a culture of wellness in the workplace.
Every disruption has its upside, and in today’s workplace, that’s good news since change is the mantra being heard from every sector of business. But embracing change is quite challenging for most managers and business owners. How do you please the Millennials, who comprise more than one of three in the workforce, and also offer something worthwhile that will benefit all members of your staff? Businesses are realizing the importance of an amazing culture but the reality is that most are still not getting it right.
While 50 percent of companies with more than 50 employees have wellness programs, they are not achieving the desired employee health improvements, the New York Times, recently reported. Wellness programs can work, if properly conceived and implemented -- the problem is they rarely are.
Typically, workplace-wellness programs employ a “carrot-and-stick” approach where the employee is financially rewarded for participation through lower health-care premiums and penalized with higher premiums if they do not participate.
Many organizations continue to work in remote and hybrid models as the pandemic winds down, but many employees, when given the option to return to work, would actually prefer to continue working remotely. Our new guide, Taking Care of Remote Employees: The Key To Business Success Beyond the Pandemic, gives you actionable steps to ensure that your employees feel supported no matter where they are working.
