In 2020, companies worldwide had to make a tough decision for their employees’ safety and wellbeing. A rapid transition to remote work meant that employers had to make the best of the resources they had at the time — and many are still trying to catch up.
2020 has been a year for the books! In spite of the many challenges that came our way, we also found unique opportunities for growth. We learned that we’re truly “better together,” even when we’re working apart and staying connected virtually. We’ve come to appreciate what’s really important to us in our personal lives, and to prioritize what matters most professionally for our clients and partners. We’ve experienced, first-hand, that going the extra mile for each other at work and at home makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
With its recent state of stress research, Grokker Innovation Labs, a research organization committed to advancing employee wellbeing and workplace culture, set out to understand the stress levels of U.S. workers as the damaging effects of 2020 continue to linger. Seeking to reveal how stress is impacting workers' lives and what they're doing to manage it, the insights provide focus on the specific areas where greater support is needed from employers. Let's take a look at the research highlights.
COVID-19 and its aftermath has made 2020 a downright challenging year. In the blink of an eye, the very definition of work/life balance has taken center stage — instantly changing from what was once just a desirable goal to the global imperative for employers everywhere. Keeping employees healthy and safe so that businesses can keep their doors open is now every employers’ top priority. Though some semblance of a new normal is beginning to take shape as digital environments begin to repair the disconnectedness we feel at home and at work, there’s a lot of good yet to be done.
Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, the world in which we live and work has been turned on its head. The lines between work-life and home-life are blurred, parents with children underfoot are overtasked, and choosing between the family who needs them and the work that sustains them has become a daunting, daily task for nearly everyone.
What is employee happiness? In jargony terms, it's a positive mindset enabling emotional engagement with one's company. Put simply, it's that pleasing, content state of being that makes an employee willing to "go that extra mile" while running with an idea or problem-solving. It's that special something that makes it possible for an employee to, say, write a blog post about employee happiness without rolling her eyes. You might say that employee happiness is the piece de resistance to employee Engagement (yes, that's Engagement with a capital E).
Listening to employees is a critical component of maintaining a company culture that values people as individuals with unique interests, struggles, and goals. Individual employees create a workforce culture, after all, and make the culture happen. They personify it. They bring it to life. They live it. So if you're building a culture of wellbeing, it only makes sense that you provide them with wellbeing benefits that enable them to show up and give their best.
What do your employees want and need in a workforce wellbeing program? Wellbeing is inherently personal, so don't make assumptions. Ask them! Listen. Find out what they expect — what they'd enjoy and actually use. And then, take action.
According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. In fact, cardiovascular diseases, including stroke, kill 17 million people worldwide each year — a figure expected to reach over 23 million per year by 2030. We can’t think of a better reason to raise heart health awareness among your global employees.
It’s a new year — a new decade! — and we hope your workforce wellbeing program is already making a splash with employees. Now is the time to get people excited about your 2020 activities and kick off a happy and healthy year. We want you to make the most of your workforce wellbeing initiatives so your employees engage early and often. That's where delivering personalized experiences fits in.
Aside from being the first month in the new year, that special time for making get-healthier resolutions, January also comes on the heels of December — when most people eat and drink “whatever they want” as they move from one holiday party to another, leaving cookie crumbs in their wake. Unfortunately for those of us with a sweet tooth, a big slice of grandma’s rum cake doesn’t pack the same nutritional punch as a naturally sweetened apple, orange, or strawberry. But ‘tis the season, right?
Most of us — if not all of us — have participated in an employer-sponsored wellness program of some sort. Even if we’re old enough to remember when it was perfectly acceptable to light up a cigarette in the office, we’ve grown accustomed to our employers offering health screenings, fitness challenges, or educational lunch-and-learns to promote healthy habits. And if we're lucky, our employer provides personalized wellbeing tools that we can access on-demand, when and where we need them the most.
LuckyVitamin, an e-commerce company supplying over 38,000 natural and organic products to customers around the globe, is truly “walking the talk” of workforce wellbeing. With a mission to support anyone — including their employees — on their journey toward happy wellness, they promote and enable the pursuit of wellbeing in all that they do.
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.
