Next Practices in Holistic Well-Being | i4CP

Well before the coronavirus pandemic, the topic of employee well-being (EWB) was a growing priority of many organizations. As I mentioned in a previous post, you can check out Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book, Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance and What We Can Do About It, to obtain an in-depth view on why EWB is a heightened concern (e.g. 24/7 always-on environment). While the concerns about EWB were already acute, they have been magnified during the coronavirus pandemic. A recent report by SHRM on the impact of COVID-10 on EWB found that 35 percent of surveyed employees report OFTEN “feeling tired or having little energy” and many of these employees report feeling hopeless, having little pleasure in doing things, and having trouble concentrating on tasks. These stressors continue to take a toll on EWB. And although EWB is a worthy pursuit in itself, it is also a core component of an organization’s talent strategy and lever of employee attraction, engagement, retention, and performance. In this 60-page research report by i4CP and thought leader Rob Cross, they provide EWB insights that are relevant now and will continue to resonate well beyond the pandemic. The report is broken into five components including 1) Value of Holistic Well-Being , 2) Awareness and Training on Practices, 3) Despite Huge Investment, Well-Being Program Effectiveness is Elusive, 4) The Foundation of Well-Being: Culture and Leadership, 5) Four Practices for Driving Holistic Well-Being. A few findings include a) high-performance organizations are 1.5x more likely to emphasize physical and mental/emotional well-being b) when employees are encouraged to report concerns about the emotional well-being of themselves and others, organizations have 4x market performance. c) there are still barriers to EWB, including cost, awareness, culture, leadership behavior, and underutilization of technology, to name a few. There are several insights in this report, which also includes case studies from Facebook, Nationwide, and others. The Humana case study on p. 36 provides the example of using leadership development training to address the stigma surrounding emotional and mental health issues, and helping leaders to create a culture of “psychological safety” so that workers are more comfortable bringing forward concerns about EWB.