Wellness is being taken seriously by organisations that may previously have paid lip service to the needs of their employees, team members or people for whom a level of care might be expected.
Schools have always put pastoral care at the forefront of their pupils’ learning experience. Universities have expanded the provision of Wellbeing services to students in the face of worrying statistics on suicide, rape, bullying and addiction.
Employers might be interested in their staff’s wellbeing because they genuinely care about their workers, and wish to improve retention levels or win prestigious awards. But how should they measure wellbeing?
One of the techniques an employer might use to gauge staff wellbeing is a staff survey.
Q1. Management value your input – do you: agree/ disagree/ neither
Q2. Are you likely to recommend your workplace to others? yes / no / not sure
etc…
This might give management some performance indicators that look good in pie charts and graphs. But how useful are staff surveys at starting a conversation about areas for improvement?
Shouldn’t employers start with one basic question such as:
Q. How happy were you at work this week?
Friday is an organisation that poses that question, followed up on a Monday morning with briefing sessions where teams can share the anonymous results and engage in a conversation about their implications.
If wellbeing were measured by levels of happiness, it might prove to be more instructive and help to create better working environments.
odespinner 