The six steps to help you build a successful workplace health and wellbeing program

Australia has seen an enormous amount of change in the workplace during the last 20 years — in no small part to the digitisation of the economy, automation, demographic changes, the gig economy, and more recently flexible work policies. However, while our work lives are digital enabled and may appear more “flexible”, The Black Dog Institute reports that one in six Australians are currently experiencing mental illness, most commonly depression and anxiety and is now the leading cause of sickness and long-term incapacity in Australia.

That means in a team of 100, approximately 16 team members may be facing mental health issues. The pandemic has compounded health and wellbeing concerns for businesses. Now more than ever, businesses must consider the health and wellbeing of staff (and directors) as a key strategy for business resilience. 

Coming out of a series of pandemic-enforced lockdowns, companies started asking themselves how they could effectively help their staff mentally recover from prolonged home isolation. Many businesses suffered from lack of team cohesion, creating a host of customer service issues.

In addition other lockdown fueled issues were materialising such as communications breakdowns, staff performance issues, and team instability caused in no small part by the ‘Great Resignation’. Immediate action was required by management to help team members.

But when you start talking about the key factors that drive positive health and wellbeing outcomes for staff, you need to consider employee access programs (EAPs), HR policy, team building exercises, mentorship, and a variety of other activities that work together to bring a supportive yet cultural experience to each individual within the team. It will quickly dawn on you that your efforts will yield value to staff beyond salaries while also improving staff retention, morale, productivity and ultimately, better client outcomes. 

Rolling out an EAP program for all staff, along with offering an expanded HR policy framework, and setting up team building initiatives to help drive a values-based team culture is a great first phase. 

Feedback from staff should be overwhelmingly positive. But as with all new initiatives, ongoing analysis and tweaking will be required to further refine your approach.

Identify your team values

As business leaders, we are presented with a myriad of programs, concepts and ideas from corporate health and wellbeing providers, HR specialists and other thought leaders. But it’s hard to know what efforts will resonate with your team. Should we offer subsidised counselling services? Should we build a meditation pod? Should we buy a gaming console as a stress reliever? All great ideas, but will staff gain continuous value from these items? Will they grow as individuals?

We found aligning our corporate values with our health and wellbeing initiatives to be an essential success factor. If a business’s values are geared towards driving a successful team culture (which they normally are), then your health and wellbeing program should be underpinned by these virtues. For instance, organisations that consider “Team First” as a core value may consider team based activities to reinforce a healthy working environment. “Smart” organisations may wish to engage individuals on a more cerebral level to drive quality health and wellbeing outcomes. 

Engage your team members

By talking to staff about what they want, you can quickly identify themes that may equate to positive health and wellbeing outcomes. Staff surveys can be echo chambers for management. So opt for personally interviewing a cross section of staff to hear their thoughts on what initiatives would provide the biggest impact in their lives. Technical staff are likely to motion towards gamifying health and wellbeing activities. There is scientific evidence supporting gamification having a positive impact on health behaviours. But be sure to implement something that’s engaging for all staff profiles. 

Designate a program champion

Positive endorsements from a designated program champion — an influential and respected team member — will go a long way to drive engagement in your ongoing programs. The last thing businesses want is for such initiatives to fall flat only to burn a hole in your pocket. Your program champion should not only believe in the program, but should also seek to inspire others to engage with the initiatives and lead by example.

Build a policy framework

When staff experience incidents that impact their health and wellbeing, it is vital for organisations to have policies that are legally sound while providing guidelines for business managers to contend with staff concerns. Your health and wellbeing program should be underpinned by a suite of comprehensive policies that may cover items such as domestic violence, equality in the workplace to reassure staff that their needs may be met in worst case scenarios. Importantly, engage your legal counsel to avoid the legal minefield that is HR. 

Deploy an employee access program

Employee Access Programs providers (EAPs) exist to provide readily available fully or partially subsidised counselling services to staff. We opted for Active & Thriving — an EAP consultancy firm offering an app that allows staff to engage in private counselling services, share health & wellbeing outcomes and regularly take part in learning activities such as webinars. We proudly flip the bill to ensure individual team members can resolve mental health issues or at least take the first steps to contending with emotional challenges or mental illness. 

Build, test, measure

Being a digital agency, we tend towards Lean methodology when implementing any new initiatives. This forces us to test and regularly measure every new initiative we release into the wild. A health and wellbeing program is no different. Staff satisfaction surveys, EAP engagement rates, and our health and wellbeing app allow us to keep a finger on the pulse. At macro view, annual staff retention rates, sick leave and overall customer satisfaction are the key indicators that business managers should seek to watch.