Resources › The Changing Landscape of Workplace Wellbeing [2022]

The changing landscape of workplace wellbeing

Thanks to pandemic and supply chain challenges employee resilience has been tested like never before.

With that brings increasing demand to cope with mounting pressure. Whether we're working from home or on the front line, future of work looks very different today. When it comes to essential or front line workers, they often don't have good support systems in place. As non-desk workers, they're often forgotten and neglected when it comes to workplace wellbeing.

Workplace wellbeing, otherwise known as employee wellness or corporate wellbeing, relates to a safe and healthy physical environment for your employees to work, how workers feel about their work, their working environment, and company.

What's changed?

The three Fs no longer cut-it

Standard offerings around wellbeing, fruit, fitness, and flu shots, simply don't cut it anymore. Wellness isn't a 'one and done' conversation. It needs to be ongoing.

Wellbeing can shift

People struggle at different times; different triggers can upset them, Covid lockdown being a major trigger for many.

We're dealing with the most distracted workforce in history

Emails, texts, group chats – all this noise presents a real challenge to organisations. Put the focus on workplace wellbeing by "interrupting" employees.

Important fundamentals of workplace wellbeing

Before you implement a workplace wellbeing program, here are three foundational guiding principles:

Workplace wellbeing is for everyone

When it comes to mental wellbeing, organisations traditionally invest in those who are in offices or at their headquarters. What happens to non-desk, front line workers?

Technology makes it easier than ever to include people, and to be flexible in how we offer help.

Take a holistic approach

The best organisations go beyond providing wellbeing for their employees.

There's a tendency now to also influence an employee's wider circle, like their family members. The most successful companies recognise that every team member's wellbeing extends far beyond themselves.

This may involve offering counselling sessions for families, flexible work hours, parental leave and more.

A move away from one-off interventions

After engaging a popular speaker for a big bang launch, what happens next?

We need to provide our people with simple, practical content, tools and strategies they can use on an ongoing basis.

Important principles for anyone tasked with managing workplace wellbeing

Scared people become scary people

Fear of the unknown is rippling. Open, honest communication is critical. In the first instance, the most powerful thing you can do is to reassure people – about their role; and about the company's position.

You don't need all the answers

You simply need to consistently point people to where they can get the answers. There are powerful resources and tools out there – and you don't have to 'go it alone' when designing a wellbeing program.

Role modelling is key

It's vital that as leaders, we show people that it's okay to not be okay. Walk the talk by scheduling 'away time' or meeting-free time is one of the best ways in which we can support our people, because people will do what you do, not what you say.

Practical actions you can take

Point your people to simple, practical things they can do daily.
Sharing a toolkit of online resources, for example, is a powerful way to support your people.
Discuss expectations, priorities and deliverables weekly.
Provide certainty and understanding around what's feasible for each team member. In addition, ask them how they're doing and give them permission to look after themselves and take breaks.
Create a space for people to talk (i.e. 'drop-in wellbeing session').
There is real power in creating space to share how we feel with each other, including sharing what works to build personal resilience.
Role-model the behaviour you want because your actions are contagious.
If you take the time to look after yourself, you're giving others permission to do the same.
Share messages of hope.
This is temporary and this too will pass. It's important to normalise what people are feeling; but to remind them that better, easier days are coming.

Getting consistent cut-through with workplace wellbeing messages

A major road block companies face is getting ongoing cut-through for their workplace wellbeing messaging. While workshops are a great way to provide experiential learning in a group setting, we struggle to retain that information over time.

When it comes to influencing long term behaviour change, key messages need to be seen 17 times, using spaced repetition. Spaced repetition is where you space out the frequency of the message over time, rather than just displaying a message on repeat, which actually has the reverse effect.

For most organisations, the communication tools and channels fall short when it comes to delivering spaced repetition. Imagine sending the same email or reposting the same message to Facebook Workplace or MS Teams 7 or 8 times, let alone 17 times. It will not only infuriate everyone, including the person having to send it, but it will clutter the tool.

Snackable learning: the key to remembering

Snackable Learning blends the best parts of microlearning (the delivery of short bursts of bite size content) and nudge Learning (the positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to influence behaviour). This style of learning combat the natural tendency for people to forget what they've learned.

The Flourishing Institute has partnered with Vibe.fyi on a number of industry-leading wellbeing programs that make it possible to deploy them at the touch of a button to screens throughout organisations using a 'snackable' learning strategy.

Vibe.fyi takes the key learnings from a workshop and delivers those throughout the workplace in a highly visual and engaging format; at the level of frequency required to embed long term learning.