Well-Being in the Workplace

Given the growing pressures and uncertainty of the workplace and its domination of our daily life, employee well-being at work has become an important concern for both employees and senior management. Indeed, well-being in the workplace has become a hot topic both in the popular business press and in academia.  This interest grew considerably in the last decade due to a pioneering report, “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow” (Black, 2008), which was among the earliest to connect workplace well-being to employee health and organisational performance. Workplace well-being is vital to societal “good health and well-being,” which is considered as Goal 3 of the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015).

A recent study of Indian companies by People Matters (2019) showed that the top two priorities for HR departments this year were to get their employees future-ready through learning and development (67% of respondents), and to emphasise employee health and well-being (50%).  The top three objectives driving these well-being initiatives were to improve employee health (36% of respondents), increase employee engagement (23%) and improve employee productivity (17%). Technology is slowly beginning to be deployed, with only 19% of the companies using technology in their health and well-being initiatives.  The budgeted spend on well-being per employee per month (excluding medical claims) ranged from less than Rs. 100 (11% of firms), to Rs 100-500 (24%), to Rs 500-1000 (12%), Rs 1000-5000 (29%) or more (12%). In other words, almost half the companies spend less than Rs 1000 per employee per month on these wellness initiatives.

With all this growth in attention to employee well-being, are corporate programs making a difference? On this vital question, the jury is still out, with companies being only averagely satisfied (3 on a scale of 5) with these programs. The challenges in enabling effective health and wellness programs include limited budgets (39% of respondents), lack of employee engagement (19%), lack of personalised wellness programs (19%), lack of information about the market (8%), and difficulties in finding the right partner/vendor (5%). Because of its impact on employee performance, well-being is not just a concern of the HR executive but of the C-Suite itself.