Well-being In The Workplace

Hi there and welcome. It’s Kerstin Jatho here from 4Seeds Consulting, a transformational coach who shifts people from languishing to flourishing. In this video, I want to talk to you about well-being in the workplace.

So, well-being isn’t really a new topic. However, it’s been one of those topics leaders have been kicking in front of themselves, and like a stone turning it over and over thinking, “when we have time”, “when this project has ended”, “when we have the money, we will worry about that”. However, now well-being has become the number one strategic focus for organisations to really focus on and bring in.

The reason being that companies have understood the sunken cost of unhappy employees, and realise that happy employees are actually productive employees.

So how do I create a company or an organisation where well-being is part of my strategy? Not something easy to do, but perhaps these ideas will help you.

Start looking at your working environment. Does it actually foster well-being or not? What are your working hours? Do you have downtime? Do you actually honour lunch breaks? Do you ask people to stop working at a certain time? Or do you send emails at eight or nine o’clock in the evening thinking, hoping, expecting your team to actually respond. Those are not healthy habits to create, and that is well-being.

Educate and make your employees mindful of what this well-being topic is all about. And create, I would say, collaboration on how you can jointly reach it. Because as an organisation, you have a role to play to create the environment or the playground for people to actually experience well-being.

But equally a follower has the responsibility to look after their own well-being. There are certain things a company cannot do for them. So, it becomes a joint partnership. However, a lot of conversation needs to happen. So, for leaders, it’s also checking in with their team on a regular basis about their well-being. How are they actually feeling? How are they doing? What’s causing them stress and frustration? That is a leadership conversation to have, not the responsibility of the HR department.

Then it’s also in creating or instilling support programmes where employees can go to if they need mental or physical or emotional support. Who can they call? Where can they go? Those structures need to all be in place.

And a nice programme that I’ve become aware of, which really helps, is “let’s talk”. Just talk together what it is about well-being. What does it mean? Because it’s different definitions for different people.

However, if you want to be successful as an organisation going forward in the hybrid world, well-being becomes a key strategy for you to implement and focus and make part of your culture, and really say what you do and mean.

Over to you for sharing your comments and experiences.

How does your company instil well-being in the workplace?