During a recent culture coaching session with a large 4000+ employee company, the attention of my client’s HR leadership team was immediately captured when I mentioned the topic of employee well-being. Workplaces are increasingly showing interest in understanding evidence-based examples of what acts of leadership can help improve the overall employee perception of their company well-being practices.
So, what specifically is employee well-being? A partnership between Great Place to Work® and Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School resulted in a reveal of 5 dimensions for a holistic well-being strategy at work that helps attract, retain and sustain great talent:
- Mental/emotional support
- Financial health
- A sense of purpose
- Personal support
- Meaningful connections
Read More: 5 Dimensions of Employee Well-being
Mental/ emotional support:
Mental/emotional support activates psychological and emotion safety. Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam managers lead by example to create an environment where it’s okay to make mistakes. Here, employees are not afraid and therefore trust their managers will help them learn to do better in future. Mental and emotional support also come in the form of free psychological support, webinars on mental health in the workplace, or a budget for monetary awards on digitalized Celebrating You platform to recognize employee’s contributions and their important milestones – both personally and professionally.
Financial health:
Financial health does not only come in monetary form but is also demonstrated in #recognizing and promoting positive #behaviors that supports employees to achieve their own individual and team goals. Here this encouragement can help individuals surpass their goals, or achieve a competitive advantage so compensation and benefits are realised in areas such as covering preventive care, inpatient and outpatient care, emergency care, and dental and annual checkups for both employees and their dependents.
A sense of purpose:
In their Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance research, authors from the prestigious Harvard, Wharton and Colombia Business Schools used Great Place to Work®’s proprietary Trust Index survey from 456,666 employees across 429 firms and 6 years across a broad range of industries and identified two types of workplaces with purpose: high Purpose-Camaraderie and high Purpose-Clarity.
High Purpose-Clarity workplaces show that employees experience a sense of #purpose at work and believe their leaders set a clear direction and expectations (purpose + clarity). This is a big win-win for both employees and employers because when employees can thrive at work and research shows workplaces can prove to achieve returns 6.9% higher than the market.
Meaningful connections:
High Purpose-Camaraderie workplaces provide employees with meaningful connections initiatives such as “Fun and Work @CCBV” Workplace Group where every month, there are a thousand posts and interactions from nearly 4,000 active Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam (CCBV) employees on the channel.
Best workplaces maximize human potential through meaningful connections, established on a foundation of trust, resulting from not just a top down or HR function led approach. “9X+” Project at CCBV is a great testament as this community is shaped and led by the youngest associates across functions with great creativity to embrace the uniqueness of diverse generations while instilling young energy to refresh employees’ experiences, reach unity in DEIB, and make a difference together.
Personal support:
Offering personal support can manifest as an act of inclusiveness. For instance, when female employee resource groups (#ERG) receive both professional and personal development training and coaching.
In addition, onsite facilities such as the open air swimming pool at VNG Corporation show these Best Workplaces’efforts to provide personal support to staff by contributing to their work-life balance.
Get tailored top tips for your organization:
Due to the nature of diversified well-being practices from workplace to workplace, during my culture coaching sessions, I show companies how acts of leadership can help improve the overall well-being of their teams. We can facilitate this by selecting one of the high impact statements from our Certification Survey and demonstrate how it can change the current well-being result, live on our Survey Platform – Emprising™.
If you are interested in measuring your own Well Being score and what high impact statements can help move the needle for your organisation then contact us for an Emprising™ demo today!
