Evidence Based Ways To Improve Workplace Wellbeing : Part 3

This is part 3 of 3. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here

Build a deeper understanding of how employees experience work at your organisation.

The starting point for many leaders who want to improve wellbeing in their workplaces is usually “I know where things need to be improved, I just need the tools to do it”. Often these leaders have spent years at their company building a deep knowledge of their business, clients and organization. So it isn’t surprising that they come with strong hypotheses about what it is like to work at their company.

The problem with this though is that even in the same organization, experiences often can vary starkly across teams, across seniority and across individuals. Without building a picture of how these different groups experience work at your company, driving on initial hypothesis can be problematic.

A recent report by Professor Ivan Robertson has found that 90% of people believe that how we feel at work matters, yet only 49% of people report their company is measuring happiness and wellbeing. So employees want to be heard.

Whether you ask a psychologist, or a customer experience analyst they’ll tell you the complexity of understanding of experience. We can ask people how they feel but we can only know what they tell us or infer based on how they behave.

So what are the best ways?

One way is to use validated standardized survey questions at scale to understand the health and wellbeing needs of your staff. These questions in and of themselves are not that useful, how do you know what “4” means on a scale. However, the power of these surveys is that other organizations are using them, so comparisons are possible. These standardized questions are asked in published reports, academic studies, and even national datasets. This allows you to understand the areas where you company could be taking action compared to peers.

Another way is to create psychological safety and ask individuals 1 to 1 or where needed anonymously about their experiences. Leading this work should be someone who is an independent researcher and not a part of the company. This 1 to 1 interaction means people don’t moderate their response in ways that often occurs in focus groups.

Starting meaningful conversations with employees about their health and wellbeing needs is fundamental to workplace wellbeing initiatives. A study found that when doctors and nurses were asked to voice their views on drivers for burnout and then lead initiatives to redesign their workplaces as a result, they were much less likely to want to leave.

Without knowing how people experience work at your company, you cannot make sustainable changes that impact their wellbeing. So creating opportunities for meaningful conversations to understand employee experience is essential to health and wellbeing.

At Eudaimonia Health, we partner with clients to improve health and wellbeing in homes, workplaces and local communities.