Holistic Wellbeing & The Workplace - Health & Wellbeing Magazine by Foyht

Holistic is now a very fashionable word these days. And used in the context of many different situations.

Hopefully this will be a fashion that can be sustained.

Why is that?

Far too many decisions are made in isolation and little thought is given to the consequences of frequently, swiftly decided upon managerial interventions. Consider the sudden decisions to reverse working from home policies where leadership teams, for whatever reason, have decided that they want the workforce to be in the office and not at home. A major UK law enforcement agency did exactly this.

And that’s all very well but, if the people affected have carefully reconfigured their domestic circumstances to accommodate the earlier decision to work at home, the unintended consequences ain’t great. In the UK law enforcement agency example, some employees had sold their cars, some had arranged complex new child-care plans and some of the employees’ partners had changed their own employment circumstances to fit in with the new reality of home working. None of these domestic provisions are always easy to reverse.

And it didn’t stop there. A small number had actually moved away from the metropolitan district having sold their homes to do so. Oh dear! If you can smell a combined HR and PR disaster, there is nothing wrong with your nose.

This was an astonishingly clumsy piece of decision making and a holistic approach was the very last thing it could be considered as being.

We have seen from previous articles here that Culture is critical to a higher performing workplace with higher performing workers.

A holistic approach to workplace Wellbeing is equally important. There’s so much that could be written here but let’s keep focused.

So, we’ve set the scene.

How then, do we achieve a holistic approach to workplace Wellbeing & indeed sustained Life Satisfaction?

Wellbeing is a sophisticated and complex Venn diagram that we all have to work at and we all have to get it right. Workplace Holistic Wellbeing goes way beyond the ridiculous, and ridiculed, tokenism of putting fruit on desks or sugar laden cakes on birthdays. It’s a serious matter that has to work for the employer and the employee, Yes, there may have to be trade-offs, but the more thinking we do in advance the fewer the trade-offs we have to make.

For the employer, team leader or policy maker the objective is rational, cost effective policy interventions free of unintended consequences. The employee will want the same – commonality of purpose really helps!

Wellbeing is influenced by, in no particular order, Home Life, Online Life, Love life, Health, Money and Work. The most dominant influence varies but Work is a big one. Sustained issues in any of the key influence areas depletes Wellbeing and lessens wider Life Satisfaction.

Isn’t this all beginning to sound a bit gloomy?

Well, it shouldn’t!

Recent news stories and case studies mean a bright light is being shone on multiple opportunities to radically improve the interventions made in the workplace. By taking more factors into consideration we can create the perfect Venn diagram talked of earlier.

The pastoral role of an employer is not only a matter of Regulatory Compliance, it’s good business. Lower absenteeism, greater levels of loyalty, productivity, profit and innovation are all achievable. Interventions requiring small, well considered incremental steps and changes are the key.

As discussed earlier, this is a team game and the employee needs to do their bit. The process is similar to what the employer needs to think about. The employee needs to ask themselves what small tweaks and incremental changes do I need to make?

Such changes could be in one specific domain, such as Online Life or Work Life, or in multiple domains, but one at a time please, making too many changes at once can be overwhelming and result in relapse. Planning changes requires assessing where one is now, what change might look like and deciding how to implement it. Can this all be recorded and tracked so that progress – or otherwise – be assessed?

Yes, it can. NoWorriesApp.com have a free to download App featuring a unique Happiness Tracker and Worry Hack, that nudges the user to make a decision how to manage a small achievable change successfully.

Is all of this really so important?

Really?

Yes it really is.

Best research suggests that we all only get one life – so we need & deserve to live it well.

Learn more here

References

AppStore and Google Play Store – search for the free to download NoWorriesApp – and with NO in app purchases or adverts!

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