top of page
Search
clairepottercole

Why should companies worry about employee wellbeing?

Wellbeing is a word that is so often thrown around now, you can't escape it - all this talk of wellbeing is affecting my wellbeing!

It is #worldmentalhealthday on Saturday 10th October. A timely reminder that #mentalhealthmatters

But why should employers worry about it? Shouldn't employees look after their own wellbeing?

Research figures show that for every £1 spent on looking after your employees wellbeing you will see a £6 return. Put simply, low levels of wellbeing have a financial impact. Increased sick days, increased staff turnover, staff disengagement, these are all costly implications of ignoring the wellbeing of your staff.

I was lucky enough to attend the #brightfutureslbg Human Capital Summit - The Future of Work. It was a very interesting event with a range of top level speakers, all sharing their insights into the challenges we are facing today in ensuring the sustainability of our human capital.

I was invited to share some insight into the wellbeing element of this. Now this is not my field, my field is the green one with the horses and the poop. The bright lights on the stage and the pairs of eyes looking towards me, the camera's and the technology and the pressure of 'don't mess it up' meant that whilst I managed to briefly explain to a largely corporate audience, the nature of the work I do at BEAT, I failed to share my insights as to why I believe we need to invest in wellbeing. So here I am, creating my first blog, to share my thoughts.

As i've mentioned, it costs to ignore wellbeing. So what can you do to help your employees? Allocate time to their wellbeing, put a strategy in place that you can stick to and show that you are being active in the 'social' of your ESG.

I'll level with you - I had to look up ESG - Environment, Social, Governance. My basic understanding of it is that larger company's are moving away from CSR towards ESG. It's a way of measuring what companies are actually implementing in these areas. It would seem that everyone has been quite active in looking after E and G but there hasn't been much attention paid to S. Human capital must be your most valuable asset so surely pay attention to it. Also COVID has shone a spotlight onto the S. Investors look at company's ESG and if there is attention being paid to S then it shows that those companies are more likely to weather the COVID storm.

Staff wellbeing leads to solid company performance. Guernsey has an opportunity now to contribute towards the Island's development goals such as the #reviveandthrive strategy. The #statesofguernsey and the third sector can only do so much without the support of our local organisations. It's time to really get involved. We are lucky in that we have lots of service providers here to support wellbeing but we are often small companies and without the support from our organisations we will fail to thrive and continue to offer our services. So get behind these initiatives, we are lucky to have them.

Globally and as a community we are facing uncertain times. Now more than ever we need to invest in our people. We are a small island with a finite amount of human capital, even by bringing employees here, we can only accommodate so many. Therefore we need to invest in what we have right here, right now. From the soil up we need to nurture our islanders, we don't want to lose the younger generation, we need their input and innovation. Equally, don't ignore the silver generation, they are incredibly valuable with years of experience. We have it all here already, we need to make the best of it. We have an opportunity to be world leaders in #guernsey because we are small, we are nimble and we care. Invest in social now, we will ride the storm of COVID and we will reap the benefits later.

My goal with BEAT is to support the needs of our community, I work with individuals and organisations to promote wellbeing and help companies to improve staff performance. This is a unique offering to Guernsey. Get behind it!


Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page