If you are responsible for employing staff, the wellbeing of your workers should be one of your top priorities. In this blog we delve into five different ways employers can improve the wellbeing of their employees.
Faster Payments
Your staff come to work for a paycheck. Some may have a passion for the work or a love for their colleagues, but when you take it down to the bare bones, your employees are working so they can get paid.
When it comes to wellbeing, people could be struggling to pay for their weekly food shop or to buy a new uniform for their children. Using Faster Payments would mean there would be no need for people to continue taking out loans for the simplest things, starting to build up debt and a bad credit score. Faster Payments mean your employees wouldn’t be under so much stress to make ends meet as the money they are owed could be transferred within a matter of seconds using tools like our very own IGsend.
Four-Day-Working Week
There are many pros and cons to a four-day working week, we take an in depth look into the positives and negatives of a four-day working week in our blog.
To put it simply from a wellbeing point of view, a four-day working week would bring a work/life balance that so many people crave. It gives people an extra day to take a breath away from the stress that a workplace can potentially bring. More and more companies are starting to trial a four-day working week with no loss in pay for the employees. A study conducted by Microsoft Japan found there was a 20% increase in employee productivity and a 45% increase in employee work-life balance.
Employee Benefits/Wellness Tools
Employee benefits are becoming more and more common in the workplace. It makes the employees feel appreciated by the company and boosts their wellbeing as they feel recognised for what they do for the company.
Benefits could include, gym passes, free fruit, or mental health wellbeing apps such as Headspace and Raiys.
Gym passes are becoming quite a common benefit employers offer as A study from the mental health foundation found that regular physical activity can increase our self-esteem and can reduce stress and anxiety.
Headspace is a leading provider of meditation and mindfulness and has even made a specific Headspace for Work app which allows employers to buy a package to allow access for their employees. The company said, “Headspace for Work offers proven mindfulness programs that lead to healthier organisations from the inside out”.
Flexible Working
Flexible working has become common place since Covid19 arrived. Businesses had to suddenly rethink their ways of working so they were still able to operate. Quickly, it became obvious that people were able to successfully work from home and still complete their tasks to a high standard. This made a lot of companies rethink and now most job adverts you see, list flexible working as one of their benefits.
Companies are jumping at the opportunity to make flexible working an option for their employees as studies have shown, flexible working was able to help decrease the stress of many employees which meant they were less likely to take sick days or quit their job. The lack of stress that came hand in hand with flexible working was promoting a happier, loyal and more balanced team.
Recognise Employees
Your employees are essential to the day to day running of your business. If they decided not to turn up one day, the company wouldn’t last very long. It only makes sense that you would want to celebrate those people for all the effort they put in to help you carry on with building your business.
One way to celebrate your employees could be recognising them with something as small as a cake to say well done, ranging to a monetary bonus to say thank you and show appreciation for hard work. Recognising your employees would make them feel appreciated and in turn could make them more productive.
The above five ways to improve employee wellbeing are only a few of the many ways to improve employee wellbeing, and lots of tools to help facilitate the process. From access to apps and online platforms, to readjusting business processes – for example switching to Faster Payments for payroll – employers should be doing all they can to improve the wellbeing of their workers.
