Workplace wellness is essential to achieve organisational goals as it makes a major impact on the workplace culture, resources, productivity, and ultimately the bottom line. Mental and physical well-being is a fundamental issue for business growth, stability and sustainability.
A major outcome of the recent COVID-19 outbreak is the focus now being placed on employee wellbeing and the effect on their performance and consequently on the business results. However, for any organisation to understand the importance of employee wellness, it must understand what workplace wellness means.
Wellness covers physical and mental fitness. It has grown as a concept in the workplace, focusing on helping employees influence their own wellness, quality of life and consequently their performance at work.
The different types of employee well-being include:
Physical wellbeing: Physical well-being encompasses the prevention of or curing of physical illness. Employees should be encouraged to practice healthy lifestyles like walking, exercising, resting and eating well to prevent sickness. At project sites, a mandatory safety checklist must be provided for employees commencing any kind of work to ensure everyone’s safety. Employers and business owners should consider introducing Health Insurance (where possible) to enhance their physical wellbeing.
Mental wellbeing: Stress is an overwhelmingly present factor in our daily lives and can come from the workplace which affects employee performance. An employee mental wellbeing takes into consideration stress, burnout, or other feelings of unease. Mental health benefits or a company culture in which mental health is openly discussed can equip employees with means to take care of their psychological soundness. As a result, employees will perform better on the job.
Financial wellbeing: Employees’ feeling of financial stability to meet their needs affects their wellbeing. The possibility of losing financial stability severely impacts employee wellbeing, thus affecting overall performance and productivity.
To ensure and maintain a well workplace, facility managers can play a vital role. The indoor environment should be a safe place that responds to basic human physical needs and also meets the psychological needs of all end user. To achieve and maintain such an environment, the facility manager should formulate a strategy to regularly monitor and evaluate the wellness of the workplace.
If employees are not comfortable with their current environment, they are less likely to be able to concentrate on their tasks. Facility managers should concentrate on ensuring and maintaining a comfortable physical environment including good indoor environmental good air quality, lighting, noise level and safety.
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Functional factors: Another important factor that can affect occupants’ well-being is space utilization. Facility managers should try to better understand the occupants’ type of work, as well as their company’s strategy and direction. FMs should collaborate with the appropriate departments to ensure their buildings are efficient in terms of occupant density, functionality layout, furniture, ICT, and indoor facilities such as cafeterias and recreation room. In addition to personal workstations, providing designated areas for collaboration, contemplation and formal and informal meetings can significantly contribute towards workplace wellness.
Psychological factors: Until recently, FMs responsibilities were focused on managing HVAC, lighting systems, furniture and other physical factors that affect workplace safety and quality but now it includes the psychological experience of people in the workplace.
Introducing employee well-being initiatives such as mental health workshops, stress management trainings, learning and development programs, fitness competition can significantly improve employee morale.
Also, when hard work, dedication, and teamwork are valued, employees feel more fulfilled and satisfied in their jobs. Employee recognition positively affects productivity and creates a culture of appreciation.
Workplace wellness is important more than ever as organisations realise the power it has to transform employee work experience and achieve superior service delivery.
