Enhancing Employee Wellbeing to Boost Engagement and Drive Business Performance

According to Gallup's "The State of the Global Workforce: 2025", only 1 in 3 employees are thriving, and the hardest hit sector in declining life evaluation are managers.

Managers are not thriving and that can impact the engagement and wellbeing of your entire workforce.

When considering employee wellbeing, there are two critical questions an organization should ask:

1. Does it matter?

2. Can we realistically do anything about it?

The answers to these two questions are emphatically yes!

Firstly, it absolutely matters! Well at least it does if you are concerned about managing employee costs, performance, and your competitive advantage. Research and data are abundant and consistent: Low employee wellbeing and a perception that your employer doesn't care about your wellbeing has a big impact on employee engagement, and in turn excess costs like absences and turnover. Not only that, but less engaged employees and teams are less productive, less innovative and creative, and have more safety incidences.

According to additional Gallup data, employee wellbeing significantly impacts your ability to recruit, retain, and engage key talent which can impact your competitive advantage.

• 59% of U.S. workers say that having greater work-life balance and better personal wellbeing is very important to them when considering whether to take a job

When comparing employees who are engaged but not thriving with those who are engaged and thriving, those who aren't thriving are:

• 61% more likely to experience burnout "often or always"

• 48% more likely to report daily stress

• 2 times more likely to report daily sadness and anger

So there appear to be some downsides to poor employee wellbeing. But does implementing effective programming make a difference? Yes. When employees strongly agree that their employer cares about their overall wellbeing, they are:

• 69% less likely to actively search for a new job

• 71% less likely to experience a lot of burnout

• 3 x more likely to be engaged at work

It is evident that you can't influence your workforce engagement or performance without addressing wellbeing. When employees are burned out, stressed or disconnected, their engagement, performance, and costs will all be impacted.

I think we've established that, yeah, it matters, so the real question is: Can you do anything that will actually shift the needle? Again, this is an emphatic "yes!"

Firstly, what is wellbeing? Well, it's not really one thing, it's a combination of a personal perception of thriving across multiple aspects of life, including: physical, emotional, social, and purpose (commonly thought of as pillars like family, career, or community). Thinking simplistically, providing resources to support these areas can be of benefit and help support wellbeing.

Commonly, however, employers implement strategies that primarily focus on resources for individuals. Wellness resources, time off policies, health benefits: these are tools for individuals to try and manage their own physical and mental wellbeing. Often, there is too little appreciation for the workplace environment.

A recent McKinsey paper determined that a major predictor for burnout wasn't whether employees had access to good health resources and support, but rather their work environment. Organizational and managerial factors that impacted job demands and stressors were important for wellbeing, and, aligning with information presented above relating to the question of "Does it matter?": Employees who reported positive work experiences had better holistic health, were more innovative, and had better job performance.

The best approach to gaining the most from improved holistic employee wellbeing requires a complimentary approach of providing good health and wellness resources as well as actively addressing the workplace psychosocial environment.

Leaders need to understand their impact on the employee experience. They must be properly trained and understand their roles, via communication, inclusion, recognition and the elements they control relating to job demands, development and mentoring, as these all play a critical role for building a workplace environment that enable employees to thrive.

Here are key areas that all need to be considered in order to meaningfully impact your employee wellbeing:

1. Foster a Positive Work Environment: This will necessarily include often overlooked practical management training, policies and practices that ensure there is open communication, an inclusive culture, strong employee feedback loops, as well as opportunities for development and recognition. (Need help with training your leaders? Check this out.)

2. Realistic Work-Life Balance: What you say as an organization matters less than what you do. If you say you support good work-life balance and then place unrelenting demand or "always on" expectations then it all falls apart. Ensure your workplace demands are reasonable.

3. Support Mental and Physical Health: Resources in this area must be practical and align with the workplace demands. Providing robust health and wellness resources but not leaving employees any time or energy to utilize them is counterproductive. This is an area where HBD's industry-leading workplace programs, fully integrated into normal workflow provide an incredibly effective solution...remember to check us out!

4. Professional Development: Mentoring and development opportunities help employees feel a sense of growth and optimism. They feel more valued and more connected to a sense of professional purpose.

Ticking the box on one or two of these areas and faltering in others can make a big difference. Successfully building a thriving workplace takes some coordinated effort. It's rarely a "one and done" solution but rather an ongoing process of evaluating the needs of your people and seeking to continually improve and adapt in order to support them.

If you want to improve your workplace wellbeing, reach out to HBD to learn about our "Wellbeing 360" models and services. We have a range of approaches to support both top down leadership development and bottom up employee approaches to enhance employee health, wellbeing, engagement, and performance. We work collaboratively to plug holes (e.g. fill the gap for targeted leadership development, or address proactive mental wellbeing at your employee level), or, we can consult and deliver comprehensive total workforce wellbeing programs that evolve as your workforce needs change. Reach out to learn more.