Measuring employee wellness
What is employee wellness?
Employee wellness is a very hot topic in the workforce today, but what is it exactly? Employee wellness is an overall measurement of employee satisfaction with their role within an organization. With all of the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the workforce, many changes have been made in order to keep employees happy and continuing on in their roles. The flip side of employee wellness is when employees are unsatisfied with their work or working conditions causing them to be unproductive, unhappy, or unreliable within their roles.
When a company is hiring for a role, it lists various qualifications that are both wanted and needed within the role itself. Usually, these job descriptions are created by a manager or human resources person in order to fill the gap within a department. Much like a company has its list of qualifications for an employee, employees also have qualifications of a role that are wanted and needed for them to take an offer. In this instance, we’re going to call these qualifications metrics as they are a measurement of both employee and company standards.
Some examples of employee qualifications by an employer:
- Various hard skills needed for a role (i.e. coding, writing, graphic design)
- In-person, remote, hybrid expectations
- Attention to detail or idea-generating
- Years of experience in certain field
- Experience managing people
- Technological skills
Now, on the reverse when someone is looking to join a company or organization, they might be looking for items like:
- Healthcare benefits
- Good work/life balance
- Gym memberships or access
- Ability to move upward within the organization
- 401K and other financial service benefits
- Healthy (not hostile) work environment
- Vacation time and paid holidays
- Flexible schedules
- Employee wellness
Employee wellness can mean a lot of different things to different people. From the top down, it can mean that employees seem happy, are showing up on time, and fulfilling their daily tasks to the best of their ability. But from the bottom up, it could mean that employees are not stressed, feeling like they have ample time in the day for their work, and can see a future in the company. Or, it could even be offering programs for actual health and wellness and giving incentives to be healthy and active employees. There are many ways to increase employee wellness within an organization.
Any way you look at it, employee wellness is very important and has become the topic of much discussion and a point of measurement within the workforce.
The future of employee wellness as a company metric
As working remotely and the Great Resignation has shown us, the working world looks very different today than it did even 5-10 years ago. The days of people taking on jobs, sticking with it for 40 years, and not looking up from their desks are over. People want to move around, gain experience, and be happy with where they spend their time working.
Measuring employee wellness can be difficult, but it is possible. Surveying employees regularly can help gauge how people are feeling. Offering people to sign off early or unlimited PTO has become a popular way to insist taking time off is important. Talent retention is a huge metric for employee wellness. And, of course, overall growth and production of a company can be linked to employee wellness as well.
If you’re interested in creating employee wellness plans for your business – E3 Consulting is here to help
We can help you measure employee wellness as a metric for your company, and help to improve it along the way. Employee wellness doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re here to work with you to devise a plan that works.
