The Link Between Staff Wellbeing and Performance
Published: 14/10/2018
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There is an evident link between staff well-being and absenteeism. In this article, we address business owners and MDs in hopes of conveying how vital employee mental health is for any organisation. We will also share tips on how you can improve it within your company.
In the past couple of years, great strides have been taken in addressing mental health issues. While they have always existed, they have long been ignored in our society. It is very promising to see an increasing number of companies addressing mental well-being within their organisations. I will also take proactive steps to raise awareness and offer support to those who may be struggling. However, the road ahead is still long, especially since many businesses still don’t see the significance of building a healthy company environment.
Before we begin, it’s worth noting that it’s a proven fact that happy employees are up to 13% more productive. In other words, by ensuring the happiness of your employees, you don’t just cater to them - you are also bettering how your business runs. The opposite is also true. Organisations in which staff wellbeing isn’t prioritised are chronic sufferers of underperformance, lack of motivation and, most of all, patchy work attendance. The latter is particularly expensive to companies of all sizes; thus, we are going to focus on it today. We will also share actionable solutions for improving your staff's work environment.
There are several common reasons for patterns of work absence. Here are the common ones:
Hostile work environment;
In-team disagreements;
Difficulties commuting;
Problems at home;
Burnout;
Health issues.
Let us dig into the final two. Not too long ago, a sick day would only stand for when a worker was physically unwell. In today's world, however, mental health is also taken into consideration. A study conducted by Employee Benefits in partnership with Health Shields sheds light on just how prevalent mental health issues are within organisations. Almost half (47%) of the companies quizzed for the study said that mental health is a top cause of employee sickness absence. This figure has risen from 39% last year and means that mental health issues – including anxiety and depression – now account for the second highest cause of sick leave.
Therefore, we are not a medical blog and will not dig into the causes of the above-mentioned struggles. However, according to the statistics, in 2020/21, work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 50% of all work-related ill health. This is the most unambiguous indication that while we’ve developed mental health awareness at the workplace, there isn’t anywhere near enough being done in order to solve it. As a result, businesses keep on losing money to sick leave - half of which is caused by the working environment.
Over six in ten (62%) employees said they would achieve a better work-life balance if their company proactively supported their mental well-being. It’s safe to assume that the backwards is also true. The mental well-being of employees is known to be significantly better when they are able to achieve a work-life balance. In other words, we have a loop in which mental health and work-life balance are co-dependent on one another. So, if you seek to nourish mental wellness, you might as well begin with the assurance your staff aren’t smothered by work.
One of the best ways to help your employees strike the balance between their at and away-from-work lives is by introducing flexible working hours. People have different routines and different outside work responsibilities. Such would be the likes of childcare. Therefore, strict and rigid work hours may be adding additional stress to their lives. Mind, sometimes these issues are highly personal. This means an employee might be hesitant to inform you of them, alas, gradually growing resentful for not having them taken into account.
The flexible working hours model is a solution that allows your staff to schedule their day in accordance with their needs and preferences. Flexible, however, doesn’t mean free. You should set clear boundaries that would give a specific time frame and the number of hours required to be worked within it. This way, you won’t damage in-team communication by having employees work haphazardly throughout the day. You will also avoid having staff who don’t pull their weight. But most of all, you’ll be sending a message that you care about your employees enough to let them have their work day based on their individual preferences.
Another effective way to let employees work at a pace and environment that’s friendly to their mental health is to move to a hybrid work model. This model contributes to a healthier work-life balance in many ways. Additionally, it addresses the diversity of personalities you most likely have in your company. Some people flourish working from the office, while others are most productive working remotely. A hybrid working model can significantly improve overall team performance.
It can also help with collaboration and communication within the team. If your rules are that each employee needs to come into the office once a week, they will be more direct and clear in communicating what they need from their colleague. Mainly because they’re not going to meet face-to-face for another week. Spending less time together in person can also improve the overall office culture. The staff won’t be taking each other for granted when they don’t see one another every day for 8 hours on end. Unlike flexible working hours, less strategy is required to set the attendance rules. However, you will instead need to think through the software you adopt. It will unite your team that works both on-site and remotely through a centralised platform where they can communicate and collaborate.
Burnout is the result of continuous dissatisfaction with work. It manifests as irritability, cynicism, isolation, and even depression. It clearly has adverse effects on employees’ mental health. It also often leads to more frequent absences, which is very costly to businesses of any size. Keeping that in mind, we can conclude that staff well-being is also tightly knit to employee satisfaction. Therefore, one way to address absenteeism is to improve the employee experience.
Humans, by their nature, enjoy variety. Additionally, the feeling of contribution and achievement triggers our brain to generate endorphins, also known as the hormone of happiness. However, the response is quite the opposite if stuck doing repetitive tasks with no end. Completion of a task is commonly perceived as a reward. So what happens when there’s no end to grinding? It becomes depressing as it starts feeling pointless.
This is why employees subjected to repetitive manual labour are often deflated, disinterested and dispassionate about their jobs. Their job is not to contribute to the growth of the company but rather to the continued sustainability of its basic functionality. It can be disheartening. Of course, their tasks are still vital for the business and cannot be simply abolished. On the other hand, to pull your staff out of their captivity, you can provide them with the tools to either fully or partially automate the process. Modern technology is capable of taking over notoriously tedious tasks such as shift scheduling, payroll, invoicing, time tracking, document upload and many more. With these essential yet mind-numbing processes taken off their hands, your employees will be subjected to facing more challenging tasks that require their judgement and unique thinking processes. Naturally, this will show their views are valued, raising their overall satisfaction.
A lot of work dissatisfaction arises among colleagues who are not aligned with one another. Lack of visibility of the other’s progress can lead to delays, lower standards, repeated tasks and many more. Overall, it affects performance and relationships and can become a source of disagreement. Even a hostile work environment. Needless to say, you’re likely to struggle with employee satisfaction in that scenario. You are also roped into wasting your time and energy trying to make peace among your teams. The good news is that such miscommunications can be easily avoided, regardless of whether you run on a hybrid model, fully remote or if your teams are back together in the office.
Modern SaaS systems are suited to be used as collaboration platforms that connect different departments and grant a centralised view of one another’s work. They enable communication in many different formats, from creating automated workflows where tasks are handed from one team member to another once the pre-set criteria are met to tracked file editing. What’s more, they don’t have the limitations older software has. For example, unlike Excel spreadsheets, multiple team members can simultaneously access and work on SaaS-based documents in real-time. This takes away the need for long email threads and file re-writes, and a lot of frustration stems from them.
It’s important to remember that it’s your team that brings your company success. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to serve your clients. Depending on the type of business, chances are, without them, you wouldn’t even have clients in the first place. This is why your employees should always be your priority. High pay, work perks, and other things are great ways to show appreciation. But nothing will beat personal care. Therefore, the staff's mental well-being should be above all.
Timesheet Portal is a unique, multi-functional platform that’s equipped with the tools you need to nourish the care for your staff’s mental well-being. For example, using our software will allow you to accurately record and track absences among staff, identifying patterns if such arise and being able to address the issues right away. This approach will enable you to spot whether your staff may need any support, allowing you to grant it in a timely manner.
Our software also includes a flexitime module, making it easier than ever to adjust your business to a flexible working hours model. A plethora of streamlined processes and document sharing also make the Timesheet Portal an invaluable tool for hybrid offices. Last but not least, our top-notch holiday management system gives you a clear view of your team’s holiday entitlement and whether it’s been claimed. It also makes holiday requests and approvals as easy as a few clicks, no longer causing long threads and lost emails.
Your company would never achieve what it has if it wasn’t for your employees. Unfortunately, even as mental health concerns rise in the workplace, many companies still take their staff for granted. They, in turn, retaliate by offering lesser effort and ultimately damaging the business. In other words, if you simply pay more mind to your staff and their wellbeing, you are almost guaranteed to see positive results.
Two key moments are to focus on: work-life balance and employee satisfaction. They work wonders to prevent negatives such as burnout or work fatigue. Therefore, it directly addresses deep-rooted and often expensive malpractice such as absenteeism. There are also two ways to improve their overall experience: by raising productivity and individual performance and by giving them more freedom by adopting flexible hours or hybrid office approaches.
Are you ready to make your staff’s lives better? Learn from us.