Pushing Wellbeing Forward: Q&A

In January, The HR World commenced its new round of monthly webinars, directed at giving Senior HR professionals access to insights from some of the industry’s leading experts.

How to create a culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace was the central question of the webinar, and answering this were Lisa Haggar, HRD and LinkedIn’s HR rebel and Lee Chambers, psychologist, wellbeing specialist and Founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing.

The session was sponsored by OpenUp.com who provide mental health wellbeing support across thousands of employees in hundreds of businesses.

The webinar was very well attended and went beyond the usual time allocated. In order to address as many issues as possible, we asked Lee and Lisa to address a few of the questions posed by attendees which they were unable to respond to in the time given.

Here are those responses.

1: How would you suggest that you tackle the issue that work life balance is impacted by workload – specifically for senior leaders?

Lee Chambers: In my experience, management capacity plays a significant role in wellbeing’s ability to build culturally through an organisation, and when resources are stretched this space becomes smaller. Sometimes, wellbeing doesn’t start with direct health interventions, but with improving processes, streamlining systems and being open and honest about capacity challenges.

Lisa Haggar: There’s an expectation as a senior member of the business, you need to do extra when needed, however this shouldn’t mean all the time. Work will always flow in. No-one’s inbox ever stops. As a senior leader in the business setting boundaries for yourself is important and communicate this with your teams so they know its ok to close your laptop down at 5pm and not feel they need to be first in last out. Your team will follow your example, so role modelling is very important. Don’t send emails after work hours as it causes stress to others, who feel they need to respond straight away. If you think you just want to get this down before you forget, leave it in your drafts and press send in the morning.

Too many people think it will be quicker if they just do it themselves, so don’t delegate. It’s not easy letting go of things, but it does reduce the amount of work and stress on your plate and more importantly it’s helping to develop others.

Another point is to review the workload. Collaborate with your own team and others, to see if there are better, quicker ways of working. A simple example of this is would the use of technology reduce some of the manual tasks we all find ourselves dragged in to. Review your current processes. Challenge how you do things – is this the best way, what if questions… how can we… are there areas when..?

Learn how to prioritise, not everything is urgent. It’s ok to say NO, or I can take care of that for you on Tuesday as my work load is full today.

2: Should the Year End report and accounts feature the impact of well-being reducing costs, increasing retention, promoting the business positively? (And if so how easy is it to get this kind of data?

Lisa Haggar: Like all investment you will have a clear plan of what you want to do, how much it’s going to cost and what the intended outcomes will be. You need to be able to measure its impact and success. For example, investing in wellness within your business could reduce absence levels, reduce turnover, increase engagement, increased output and these are easily measured and tracked. These of some of the key KPI’s from a people perspective and most HR professionals produce data for the business.

Lee Chambers: There is certainly a place for wellbeing KPIs and monitoring the impact is one of the ways to keep it sustainable and continually funded as you deliver on the strategy. Previous research shows the value of investment in wellbeing returning £5 for every pound spent, and this will be higher when it’s well implemented. As for obtaining specific metrics, there are a range of variables to consider when measuring, but organisations should be monitoring these as part of a wider strategy to gain insight into what’s working well and what needs evolving.

3: My main stakeholder role models adverse working practices, and needs to be convinced to model better working practices. How would I go about doing so sensitively?

Lisa Haggar: We talked about the importance of communication on the webinar. Do your research, get the data and show them the positive impacts it will have on their business. Once they see some data and validation, it’s easier to have the conversation. Use case studies of other companies to show the outcome and find out what your competitors are doing. Working people to the point of burnout is not acceptable and they will leave.

Remember we aren’t doing any of this because it pink and fluffy… it’s smart business. If anyone is having trouble with putting a plan together, designing a deck to convince the board, doesn’t know how to say to their boss their demands are unrealistic, please reach out.

Lee Chambers: Many leaders of today are modelling the leadership they have grown underneath, and quite often these are subconscious and can feel quite personal to how they identify as a leader. How you broach the topic depends on the leader themselves, but it’s important to consider entering from a place of curiosity and understanding, rather than blame and judgement. Sometimes, explaining in feelings rather than thoughts, can get the leader to consider how their actions make others feel, and see things from a different perspective. Make sure they feel listened to and heard, and just having a discussion about it can often bring an awareness and a reason to change they may not have considered before.

You can view the whole webinar through our on-demand service.