Wellness at work: The promise and pitfalls
Oct 30, 2018
Today, companies are in a unique position to be a good influence on the health and general well-being of its staff. After all, working people spend more of their waking time on the job than anywhere else. In fact, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime.
Since work is such a monumental portion of our time spent, employers should be obliged to offer employee wellness programs in order to help their employees thrive. Sounds obvious, right? Not exactly. Employee wellness transcends beyond nutrition and fitness. It’s about feeling connected, feeling cared for and finding a way for people to feel “who they are” at home and at work. Many companies are struggling to keep up with the wellness program trends necessary to foster employee success.
Some organizations are offering a portfolio of benefits because they see their greatest asset as their employees, and they believe in investing in them. Emerging research claims that when you look at people not as objects but as human beings, they respond with higher performance. Engagement goes up, and not just engagement, but passion.
Members of the Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning & Development (CAALD), a group of learning authorities whose members include researchers, corporate and not-for-profit leaders, and McKinsey experts, recently debated these issues at its second annual meeting, in Boston. Read more here.
Why should you care?
Until organizations do a better job of letting their people know they are valued and cared for, we won’t even begin to move the needle on team-member well-being. It’s an evolving necessity companies must consider in order to retain a successful workforce.
