It’s likely you spend the majority of your waking hours working. My business-owning clients, even when they’ve done the hard work of setting their focus where it’s needed and delegating what they can to their team, definitely do.
Even if you haven’t taken a leap into entrepreneurship, I bet if you’re here, you’ve climbed the ranks at your office or workplace to a position of leadership and management – and work is commanding at least 40 hours of attention from you each week.
So is it any surprise that when things at work aren’t good, nothing is?
It’s critical that we understand workplace wellbeing is the foundation for all other areas of our wellbeing. Gallup has even studied it: they found five distinct elements of wellbeing that “differentiate a thriving life from a suffering or struggling life. They are, in order: Career, Social, Financial, Physical, and Community.”
Our work life and personal life are not mutually exclusive
Companies are starting to recognize this. Wellbeing, in all facets, has increasingly become part of the corporate conversation.
The trouble is, too many companies are still focusing on “wellness” programs – essentially diet and exercise. Or, maybe a ping-pong table.
What if the next global crisis is a mental health pandemic?
-Gallup, Wellbeing at Work
It is here now.
The world is craving a different approach to success.
What if you could be part of creating an environment where that approach thrives? Where it encourages wellbeing at work, for yourself, your colleagues, and your team? Where your team contributes more and better work to your company’s collective goals, simply because they are, well – at work and, by extension, at home?
3 areas of focus to help inspire change
It’s possible. No matter where you are in your company’s ladder, there are steps you can take right now to help promote workplace wellbeing for your team. It starts with you, and how you communicate with them.
1. Give the gift of clarity
Clarity is foundational to wellbeing. Understanding what is expected of you every day decreases stress, overwhelm, and burnout.
Another eye-opening statistic from Gallup: “Only 1 in 2 employees worldwide know what is expected of them. That means half of employees are unsure about their roles.”
How can you possibly go to work every day with a cloud of uncertainty and walk away in the evening feeling accomplished, fulfilled, or even just useful?
When employees and managers know what is expected of them, it builds trust and increases engagement… which, maybe not coincidentally, are the next two areas I want you to focus on.
2. Build trust
With a more cohesive team that is clear on what’s expected of them, trust, collaboration, respect, and productivity increase (as does profitability).
What’s more, you build trust through accountability. I don’t mean a scary, aggressive accountability. I mean, “I trust you with this work,” and then demonstrating that trust by letting them own the work you’ve asked them to do.
It’s also, “I trust you to come to me with suggestions and ideas.”
Ultimately, trust has to be there for people to come up with something new and be willing to fail. You’re building psychological safety so that your team can trust you, too. Your team has to know you have their backs.
3. Inspire engagement
To put it simply, career wellbeing is the number one driver of overall wellbeing. And the number one driver of career wellbeing is engagement.
When employees are actively engaged in their work, they feel like they’re a part of something bigger. A sense of autonomy, of serving and adding to a higher purpose, of learning and evolving and growing, has a powerful impact on a team.
More than anything, your team needs to know that what they’re doing matters.
And you establish that by engaging with them – for starters, by providing regular feedback, scheduled conversations, and open doors (literal or figurative!).
Have I convinced you yet that you can do this and that it’s in the best interest of your team and company to do so?
If not, maybe the Surgeon General will: late last year, Dr. Vivek Murthy and the Office of the Surgeon General released their Workplace Well-being report. “A healthy workforce is the foundation for thriving organizations and healthier communities… As we recover from the worst of the pandemic, we have an opportunity and the power to make workplaces engines for mental health and well-being.”
I deeply believe that these issues are worth our attention, no matter how big or small we think our sphere of influence is at work. I’m going to be diving into each of these three focus areas in the months to come – I have so much more to share with you about why each one is important, how you can establish clarity, trust, and engagement with your team, and the payoff you’ll see from doing this work.
I can’t wait to hear what you think and how it works for you – we have an exciting journey ahead of us!