Speaking at the Wellbeing in The Workplace event in The City of London back in October last year Nuffield Health Chief Executive David Mobbs pointed to employee wellbeing solutions as the new corporate social responsibility model to help solve the UK’s health challenges. Referring to research, commissioned by Nuffield Health, in conjunction with Ashridge Business School, Mr Mobbs reveals how the future financial health of companies relates closely to the wellbeing of their employees.
Supporting his CEO’s view, Dr. Andrew Jones, Nuffield Health’s Managing Director for Corporate Wellbeing, said: “To retain the best staff in this economic climate, employers have to become the ‘employer of choice’ by demonstrating a willingness to invest in the health of their employees and their families. But this reaps dividends for the companies themselves in reduced employee sick leave and absenteeism. It is an initiative that increases productivity and economic security for the UK.”
Judith Parsons, Business Director for Ashridge Business School, explained that the costs of not attending to employee wellbeing are enormous – both at an individual level and to the company bottom line. She shared the fact that the cost to employers of sickness is in the region of £600-700 per employee per annum – money that organisations could have added to the bottom line or invested back into the organisation. Despite these alarming figures it would seem that fewer than 50% of employers have a strategy for managing illness., and as Judith Parsons concluded “Employers who are not taking wellbeing seriously also lose out on higher levels of employee engagement, retention and creativity.”
As a result of Ashridge’s Research, Nuffield Health created Seven Steps to delivering first class employee wellbeing. These steps outline, amongst other things, the importance of identifying the strategic imperative, and business benefits to an organisation in investing in employee wellbeing.
At about the same time last year as David Mobbs was speaking at The Wellbeing in The Workplace event, one of the major UK Utilities Companies had just made the decision to commission a second pilot programme of a revolutionary approach to improving engagement, and reducing employee stress levels, with a volunteer group of senior managers.
Taking an approach that was not dissimilar the Nuffield Seven Step Plan, in May 2012, the company identified that following a protracted and ongoing process of re-organisation and structural change, they had a real problem with employee engagement, and that this problem was impacting upon productivity. They set specific objectives to re-build a sense of job security and trust, address the ‘silo mentality’ that had developed, empower and engage the extended leadership team, and increase energy levels and productivity within specific functions and departments.
In July 2012, this organisation commissioned an initial pilot with a ‘soft’ audience from HR Department. The results were so exceptional that the decision was made to conduct a further pilot with a volunteer group of senior managers in November and December 2012. Similarly impressive results from this second pilot resulted in the Charisma Model programme receiving Board approval for implementation across the organisation’s population of 250 leaders, managers, talent and high potentials during 2013. The Board also sanctioned an ongoing and accelerated programme to develop a robust in-house to support and sustain the positive changes bought about by the programme.
In their Health, Work and Wellbeing Booklet (March 2012) employment relationship advisors ACAS remind employers of the duties that they have under health and safety law to assess and take measures to control risks from work-related stress. ACAS go on to say that factors from outside of the workplace, such as relationship, family or debt problems can create stress or turn otherwise normal pressures of work into excessive ones for particular individuals. Whilst they make the point that employees have a responsibility to manage these issues, they also remind us that employers also have a duty to take reasonable care to ensure the health and safety of employees.
The majority of organisations that I speak to have clearly defined and well managed Health and Safety policies in place to protect employees from physical injury. Many of these same organisations however are unclear as to the scope of their responsibilities towards the mental wellbeing of their employees. There is an interesting debate as to whether or not organisations should invest in helping employees deal with stressful issues that were not created within their work environment. Many CEOs that we speak to are in full support of coaching and counselling , but are very clear that it is not their responsibility to provide what they see as ‘therapy’ for their employees.
Surely the decision for a CEO as to how far they are prepared to go with investment into employee mental wellbeing should not just be about Corporate Social Responsibility. I believe there is a straight forward balanced decision that can be made which is all about return on investment. Much has been written about the impact of a happy, healthy, engaged workforce on a high performance culture, and the benefits of a high performance culture on productivity. I believe that it is the responsibility of providers such as myself, to work along side organisational HR Directors to prove a measurable, tangible business return as a result of reducing employee stress levels, and improving engagement. An Operations Director would need to substantiate ROI before any investment on proposed new plant or machinery was sanctioned. In the same way, a CEO, with responsibilities to customers and shareholders as well as to employees will need to understand what the impact on the bottom line will be, before he or she signs off on investing in increasing the self- confidence, emotional awareness, energy, engagement and ultimately the effectiveness, of the leadership team.
“Employers are fast-becoming ‘guardians of health’. Personal health ‘optimisation’ and disease prevention are the new drivers of change.”
Marcus Powell, Nuffield Health’s Group OD and HR Director
