Employee Wellbeing Programmes

With the rise in concern about workplace stress (and its potential for legal claims from employees affected), employers are considering steps to reduce stress and improve wellbeing, both physical and mental, amongst their workforce.

Employers may consider investments in employee wellbeing for several reasons. They might want to increase morale, improve retention if they’ve been experiencing high staff turnover, increase productivity or reduce levels of absenteeism.

There are many different ways that employers can encourage employee wellbeing, both physical and mental.

Physical

The link between physical fitness and mental health has long been known about, yet how many employees have the chance to exercise during their working day?

Some workplaces have onsite exercise facilities where staff can work out (good for both stress relief and burning off the calories from another wellbeing initiative – free food). If there’s no room for an onsite gym, employers might want to look into discounted gym membership, perhaps with incentives for keeping going past the initial few weeks of endorphin-fuelled enthusiasm.

Whilst many employers have a workforce that comes from a wide geographical area and therefore need their cars to get to and from work, there may be those for whom cycling would be a good idea. Can the employer assist with bike parking, changing facilities or even a grant towards buying a bicycle?

Connecting with nature has been shown to improve mood and reduce stress, so perhaps setting up an outside work area might encourage staff to unwind and still fulfil their work commitments. If the weather doesn’t lend itself to such things, perhaps a covered area, bringing the outdoors indoors? Fresh air and vitamin D from sunshine (when it happens) can boost physical wellbeing and increase resistance to infections such as colds or flu, reducing sick days.

Mental

There have been several legal cases in recent years where an employee’s level of stress has been a major factor, particularly when it could be shown that the employer hadn’t made any appreciable effort to eliminate or alleviate the source of the stress.

• In 2015-16 there were 488,000 reported cases of work-related stress, anxiety or depression.

• 77% of employees have experienced symptoms of poor mental health in their lives

In 2017, the cost of mental ill health at work was put at almost £35 billion - £21.2 billion in reduced productivity, £10.6 billion in sickness absence and £3.1 billion in staff turnover.

Whilst it’s not always possible to purpose-build (or even retrofit) a workplace to include such things as contemplation zones, communal collaboration areas or plants and artwork, there are always steps that can be taken to give staff the chance to change their mental state, including flexible working, training on stress management and handling busy workloads, employee counselling and job evaluation, to ensure that the worker and their work are still a good fit.

Things to consider

There are things that need to be kept in mind if you’re an employer who wants to adopt any of these measures (or other, similar ideas).

Data Protection

Some employers want to monitor the health of their employees, both to assess the current state as well as measuring any improvement. This is often done through the use of apps connected to smartphones or other wearable technology.

However, employees who participate in this kind of scheme need to be clearly informed about what kind of information will be gathered, as well as how it will be shared and how long it will be retained. Some of the information collected may relate to medical conditions and could count as sensitive personal data for the purposes of data protection legislation. With the advent of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this could take on even more significance as breaches under the Regulation will attract a far higher penalty.

Inclusivity

When designing a wellbeing programme, be it physical, mental or both, employers should take care to ensure that they aren’t inadvertently excluding a portion of their workforce.

Employees who have mobility problems may not be able to participate if the employer organises a running club. Similarly, those who are partially sighted may find participating in certain activities difficult if not impossible. If a team building exercise or activity is organised at the weekend, employees who have childcare responsibilities may not be able to attend, and those with disabilities will need time to recover, which may mean they have problems on Monday morning.

Those who take particular medication or have care commitments may also find that activities which are organised at breakfast time may be inaccessible to them.

The venue and type of event may also exclude certain employees – for example, a pub night will exclude those who don’t want to be around alcohol for religious reasons, or who may have had problems with alcohol in the past and are in recovery.

A fitness session may attract mainly male employees but if a female employee decides to attend, are there safeguards in place to ensure that she is made to feel welcome and not subjected to unacceptable behaviour from other attendees?

For some activities, clear communication is important; if one of the participants is deaf, is there a sign language facility available?

For all activities, if the employer is providing refreshments, care should be taken that there are suitable choices for all lifestyles and protected characteristics. Laying on “tea, coffee and bacon sandwiches” is just asking for trouble, as a moment’s thought will reveal.

It’s also the case that some workers, no matter how hard the employer strives to cater for them, won’t get on board with any kind of wellbeing programme and the employer will just have to accept that. An employee who refuses to participate should face no sanction or disadvantage (known in legal terminology as a detriment) as a result of that. The employer shouldn’t worry too much about it – they may find that as the demonstrable benefits of a wellbeing programme become manifest, the employee may decide to join in after all.

Nevertheless, employers should make sure that any programmes they run are on an opt-in rather than opt-out basis.

rradarstation

rradarstation is a resource available through the AXA MLP where policyholders can access rradar’s legal advisory team over the phone or by email and web portal that provides over 1,000 articles, step-by-step guidance sheets, forms, sample letters and templates to download relating to running a commercial business including HR topics.