Bringing wellbeing into the workplace

We know that wellbeing is good for business. It increases productivity and significantly reduces absenteeism, but more than this, we understand the interconnectedness of culture, colleague experience, wellbeing, and performance.

We aim to support and inspire all of our colleagues to live happier and healthier lives and ultimately, create an environment that ensures that everyone can thrive and show up at their best everyday.

“Wellbeing” means different things to different people at different times. Most commonly, these factors include physical health, mental health, personal and work relationships, your relationship with money, how you find fulfilment, and how you connect to yourself and the world around you.

To ensure that your colleagues’ wellbeing is fully supported, it’s important to help them to look after all of those factors.

At Bruntwood, we’ve put together a bespoke wellbeing programme focusing on wellness, work-life-balance, and productivity with the aim of keeping our colleagues feeling happy, healthy and productive . We do this through a range of services including education, support and initiatives that aim to improve overall wellbeing.

We spoke to Chris Watts from our wellbeing partner organisation, We Are Wellbeing, about the importance of embedding wellbeing into your workplace strategy.

Why is looking after your colleagues wellbeing so important?

As an employer, it is vital you look after your employees wellbeing. Taking care of their health and happiness might seem like a burden at first - expensive to set up, costly to run and extra work that you don't really need to do but in the long term, it pays for itself at a rate of approximately £6 gained for every £1 you spend.

Looking after your employees health and happiness leads to higher levels of performance and productivity, lower absence levels and lower levels of presenteeism as healthier employees have lower rates of illness and higher levels of discretionary effort - when employees go the extra mile for colleagues and teams, in support of the business targets and vision.

And these are only the measurable benefits of a high quality wellbeing strategy - other less tangible rewards can include greater team cohesion and team work as colleagues work together, share experiences and hobbies through clubs and events that may run as part of a comprehensive wellbeing strategy. When colleagues really feel like they belong, they tend to stay loyal to that company for a longer period of time and through periods of instability. This in turn saves on hiring costs and retains high levels of experience within the business.

What can employers do to help improve colleague wellbeing?

My top 3 things that employers can do to improve colleague wellbeing are:

1) WAW Champions Network. Partner with We Are Wellbeing and get a comprehensive network of Wellbeing Champions into the company.

2) Use what you've already got. Look at your team - who has skills / interests / hobbies that you can create clubs or events around? Getting people together who share the same interests creates incredible friendships which, in turn, leads to employee retention, higher levels of discretionary effort and lower levels of absenteeism.

3) Good quality, 2 way communication. Talk to your employees, ask them what they want to see as part of a wellbeing strategy. What do they want to see more of / less of? Ask for feedback on past events - how can you learn from them to make the next ones even better?

What do you love about being part of We Are Wellbeing?

Fundamentally, I'm a people person - I just love talking to people about wellbeing, health and fitness! Meeting such a wide range of diverse people when I deliver the Champions Training or the Webinars, getting to know them and help them improve the skills and knowledge around the admittedly huge topics of health and wellbeing makes me very happy.

How are you supporting Bruntwood and what does this mean to the business?

I'm supporting Bruntwood by delivering Wellbeing Champions Training, Webinars on health and fitness topics and ongoing support to the Wellbeing Champions that I've trained. Its a role that I love and look forward to when he dates crop up in my diary as I know that there's going to a great bunch of people in front of me, eager to learn and share their ideas. My work supports Bruntwood's long term vision and certainly supports their colleagues in establishing a culture of wellbeing at the company.



You can find out more about working at Bruntwood and our dedication to our colleagues’ wellbeing on our careers hub.