Employee Well-Being: Why It’s the Key to Retention

As much as a company spends time and effort on hiring the best candidates, it must also ensure they stay and contribute to the business's long-term success. Employee retention depends on several factors, of which the most important is employees’ overall well-being.

The modern workforce, comprising Gen Z and millennials, is prioritizing companies that are focused on their well-being. A Deloitte survey shows that nearly 62% of its employees are willing to stay in their current job if it provides more support for their well-being.

Therefore, companies offering initiatives to promote overall employee well-being are likely to be a desirable workplace, which in turn improves their employee retention.

In this article, we will learn how employee well-being is becoming increasingly important for companies to stay ahead of their peers in the business world.

What is Employee Well-Being?

An employee’s well-being refers to their overall state of health and satisfaction in terms of their physical, mental, financial, and social status. Well-being encompasses several parameters that are influenced by various factors, including perks, benefits, and burdens that come as part of an employee’s professional commitments.

Here are some of the crucial aspects of an employee’s well-being when working in a company:

• Physical Well-Being: Providing access to basic healthcare facilities, fitness initiatives, and an ergonomic work environment that employees love working in.
• Mental Well-Being: Guiding and supporting employees to manage their work tasks and get sufficient time for engagement and rejuvenation.
• Financial Well-Being: Providing an apt compensation package and other benefits like rewards, coupons, and more, that keep employees motivated to work.
• Social Well-Being: Adopting a culture that promotes Diversity and Inclusion where everyone is treated equally without any bias.
• Work-Life Balance: Ensuring that employees are not burdened or burnt out with work tasks, giving them sufficient time to spend with their families, pets, friends, or pursue a hobby.

Why Well-Being is Important for Employee Retention?

Employee well-being must be a core value of the company to drive its business and stay ahead of its competitors. The phase following COVID-19 saw many employees pursuing jobs with companies that valued their health and provided relevant benefits.

Here are some reasons why companies must step up in their wellness initiatives to stop losing any of their talented employees.

Reduced Burnout and Stress

Companies that focus on well-being ensure that employees are never overburdened and hire the right people for the right job role. Naturally, employees do not experience workplace stress and worry about never-ending deadlines.

Higher Job Satisfaction

Employees feel at peace when their basic needs, including financial stability, a safe and secure living environment, access to quality healthcare, and recognition, are met by the company. Thus, they feel more satisfied and do not look for reasons to switch from the company.

Improved Engagement

Engagement refers to the involvement and commitment of employees towards their work and colleagues. Companies that focus on employee wellness initiatives see employees actively engaging with one another, thus ensuring maximum employee retention through transparent communication.

Better Company Culture

Happy and healthy employees lead to active engagement within a company, where the main focus is on meeting work goals to achieve target business requirements. This, in turn, leads to a positive working environment and culture where employees support one another.

Lower Absenteeism

Employees often tend to absent themselves from the workplace when they face issues at work. A company that prioritizes employee well-being encourages employees to discuss their concerns with the right professionals to resolve them as soon as possible. Such actions provide employees with more reasons to show up at work every day.

Strategies to Improve Employee Well-Being in the Workplace

If your company is struggling with employee retention, it's time to reassess some of your work practices and revise existing initiatives. Here are some of the strategies to focus on and improve your employees’ overall well-being.

Encourage Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance refers to an employee's ability to devote sufficient time to achieving their work goals while also smoothly managing their day-to-day lives and spending time with loved ones. 

Most employees seek better opportunities when they notice their job consuming more of their time, leaving them with minimal to no time for themselves. Therefore, companies must emphasize the importance of logging out of work beyond a certain time and encourage leaders to create teams with reasonable work goals and deadlines.

• Encourage teams to agree on core working hours for maximum productivity.
• Offer flexible work options that allow employees to work from home whenever possible.
• Implement special initiatives, such as flexible parental leave, holidays on religious festivals, mandatory annual vacations, and other benefits.

Provide Mental Health Support

Mental wellness is something that is hard to decode. An employee’s mental health struggles often go unnoticed in the beginning, and by the time it gets detected, the employee has already decided to switch jobs or move elsewhere.

Here are some precautionary measures companies can take to help employees support their mental health:

• Have professional counselors in your office space or on your company’s intranet portal for 24/7 employee wellness assistance.
• Physical health impacts mental health. Encourage employees to participate in a fitness program, along with meditation and breathing practices, to relax and cultivate mindfulness.
• Monitor employee engagement levels in every team. Ensure leaders and HR partners have frequent communication with employees to address their concerns.

Create a Culture of Belonging

A healthy work environment leads to healthy and happy employees. Such a workplace considers the overall well-being of employees, where leaders at every level lead by example.

A successful company culture is where all employees can interact with one another without any bias or barriers. Employees feel cared for and have all their needs met when they communicate their fair concerns to the right people.

• Train your leaders to effectively engage with their team members and enhance their motivation levels.
• Provide employees with sufficient communication channels and portals to voice their concerns and offer feedback on company policies and initiatives.
• Conduct periodic sessions to refresh employees on the company’s core values and how their contributions impact your business.

Offer Financial Wellness Support

Poor financial planning and financial crunch are often the main reasons for an employee’s worsening mental and physical health. Very often, employees leave their jobs because they receive better financial compensation for the same job role in a different company.

To retain your top employees, ensure that you offer them fair compensation in line with industry standards, along with adequate perks and benefits.

• Ensure that your employees receive fair appraisals based on their performance and contributions.
• Provide sufficient awareness on budgeting, investing, and savings through routine workshops.
• Ensure that a portion of their payroll is allocated towards employee retirement funds, provident funds, health insurance, and similar benefits.

Recognize and Reward Employees Regularly

If employees leave a job even after getting fair compensation and indirect perks or benefits, it could possibly be because they were not recognized and appreciated for their timely contributions.

Failing to appreciate small efforts that make a big difference in the company’s business landscape can cost them some of their best employees. Appreciating or rewarding employees for their timely effort boosts their confidence and motivation, making them beat their records with every achievement.

• Have a rewards and appreciation portal to recognize employees' contributions that is visible to all employees.
• Offer a variety of rewards to choose from, including coupons, cash, reward points, vouchers, and similar options.
• Encourage employees to initiate peer appreciation on the company’s intranet portal.

Align Personal and Organizational Values

An employee joining the company must be able to grow professionally while acquiring new skills and experiences during different phases of their career. Companies must support employees’ growth plans while collectively focusing on their business goals, aligning their personal and organizational goals.

At Revaluate180, we help organizations identify and bridge the gap between personal and business development by aligning individual and corporate values. We focus on creating stronger connections, improving communication, and fostering a healthier workplace culture.

• Provide employees with opportunities to continue learning and upskill themselves while meeting work goals.
• Conduct useful training sessions and skill-revision workshops during phases of less or no work.
• Encourage weekly knowledge transfer sessions among team members to share lessons learned from their work experiences.

Measuring the Impact of Well-Being on Retention

While revising your employee well-being initiatives and strategies, it is vital to assess their success on a regular basis. Here are some effective ways to see how your employees are satisfied with your well-being initiatives.

Use Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Surveys

Periodic online and offline surveys help gather accurate feedback on an employee’s satisfaction with the company's overall wellness initiatives. Survey questions can vary from open-ended questions to multiple-choice or binary answers, scale-based ratings, and so on.

Track Absenteeism, Turnover Rate, and Manager Feedback

Employees often tend to absent themselves when they are unsatisfied with the company’s initiatives or their current work scope. Companies can periodically track absenteeism rates to assess the improvement in their rates after introducing more effective wellness initiatives.

Prolonged dissatisfaction at the workplace often results in employee turnover. Tracking turnover rates on a regular basis reveals how well the company’s welfare initiatives are perceived by employees.

Similarly, getting periodic feedback from managers and team leaders about the overall wellness of their team members helps HR professionals validate the impact of their wellness initiatives.

Pulse Surveys to Get Regular Insights

Pulse surveys are brief and frequent surveys designed to gather feedback on specific initiatives. Such surveys don't take much time and can be completed in 5-10 minutes. They mostly have questions involving selecting a choice to gather insights on the majority's opinions.

Conducting a pulse survey for every major wellness concern or company initiative helps companies track their impact with precision.

Final Thoughts

We learned how employee well-being and wellness initiatives are a key factor in long-term retention within a company. Well-being is a comprehensive union of an individual's physical, mental, financial, and socio-economic health status.

Companies that prioritize their employees’ well-being and provide tailored programs to address various aspects of employee wellness often experience lower employee turnover.

Additionally, companies must foster transparent communication among their employees and leaders to ensure their wellness initiatives are aligned with the latest requirements.