Employee Wellbeing
Employers: Employee Wellbeing in 100 Days
Here in the U.S., incoming President Joe Biden has announced several initiatives for his first 100 days in office. This got me to thinking… How might employers address employee wellbeing in 100 days or less?
Here my thoughts:
1. Determine what the organization’s definition and model of employee wellbeing will look like. Wellbeing is one of those terms for which there is no consensus based definition or description. This means that each organization will have to either create its own definition and description or adopt both from one of the already published definitions and models. This is important as everyone within the organization needs to know what wellbeing means and what it looks like within the organization whenever the term wellbeing is used. Otherwise, each employee is likely to attach their own interpretation to wellbeing. And employers need everyone in the boat rowing in the same direction.
2. It is important to decide what the purpose of the organization’s wellbeing initiative will be. What purpose will it serve? What is the “why” behind the initiative?
3. Determine what outcomes the employee wellbeing initiative should achieve. Think of outcomes in terms of short, medium and long-range outcomes.
4. Once the above decisions are made, widely distribute the definition, model description and desired outcomes for the wellbeing initiative widely and frequently across the whole organization.
5. Create an employee wellbeing committee made up of representatives from all levels across the organization or task an already existing committee with guiding the wellbeing initiative. Remember that employees will better support what they have a hand in creating, building, implementing and evaluating.
6. With the purpose and desired outcomes in mind, conduct a needs and resources assessment. Analyze the data collected for any gaps between today and the desired outcomes.
7. Prioritize the identified gaps into a rank order. Make sure the rank order aligns with the wellbeing initiative’s purpose and desired outcomes, as well as the organization’s overall mission and vision.
8. For each of the prioritized gaps, create an action plan for how the gaps will be closed over time. Make sure the strategies and tactics within the plan are also aligned with the wellbeing initiative’s purpose and desired outcomes, as well as the organization’s overall mission and vision.
I believe these steps are entirely doable within 100 days. Obviously, there is more to addressing employee wellbeing than these initial eight steps. In reality, addressing employee wellbeing is not something that can be accomplished in 100 days or less. In fact, addressing employee wellbeing is really an ongoing quality improvement process.
While addressing employee wellbeing will take more than 100 days, these first eight steps will get your employee wellbeing initiative launched, headed in the right direction and set on a solid foundation from which you can build further. Remember that employee wellbeing is an ongoing effort based on continually gathered data and it is a continuous quality improvement process.
©2021. William McPeck. All Rights Reserved.
