Embracing The Future, Learning From The Past...

Barnett Waddingham recently launched its UK Workplace Wellbeing Index survey looking at Corporate attitudes to 'Wellbeing'. A few weeks beforehand we launched Generation Why about how people look at their financial priorities. The links to the survey are below but it paints a simple picture - your workers need help. They want it from you. And whilst employers are starting to grasp its importance, the help is siloed and driven by fad. 60% of employers openly admit that their employees have only a moderate to low score in Wellbeing… 60%

Your employees are struggling with debt, despair, fatigue and stress. Ill health, loathing, abandonment and bullying. Of course the perfect employee enters the office, leaves the ‘baggage’ at the door and starts yet another 10 hour 100% utility day. But the rest? Well, higher turnover, presenteeism, absence, lower personal productivity and loads of risk, from health and safety to reputational….You see there is a cost equation to both sides to this and you know fruit in the kitchen just isn’t going to cut the mustard.

To deal with the complexity of the above we find ourselves shouting out loud about Well-Being or Wellness: they echo around offices like the empty vessel of words they actually are. The WHY to me is always missing. There is the WHAT – it’s the fad cos surely that’s what my people need and the HOW - well I have some benefits (admittedly the design and reason for them was from the 90’s but…)

I have sat for 25 years in this environment: I can take no more, I need a purpose in my life and Eudaimonia has (through a simple word) given me something I can pour my frustration into. My upbringing lent to the left and my working life tilts me more right but this has helped my struggle with the dilemma of what ‘good’ to my employees should be about.

Why Eudaimonia? Well it has the two parts to it as you can see above. Happiness, which to me is the proxy for wellbeing. It’s simple. If I am happy I am probably in a good, or at least a less terrible place. The second aspect is the flourishing. This is exciting as it is the start of recognising that if I, as the employer, can help you deal with what holds you back you will be, on the whole, a better employee; whether sitting working at your desk, working from home or ‘bigging up’ my company at every opportunity…

I have a team of 4 working on this in BW and am recruiting more. With Analytics I will show you where your employee pain is and its impact on your organisation. We can work together to create the right strategies and the return on your time effort and spend. It’s going to be one hell of a journey but by 2020 I want every company to recognise the need for a CEO(Chief Eudaimonia Officer).