A step by step guide to developing an employee wellbeing strategy
By: Gary Butterfield
Tags: Employee Engagement, Strategy, HR, Business, Wellbeing

Whilst regulations stipulate that, as an employer, you must have a policy in place to ensure the health and safety of your employees, there are often no real calls to action in these documents.

They’re quickly outdated after being published, and often don’t truly understand the nature of the modern workplace and how to address more common issues. This is where a wellbeing strategy comes in.

So, we’ve put together a step by step guide designed to help you put in place a comprehensive wellbeing strategy that will not just benefit your employees but your bottom line, too.

What is a wellbeing strategy?

This is the first challenge to address, defining a wellbeing strategy. Your wellbeing strategy shouldn’t just be a document buried within HR pages, it should have a clear call to action and be easily accessible. Campaigns, activities and events that have a wellbeing focus that will actually provide a benefit to your employees and engage them to take part.

An effective wellbeing strategy will drive participation and improve the wellbeing of your employees. It will improve communication and connection within your teams and can be an attractive feature for recruiting new talent into the business.

Understand the needs of your stakeholders

When considering what to include in your wellbeing strategy, it’s imperative to understand the needs of your key stakeholders. At Everyday Juice Limited we use the “Me, We, and Us” framework:

Me — What does wellbeing mean to the individual? This may be a feeling that they’re contributing to the organisation’s objectives, that they have some autonomy over their working practices, or maybe they would love to share their love of cycling.

We — What does wellbeing mean to our teams and/or departments? This may be a well-connected team, which flourishes through a happy and healthy environment.

Us — What does wellbeing mean to the organisation? This may be to have a community of well-engaged people, to foster greater inclusion and diversity, or to reduce sickness absence.

By understanding the key drivers and barriers from your stakeholders and catering to them, you are more likely to get a return on your investment.

You can get more information on this framework from another one of our blog posts here.

Get the team involved, collaboration is key

One way to ensure your employees feel valued and listened to is to involve them in the decision-making process.

Call for volunteers from your organisation to help put together and implement your wellbeing strategy, and create a working group dedicated to creating, communicating and monitoring all wellbeing activities.

Work with your group to collate ideas to address the needs of your stakeholders. You may need to start small and only take forward the ideas that will get the most traction, but the most important thing is to start. Don’t throw any ideas away though, these can be worked into future developments.

These colleagues will champion your wellbeing proposition and help push it with their own teams. In addition, drawing your wellbeing working group from various areas of the business is likely to maximise engagement and participation.

Finally, appoint a wellbeing coordinator from the group. Though a group of enthusiastic volunteers is great, they will still need structure, so this person will be responsible for driving the wellbeing strategy forward and providing administration and leadership for the working group.

Developing the strategy

Once you know what your stakeholders need and have a cracking team in place, it’s time to pull together all of those ideas so you can start to develop a working document.

The result that you’re looking for is a clear and concise document that can be effectively implemented, accessed, and updated. From this document, you will have a suite of different services, activities, and events, which employees can then engage with.

It can often be useful at this stage to call in some help from a workplace wellbeing specialist, someone impartial who can sift through the ideas to ensure they cater for all employees in a coherent policy.

Don’t forget your brand and vision

As a business, you will have a particular ethos, brand voice and vision for your company. It’s important to make sure you bear this in mind when developing your wellbeing strategy. For example, if your business prides itself on sustainability then look to see how your wellbeing proposition could reflect this, perhaps by offering bike to work schemes or incentives for sustainable travel.

Consider the user journey

It’s not unusual for a wellbeing policy or strategy to be buried deep within HR pages, or for wellbeing activities and advice to be distributed across multiple locations.

Before sharing your work more widely, ensure that what you’re offering is easy to access and navigate. The key to the most successful wellbeing campaigns and initiatives has been to bring everything into one online location.

Keep it relevant

Finally, it’s all well and good having a wellbeing strategy in place, but now you need to make sure it stays relevant and continues to meet the needs of your stakeholders. Therefore, make sure you’re reviewing the strategy on at least an annual basis, as it’s easy for them to fall by the wayside.

Work with your wellbeing group, your team members, and build in feedback mechanisms for users. Do employees feel like their wellbeing has improved? Has the work environment become a better place to be? Is the organisation meeting its goals?

As long as feedback continues to come back positive and you’re making necessary changes on a regular basis, you’ll be well on the way to creating a happy and healthy place to work.