A friend recently asked me to draft a wellbeing strategy that they could suggest to their company. I thought readers would find it useful too, so here it is.

Suggestion summary

My suggestion is for the company to take a strategic approach to employee wellbeing. The strategy should include a kpi for measuring wellbeing, an objective of maximising wellbeing for all employees and regular reporting of progress.

Benefits for the company

Improved employee wellbeing will:

• Improve productivity - getting projects completed on time and to budget
• Improve staff retention - reducing recruitment costs
• Align with UK (and other) government strategies - increase chances of gaining more contracts with these clients

Suggestions for wellbeing kpi

The Government’s most recent industrial strategy states that they intend to measure “good work”. They will explore: overall worker satisfaction; good pay; participation and progression; wellbeing, safety and security; and voice and autonomy. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has also been measuring wellbeing for a number of years.

In addition, Maslow’s motivational theory has been proven to correlate well with overall satisfaction. Therefore I suggest that the company use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a basis of a wellbeing kpi. This will allow an immediate gap analysis of overall employee wellbeing which will, in turn, show which actions need to be taken to improve. The kpi can be calculated using a combination of existing business data and quarterly employee mini-surveys. Below is a suggestion of how this could work:

Basic needs: % employees above minimum living wage

Security needs:

• H&S data converted to % employee safety
• Financial security - pensions, advice given for savings - convert to "% financial secure"
• Financial security - convert finance data into "% company security" figure
• Environmental data* - % close to science based environmental targets
• Physical security - % secure from physical attack in local area - ONS crime data

Social: ONS style question in staff mini-survey - e.g. marks out of 100 how satisfied with social life

Esteem: ONS style question in staff mini-survey - e.g. marks out of 100 how worthwhile the things you do are

Self-actualisation: ONS style question in staff mini-survey - e.g. marks out of 100 how satisfied are you with your leisure time

Overall wellbeing kpi: Weighted average of above %’s

Using this kpi the company will see where anything falls below 100% this is where intervention is most needed. Examples of possible interventions:

• Security < 100% - offer financial advice, improve environmental performance*
• Esteem < 100% - encourage staff to gain professional qualifications
• Self-actualisation < 100% - match company's jobs with employees' true interests
• There are many more

* Environmental protection is included because things like clean air, reduced carbon emissions, flood protection etc all contribute to security of basic needs - message Richard Lupo / Lupopia for more information on this.

Further implications

• After a few years of monitoring and surveying each quarter, sufficient data should be available to see which interventions result in the best wellbeing outcomes.
• Staff retention should improve
• Wellbeing measuring and strategy could be extended to the benefits that the company brings to clients

Further information

A bit more detail, justification and references to this suggestion can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/happy-now-richard-lupo/