How to cultivate wellbeing at work

Until a few years ago, work was still considered to be a simple source of income: to earn a decent living and provide for the needs of one's family. Today, the trend has changed, and work has become not only a major component of an employee's daily life, but above all, a full component of their identity. Work has thus become a key factor in personal development and self-fulfillment. Generation Y and those following, who enter the labour market, thus claim well-being at work as an essential condition for them to thrive there.

Wellbeing at work: what does it mean?

Wellbeing at work is the state of mind of an employee. This state of mind relates to the business environment through several factors: health, safety, compensation, interest in tasks, and relationships between employees and the hierarchy.

The more the work environment for employees is based on dialogue, listening, respect and recognition, the more employees will produce quality work and be loyal to their company, as a result of the significant contribution to their development.

Wellbeing at work: a source of performance for employees?

This perception of the quality of life at work can thus be considered as a performance lever, since it attracts talent and is a factor in employee engagement.

The benefits that a business owner can expect include, namely:

• Stress relief for employees

It no longer has to be proven that stress entails underperforming. Generally caused by pressure from the hierarchy, poor internal communication or over-competitiveness implemented by management, stress is increasingly inducing a bad experience among employees. Scientific studies carried out between 1980 and 2006 produced results in the same direction: stress does not increase performance; even worse, it can instead prove to be pathogenic and cause underperformance at high doses.

Thus, when a company cares about the well-being of its employees, this often results in a drop in stress which is correlated with better performance. Training, teleworking, scheduling, sports halls, libraries, and artist workshops are all avenues tested on a daily basis in companies and which have proved their worth.

• Decreased absenteeism

By promoting well-being at work, many business leaders have noticed a decrease in absenteeism and an increase in productivity. By motivating future employees, offering them a different vision of their work and using better communication skills, the level of satisfaction heightens, thereby bestowing a positive mindset. The consultants who support companies on these subjects make it clear: the drop in absenteeism is measurable and visible.

• Decrease in turnover

The development of a positive feeling of belonging to a company also makes it possible to observe a decrease in turnover among work teams. By developing the strategy of a genuinely respectable quality of life at work, you capture talents and retain them.

In addition to favourable working conditions, by promoting intrapreneurship or certain skills through new missions useful to society, you develop their speaking skills and limit the lack of adaptation.

A framework that cares about the health of its employees, is capable of bringing employees together and encouraging creativity, commitment and motivation would therefore reduce stress, absenteeism, and turnover, which are performance factors for a company.

However, for well-being to be a real source of performance, of course, the company's strategy, its vision, its organization, and its practices must be clear and reliable.

No measure aimed at improving the quality of life at work will improve the performance of a disorganized, poorly managed company without a strategic vision.