The WellRight Blog

If you talk to most enterprise-level executives about lessons learned in 2020, don’t be surprised if employee wellness is mentioned—often.

According to the HR.com 2021 State of Employee Health and Well-being study, 63% of organizational leaders agree that mental health is among their Human Resources department’s top five priorities moving forward. And 75% of HR professionals reported in the same study that employee wellness has become more of a priority.

To put it bluntly, if your organization isn’t prioritizing employee wellness, you might soon find yourselves at a competitive disadvantage.

As companies continue to navigate remote working scenarios, one of their biggest challenges is maintaining employee engagement and well-being from a distance.

For some employees, this has been their first time working from home. Many still haven’t quite gotten the hang of it. They may feel isolated, disconnected, and overwhelmed by the competing priorities of work responsibilities and the demands of home life, especially if at-home schooling is thrown into the mix.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

A common phrase, but what does it really mean? Put simply, an engaged team working towards a common goal can overcome any obstacle. When a team participates in a team-building exercise, they build the tools for real-world scenarios that demand cohesion.

But now that many are still working from home, how can this sense of teamwork translate into a remote world?

It’s early 2021, and everyone is thinking about wellness.

The results of a recent global survey by marketing icon Ogilvy prove it. When Ogilvy polled 7,000 consumers across four continents and 14 countries, 77% of respondents said wellness is “very or extremely important to them.”

The worldwide distribution of coronavirus vaccines has begun, but it seems as if remote work is here to stay.

Here at WellRight, we’ve let our employees know we plan to stay fully remote through at least September 2021. Major employers, such as Google, have done the same.

We don’t know what the future will hold. The COVID-19 pandemic might start to recede, or it might worsen. Our children may continue remote education, or they may head back to school. The economy might begin to recover, or it might drop a bit more.

One major source of uncertainty for your employees is the question about where they might find themselves working in the coming weeks and months. Will they stay at home for the foreseeable future, or will they be called back to the office?

June is National Employee Wellness Month, and what a strange month it will be. Typically, this time of year is all about finally getting out of doors after a long winter and rainy spring. It’s about going on weekend trips and family vacations for some much-deserved rest and relaxation. Summer is, usually, the season of wellness.

This year is different. Workplaces have been closed for months. Access to gyms, parks, and beaches has been restricted. Even as some businesses and public facilities reopen, people are anxious about going out again—a full 15% of Americans indicated on a May 26 Statista poll that they were afraid to leave their house. Many are fretting about the economic toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on their families while also worrying about the virus itself. Indeed, as of April, the lion’s share of Americans are either very or somewhat concerned about the virus.

Emotionally, your employees are on edge. Physically, they’re worn out. Is now even the right time to celebrate wellness in the workplace?

Whether it comes next month or several months from now, it’s going to happen. The stay-at-home regulations will be lifted, the threat of the coronavirus will recede, and public health officials will deem it safe for Americans to go back to work.

It’s important to understand that going back to the office won’t feel like business as usual for many of your employees. But planning now for the day you finally reopen your doors–however soon or far off that may be–can mitigate confusion and stress among your employees and make for a smooth transition.

It seems like the days when people would stay with a single employer for decades are long gone.

The numbers say that millennials—the most populous generation in the U.S. labor force—change their jobs at three times the rate of older generations. A resume packed with frequent job hops no longer carries the stigma it once did.

Changing attitudes about employment are combining with a booming economy to generate the highest quit-rate in years. And more than half of American workers are looking for a new job or watching openings.

In other words, if an employee isn’t highly engaged, they’re out the door.

It’s a well-established fact: When employees make healthy choices, eat better, exercise more, and learn to reduce the stress in their lives, they engage more with their jobs. Absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover go down, while productivity, creativity, and morale go up.

But as you probably know from your own life, reversing long standing habits is easier said than done. If you’ve become accustomed to grabbing fast food for comfort after an exhausting day of work, you may have trouble psyching yourself up for fresh produce. If you’re used to waking up to your Twitter feed, a 20-minute meditation may, at first, seem like a disappointing substitute.

That’s where an employee wellness program comes in. A good wellness program nudges your team toward healthy habits with a combination of fun challenges, community support, and education. But the best wellness program in the world won’t make much difference if your employees don’t use it.