Editor's Note: We recently updated this post with new insights.
What if there was an easy way to help employees combat depression, increase life satisfaction, improve holistic well-being, and live longer—all while making the world a better place?
Including it in your corporate wellness program would be a no-brainer, right?
Spoiler alert—one of the most effective solutions to boosting well-being involves the simple act of helping others.
Enter volunteering.
Millennial and Gen X employees are quickly becoming the new “sandwich generation”—but unlike their parents, they have significantly less resources and far more responsibilities on their plates.
It’s even caught the attention of the Department of Health and Human Services, which published its first-ever National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. The guidelines aim to provide agencies, governments, and private companies with proven recommendations for supporting caregivers and families.
With nearly 53 million people serving as family caregivers, plus approximately 2.7 million grandparents (including many Gen Xers) caring for children who cannot live with their parents, it’s clear that this issue is table stakes for today’s workforce.
How can employers offer more flexibility to caregiving employees in an attempt to combat burnout and attrition?
There’s a lot of conversation right now about how the pandemic has impacted workers across the country. However, younger employee populations, particularly members of Gen Z, are currently exhibiting more signs of mental and social health issues than older generations.
After graduating college and entering the workforce amidst the pandemic, Gen Z hasn’t been shy about making mental health and wellness one of their top priorities in accepting job offers. In October 2022, LinkedIn reported that 66% of Gen Z employees want a company culture built on mental health and wellness. Given that Gen Z will represent 27% of the workforce by 2025, companies are starting to take mental health in the workplace more seriously than ever before.
But there’s another area of well-being that Gen Z workers are especially grappling with on the heels of the pandemic—social wellness and connection.
Companies actively working on how to measure the impact and effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs might not realize they can lean on another related initiative to help quantify those efforts.
And they may already have the data available.
The initiative? ESG, which stands for “environmental, social, and governance.”
November is National Gratitude Month, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. With colder, darker days approaching—and times already tough for many—it’s invigorating to feel the warmth of little moments of sunshine.
You may already be familiar with some of the many benefits of gratitude, but have you ever thought about making gratitude even more of a focal point in your life? What about the lives of your employees?
Here are six wellness challenges that will not only transform your organization, but that will also help you experience a more fulfilled outlook on life.
As employee burnout continues to intensify throughout the country, nowhere else is it more severely experienced than in the health care industry.
From overworked nursing staff to overly strained cafeteria employees, health care workers are tasked with juggling multiple roles to accommodate systemic deficiencies that leave them feeling stressed, under-appreciated, and depleted. A certain amount of turnover is to be expected in this work environment, but across the country, hospitals have been seeing health care staff reshuffling or leaving in droves.
Between 2019 and 2021, turnover grew by 34% among health care workers, and as we transition out of the pandemic, they're either leaving unmanageable work environments or renouncing their professions altogether.
As such, describing this phenomenon as “burnout” doesn’t do justice to the structural shortcomings at play within hospitals and organizations. Feeling stressed or burned out is, unfortunately, the new normal among employees across industries, particularly health care, and it no longer makes sense to call it a passing fad stemming from pandemic-related stressors.
Burnout has officially evolved into a systemic crisis that wellness benefits like health insurance or a gym stipend can’t solely reverse.
We talk a lot about managing the mental health of employees, but what about the mental health of managers in your organization?
After all, they’re also employees, and with the challenges they have to deal with, it should come as no surprise that managers are struggling just as much as the people they lead.
While June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, we’ve reached the point where companies must move beyond simply showing support for one month with messaging, media, and products.
Consider this month the opportunity to begin making LGBTQ+-affirming practices an inherent and essential part of your organization year-round.
But to do that, companies need a culture shift.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and a perfect time to talk about one of the biggest factors in employee mental health: relationships with direct supervisors and managers.
We know from a 2020 McKinsey study that this relationship is critical to job satisfaction. In fact, a January 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review article titled “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation” cited toxic culture as the No. 1 predictor for employee resignations.
Toxic work environments don’t just happen on their own. They’re fostered by toxic policies, procedures, and leaders—all of which can have a negative impact on employees.
When employees face stress, burnout, depression, and anxiety, practicing mindfulness can be a powerful tool to help them navigate their emotions. At the same time, though, not all employees warm up to “mindfulness” as a concept, let alone a practice. They may be skeptical of the benefits, or hesitant to give it a try.
That doesn’t mean you should abandon it altogether.
By incorporating various types of mindfulness activities and challenges into your wellness program, you can meet your employees where they are—and help everybody benefit from mindfulness, in whatever form it takes.
