Remote working has been slowly creeping into the lives of the UK’s workers for some years. Advances in technology and security have given people the tools and capability to work from home, whilst employee perception around work/life balance - combined with new legislation around workers' rights to flexible working – has led to increased demand.
And millions are reaping the rewards. According to research released by This is Money by Lloyds Bank, more than a quarter of Britain’s workforce works flexibly – that equates to around 8 million people. Much of this has been about the benefit of flexibility – to be able to attend different offices, hold meetings off-site. Remote working has meant variety of location, atmosphere and faces.
But COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief a very different set of circumstances, where workers are not so much remote as isolated – away from office colleagues, either alone or with family members also struggling to adjust. There can be no doubt that this situation – which looks to be part of a prolonged period of change - brings a real risk to workers’ sense of wellbeing and overall mental health.
This risk extends to the health of the business. Research has backed up what many already instinctively knew: that wellness is not only directly linked to productivity but also to the bottom line.
In Autumn 2019, before the current pandemic took hold, Capita released a new piece of research, ‘Human to Hybrid’, which examined the impact of our changing world on the employee workforce. Within it, nearly 59% of HR leaders identified increased productivity as one of a host of benefits of prioritising wellbeing.
It is essential that businesses – led and empowered by their HR teams – address wellness as a priority not just for the benefit of their workforce, but for the long term good of the business too.
Fig. 1
Please rank the following reasons why employee wellbeing may be important to your organisation.
The chart shows areas ranked first by respondents.
When it comes to causing stress it can be of no surprise that factors such as workload pressure (identified by 86% of HR leads) and job insecurity ( identified by 84% of HR leads) come top of the list. And without question both of these will be exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19.
But a number of other factors – including lack of social contact (77%) – were also identified, and combined, these have the ability to cause unprecedented levels of anxiety amongst our workforce.
So how can businesses guard the health of their workforce during this period of change? We’ve identified 3 opportunities for organisations to act – small changes that will make a big difference.
Fig 2.
What factors within your organisation do you see compromising employee wellbeing today?