The W Word

We held our first roundtable last week and we promised and delivered a safe space in order for every attendee to feel they could be open and honest. We got a real insight into company culture, the personal stance of each attendee regarding their role and their honest view around wellbeing in the business sphere. […]

We held our first roundtable last week and we promised and delivered a safe space in order for every attendee to feel they could be open and honest. We got a real insight into company culture, the personal stance of each attendee regarding their role and their honest view around wellbeing in the business sphere. A group of amazing HR, Benefits and Wellbeing leads, we couldn’t have asked for more.

What came very quickly to light is Wellbeing feels like it has almost become a dirty word. The W Word in fact – whispered in company corridors and put in the small print. How has this happened?

We’ve understood for a while that it is the first budget to be cut. What we learned at our roundtable is that it is viewed with a short term lens; as one-off events sprinkled here and there across a business financial year. It’s a nice to have, not a business need. It is also seen as the antithesis of L & D; no long term strategy behind it and signed off under a different header so it goes unnoticed by the C suite. It seems if there’s even a whiff of the word Wellbeing, it’ll be questioned by management and there will be pushback. The W word is not doing so well in the business popularity stakes.

We also learnt that our guests of course have job titles that aren’t necessarily specific to mental health. The majority have experienced that moment of being asked to deal with an employee in crisis even if they do not feel equipped or trained, or tasked with a new W initiative to roll out to the company on top of their day-to-day. In certain situations they’ve been worried, felt unsafe and entirely overwhelmed. These feelings did not seem uncommon either.

Our roundtablers agreed that they’re “good people who just want their staff to be OK”, but sometimes have had to find their own way when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. The reality of what their job title is versus what their job actually entails doesn’t seem to match up and it can be a worry.

Quite the picture being painted; the W word that isn’t taken seriously enough versus the ongoing severe mental health cases and overwhelming company initiatives, all put in the same budget. How can the attitude towards each be so different?

We also learned that our roundtablers have to navigate the following when it comes to the W word / any W initiatives:

The constant pushback from and justification to C Suite
The red tape that is due diligence for any new ideas = delays delays delays
The risk averse management – ‘what’s the ROI?’
The leadership goals for the company that don’t necessarily align with wellbeing budgets for the people
Renaming and moving budgets from wellbeing to L & D in order to get what they need through and unquestioned

A lot of blocks then.

Our guests are from different verticals but the above themes seemed to be the same. Why is that and what needs to change when it comes to this suspect W word?

Well – It seems a bit of blue sky thinking, and these ideas are not entirely unobtainable if thought through / delivered in the right way:

The idea of leading with development allows accessing budgets quickly and proves the value of wellbeing as an important part of the programme of support. So that’s people development & wellbeing.

At GetZeN, we are working with businesses who desperately want to look after their staff, so there needs to be a compromise on the language and what approach is taken. Recent experience with new clients show that the combination between development and wellbeing seems to be more accepted within organisations and opens up the budgets too.

The W word is still currently treated as the outsider in corporates; viewed with suspicion and sometimes contempt at the top… but if it’s development + wellbeing – oh such a different story.

The roundtable and our own experience suggests that the focus needs to be supporting employees with this new angle. Starting perhaps with where revenue is generated for a company – commercial teams is one example. If we can effectively prove this model, leading with a department that drives money and build a case study, then the measurement around development and wellbeing will be clearly recognised with positivity within a company and rolled out across the wider business.

The healthy compromise: Lead with people development and bring in the wellbeing from the cold. Staff will learn better, feel better and the initiative will help companies hit their business goals whilst improving staff morale all at once.

And although measurement happens in some form – engagement surveys, staff feedback and the like, it needs to be so much more than that. Employees don’t want their input into this to be time consuming or encroaching on their day, but instead a quick and easy process that will only enhance their role in the company and personally, long term.

We learned a lot from our confidential Roundtable and look forward to sharing more insight and case studies that brings Wellbeing truly into the fold. The goodwill and intention is already there, and with the right metrics and perspective landing within companies, we hope to prove how what’s currently in place can only be significantly improved.