Here, we take a look at some signs of a healthy workplace culture. Think transparency, collaboration and a generally pleasant vibe.
What is a healthy workplace? It’s not just the percentage of people who bring an apple into work or anything like that; it’s much more complex.
So complex, in fact, that the World Health Organization (WHO) has gone to the trouble of providing us with a definition. “A healthy workplace is one in which workers and managers collaborate to use a continual improvement process to protect and promote the health, safety and wellbeing of all workers and the sustainability of the workplace.” WHO recommends the consideration of the following: health and safety concerns in the physical work environment; health, safety and wellbeing concerns in the psychosocial work environment, including organisation of work and workplace culture; personal health resources in the workplace; and ways of participating in the community to improve the health of workers, their families and other members of the community.
Listen to anybody who has spent time researching workplace wellbeing – which might be more accurately called worker wellbeing these days as many workers are location agnostic – and they will tell you that sustainability, employee engagement and company culture all have a massive impact on people’s overall health.
Ideally, employers have a defined worker wellbeing strategy in place that they can revise and improve as they need to. That seems like common sense, right?
Perhaps not. A report from last year found that employee absenteeism was on the rise because many Irish employers were failing to respond adequately to employees’ mental health needs. The Cork-based academic authors of the report recommended that employers increase their budgets on health spending for their staff. Investment in workers’ health is vital to ensuring a productive workforce, they argued.
It’s not just on mental health spending where Irish businesses are lacklustre. A report by the Government-backed Healthy Ireland called Healthy Ireland at Work highlighted that only around one-third of businesses surveyed have a formal health and wellbeing strategy – leaving their employees and HR departments to play a guessing game.
Here are some signs of a healthy working culture to look out for, whether you’re a worker or a boss.
Signs of a healthy work culture
People are happy to help
In a healthy working environment, pleasantries aren’t sacrificed for the sake of professionalism. You should hear and see colleagues talking together and collaborating on different projects.
How often do junior colleagues ask for help? How gracious are senior colleagues when it comes to helping less experienced staff members? If you feel uncomfortable about asking a colleague for help because they might snap at you, that’s not a good sign.
Employee referrals
If staff members refer open roles at their workplace to friends, family and acquaintances, that means something is going right culturally.
Referrals are a huge vote of confidence in a company’s ability to provide a positive experience for staff.
Growth opportunities
Good managers want to see their staff make progress and improve in line with their potential. There should be ample opportunities for workers to upskill and managers should monitor employees’ learning goals. That way, workers don’t feel stagnant and employers can keep growing their pipeline of skilled staff.
Problems are resolved fairly
Conflicts arise in every workplace, even healthy ones. In fact, suppressing issues is the sign of an unhealthy workplace environment. Instead, problems should be dealt with transparently and calmly.
If your workplace culture needs improvement…
Employee experience surveys
Some employees may have different experiences of a company’s health and wellbeing culture, so surveys are a good way to gather all views.
We recently wrote about how to get the best out of employee engagement surveys, which are a very good – and often low-cost – way of finding out how people on a team view a situation.
Bring in advisors
If you’re completely unsure about what a healthy workplace culture entails, or you don’t have the time – and there is no shame in that – you can outsource the job. Bringing in someone who knows what they’re talking about when it comes to health and employee culture could make the world of difference.
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