Research shows us that a workplace wellbeing strategy can have a huge impact on employee health while also increasing productivity, reducing absences and improving business performance.
But for HR teams and wellbeing officers, it can be difficult to measure the outcomes of your wellbeing programme in a way engages your leadership team. In this blog, we explore some snippets from our CPD-accredited Wellbeing Strategy Course to help you demonstrate how your wellbeing strategy is helping your people to be healthier and more productive — and how that’s impacting business outcomes.
Setting objectives to measure against
Having clear aims and metrics for your wellbeing programme helps you be more precise in your recommendations, taking wellbeing from a ‘nice-to-have’ to an essential business priority.
While you might use industry averages to establish a baseline, metrics designed around your own workforce are always more compelling. Closely monitoring your wellbeing activities helps you gets buy-in for future investment, demonstrate impact and know when to make changes to your approach.
Some key data to collect might include:
- Employee absences
- Mental health days off
- Engagement and productivity
- Cost to recruit
- Onboarding time and cost
- Employee turnover
Employee wellbeing doesn’t have a fixed endpoint — it’s always evolving — so you need to be continually collecting feedback to inform your strategy, then make sure you’re communicating with both your colleagues and your decision makers to really shout about the wellbeing support you’ve put in place.
Key metrics to monitor
These key metrics can help you demonstrate the impact of your work and position wellbeing as a business priority. To explore them further — including how to gather key data in your own business — head to our free Wellbeing Strategy Course.
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Recruitment and retention
Having a low turnover rate not only saves money on recruitment but also keeps valuable knowledge in the business and provides a sense of stability for the individuals in your teams. A high turnover rate is generally seen as a red flag by both existing and potential employees, posing a risk of reputational damage.
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Employee absences
Sick days can be a challenge not only for the worker who is ill but also for the wider team. Absences can increase the workload of other employees, disrupt team dynamics and lead to delays and missed deadlines — all of which increase long-term stress.
The aim shouldn’t be to discourage employees from taking sick leave when they need it, but rather to offer preventative health support to help the employee manage their own health and speed up recovery.
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Employee mental health
Mental health absences are on the rise — more than doubling across the UK since 2019. Remember that your reported figure for absences is likely lower than the real amount of time lost to poor mental health, as employees may under-report mental health challenges that affect their work (known as presenteeism).
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Productivity
Research consistently demonstrates the impact of employee wellbeing on productivity. Wellbeing support is a core part of the employee experience, and the vast majority (86%) of employees report² that they’re more productive at work if there’s a good culture.
Watch: Measuring your wellbeing strategy’s performance
In this video, our Group Head of People, Vicky Walker, explains how setting strategic goals for your wellbeing programme can help you to find out if it’s really working.
Try our free CPD-accredited wellbeing strategy course
If you’re looking for a more in-depth guide, our Wellbeing Strategy Course covers the latest research, plus advice from our in-house experts to help you make the case for investment in wellbeing and demonstrate its value to your business.
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