Employee Wellbeing: How a Sense of Purpose Enhances Productivity

Over the last decade, a great surge is observed among the companies taking various wellness initiatives, for example, free gym memberships, to enhance employee wellbeing. But in reality, are these initiatives, planned to enhance overall employee wellbeing as well as productivity, succeeding?

Nowadays, the success of any company is not only defined by the revenue and profit it is making, but by the ability of the organization to motivate, attract, as well as retain talent. And this is the reason why programs that are intended to improve employee wellbeing have started gaining a lot of popularity. But, there is still one big issue associated with these initiatives.

Company initiatives that embrace offers like free gym memberships are not completely addressing the problem of employee wellbeing since wellbeing is a lot more than merely a measure of physical wellness.

Physical wellness is vital, but it is not the only wellness dimensions that should be considered while addressing wellbeing. In fact, there exist three workplace wellness dimensions: emotional wellness, social wellness, and physical wellness. Each dimension plays a vital role in enhancing overall employee wellbeing, and it is crucial for the business managers seeking to improve employee wellbeing to take each dimension into account.

1. Dimension Of Emotional Wellness 

Emotional wellness plays a significant role in influencing an employee’s sense of well-being. This dimension recounts the feeling that you live for a purpose and you have control of your life and a feeling of belonging.

According to research, good emotional wellness has a greater impact on overall well-being as compared to other two wellness dimensions. Hence, employees with a high sense of emotional wellness experience greater well-being compared to employees with excellent physical and social wellness.

For employers, it is vital to offer employees a sense of belonging and build a positive work culture by concentrating on purposeful leadership.

2. Dimension Of Social Wellness 

Social wellness is yet another important dimension that contributes greatly to a state of wellbeing and has a large impact on an employee’s overall well-being. Social wellness includes a work-life balance and conducting positive interactions both inside and outside of the work environment.

Very often companies fail to notice the influence that social interactions have on employees. A lot of researches clearly demonstrates that employees with ‘good social wellness’ actually yield superior productivity at work as compared to individuals with ‘weak social wellness’.

By building an environment that promotes and embraces social interactions, companies can truly stimulate productivity. Informal meeting spaces, open plan offices, as well as social events organized by the company are just a few ways that a company can craft a more social work environment.

3. Dimension Of Physical Wellness

Physical wellness involves practising a healthy lifestyle. This comprises of having timely health checks, avoiding negative habits like smoking, consuming alcohol, etc. and eating nutritious foods.

According to a recent study, it has been found that physical wellness plays a major role in an individual’s overall sense of wellbeing. Therefore, in order to enhance the overall wellbeing of employees, it is important to consider their state of physical wellness.

Creating Favourable Conditions for Employee Wellbeing

To build optimal conditions at work for employee wellbeing, it is essential that business leaders think and work beyond just physical wellness and start considering emotional and social wellbeing as part of their operations.

Even though emotional wellness is considered as the biggest influence on wellbeing, it is very important for businesses to form synergies across all three dimensions so as to successfully work with wellbeing.

Strategically merging traditional perks or benefits like salary, health check packages, paternity/ maternity leave, paid time off, with environmental perks or benefits such as employee recognition and open workspaces, will lead companies in the correct direction for positively influencing employee wellbeing at work.