Business magnate Richard Branson once said, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your business”.
It’s a simple premise, but an accurate one: a business thrives when its employees are motivated and healthy. But more than that, employees also need to be mentally, emotionally, and psychologically healthy for them to truly shine at their work, and thus bring more profit to a business. With proper management, a company can create a corporate culture that actively promotes a positive mindset and a healthy well-being.
In the past decades, people believed that success in business meant happiness in your personal life. We now know that this is not the case; in fact, many people report feeling empty in their personal life despite massive success in their work life. This is because they’ve sacrificed both health and happiness to achieve that success, and although they’ve made money, they’ve lost friends, family, and even years of their life.
To mitigate this, businesses are now encouraged to create corporate cultures that promote a healthy balance between work and life. For this to be successful, companies must underline and address the importance of the physical and mental health of their employees.
In doing so, companies secure for themselves an asset that will not only place your company in good standing with investors, it also gives you a positive public image. Rather than providing companies with “soft” results, employee health and wellness is now seen as a powerful tool in improving business performance, overall production, productivity, and ultimately, profit generation. Other benefits include:
Lower Turnover Rates
Happy employees are generally too busy enjoying their work to be actively looking around for another job. And because they’re engaged with their tasks, it means your company is constantly working to turn profit.Of course, the opposite is also true: unhappy employees are generally too busy trying to find another job. And when they do, they generally will not hesitate to drop everything and leave your company.
High turnover rates generally spell trouble for a company. When employees quit, a lot of processes within the business grind to a halt: tasks are not completed, clients can be kept waiting, essential systems aren’t being checked, and so on and so forth. In fact, if the turnover rate is high enough, it can grind a business to a complete stop.
Which leads companies to a bigger problem: hiring. High turnover rates mean that the company needs to constantly be hiring people. This can be costly especially if the positions being filled are specialized and/or require unique skills. It might take a while to find a replacement, or, if all else fails, you might be forced to settle on someone with less experience and talent. A company will also have to spend extra time, effort, and money on training up new employees.
By keeping your employees happy, you drastically lower your turnover rates, thus avoiding a costly cycle of hiring new employees, training them, then hiring again. Promote an office culture that is fun, engaging, and supportive so as to keep employees happy and positive.
Higher Productivity
It makes sense that if a person is physically healthy, they are more productivity, and this is no less true for employees. Ensuring that your employees are at their physical and mental peak should become a regular part of your management duties.
In studies conducted by health care providers, they found that physically fit and mentally positive employees outperformed non-healthy and mentally negative employees on a variety of key performance indicators. For managers, this means that taking the extra time and effort to encourage your employees to lead a healthier lifestyle and have a more positive mindset can generate huge rewards for both your team and the company.
Another study conducted by researchers in Queens found a direct correlation between healthy employees and a drastic reduction in profit loss for companies. They found that companies that have physically fit employees saw less absenteeism, less workplace accidents, and less errors, which translates to more work being accomplished, less expenses for medical claims, and streamlined production processes.
Thankfully, influential business figures like Bill Gates and Richard Branson have started promoting corporate health and happiness programs and have begun implementing radical lifestyle changes in their respective companies. Many more companies are following suite, and hopefully, it not only becomes a trend, but a mandatory program that all companies must follow.
The Bottom Line
It’s hard to believe now, but some companies just a decade ago actually discouraged employee health programs because they didn’t believe in the “hard” results corporate health and happiness brought. Thankfully, we now know better.
From medical research to anecdotes from successful businesses, one thing is clear: healthy employees equal healthy businesses. Physically and mentally fit workers are proven to add to a company’s bottom line, improve the company’s ROI, and increase the company’s value both for the public and for investors.
As a manager, it’s your job to convince the higher-ups to provide more corporate health and happiness programs while encouraging the actual employees to take part. And the best way to do it is to get involved yourself: lead by example and take part in physical fitness, promote a supportive culture by showing compassion and kindness, and be supportive of employees who are going through a tough time.
At the end of the day, it’s a win-win solution: employees are actively engaged and happy with their job, and businesses make more profit.
It’s clear then that for company’s to grow, they must invest in their employees. Aside from upskill training and furthering their usefulness to their role, companies must also promote physical fitness and provide meaning, purpose, positive support, and compassion to employees in order to add value to their most powerful asset
