Why a wellbeing speaker is necessary for organisation?

The Question arises Wellbeing is not a one-size-fits-all approach! Why your organisation should hire a wellbeing speaker?

 Addressing wellbeing in the workplace is essential for all types of organisations nowadays. Not only because wellbeing and wellness is ‘the talk of the town’ and quickly becoming a highly influential market - it’s estimate the global wellness market at more than $1.5 trillion, with annual growth of 5 to 10 percent (source) - but also because numerous studies, research and common sense show that employee wellbeing is key to increased productivity and engagement. 

Moreover the average person spends 35% of their total waking hours at work (over a 50-year working life (source)) thus whether or not we feel happy, engaged and valued at work has a major effect on our sense of wellbeing in our lives as a whole. Organisations and workplaces have huge responsibility when it comes to the wellbeing of our population as a whole.     

There is now more than ever an array of research, books, programmes, strategies and various suggested wellbeing activities and initiatives out there. As an employer or HR professional at an organisation it can be triggy and time consuming to navigate the market and choose the right kind of offer for one’s organisation.     

Many organisations end up using a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to wellbeing at work and decide to implement standardised wellbeing strategies, offering fairly generic wellbeing activities - such as access to the gym, meditation classes, or a coach or therapist when employees really struggle. 

  

As a wellbeing coach and speaker, it’s my experience that the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work in the long term. The offers mentioned above are great but not enough. Standardised wellbeing activities for employees to join ‘when needed’ can quickly go ‘out of date’ and won’t speak to our ever changing needs as we move through life. They also rarely succeed in creating a safe, social space for employees to connect and talk about their health and wellbeing, overlooking that great work relationships have a huge impact on the employees’ overall wellbeing at work. 

These standardised wellbeing programmes often end up as irrelevant, unused resources to the employees, and the resources spent on them by the employer go wasted.    

As a wellbeing speaker I help organisations implement wellbeing strategies that considers the individual needs of every employer and can be implemented widely across the organisation. To me this is essentially about seeing the whole person, not just the employee. 

For example (and generally) female employees have a unique set of wellbeing requirements and the wellbeing of women is an area or concern that must be considered separately from other wellbeing activities and initiatives.  

Women are more than twice as likely to have been forced to quit their job due to being overwhelmed with unpaid caring responsibilities (more here). This is not solely a wellbeing issue - it’s an issue of economics - but organisations must consider the wellbeing of women in this position and offer initiatives, such as flexible working, that can help them sustain their wellbeing at work.   

For the women that decide to have children their lives and wellbeing needs will change significantly over time. Addtionally when women go through menopause they are meet with a different set of both mental and phycical challenges that can significantly alter their wellbeing at work. 

Now, I’m not a woman and have no direct experience of these issues so I won’t speak on them in detail. For statistics, research and education in this area I refer to women’s health charities such as Wellbeing of Women who are doing important work and advocacy.

I’m merely using this - very real and relevant - example of the wellbeing of women at work to illustrate that wellbeing is not a one-size-fits-all. And that it is important to see the whole person that comes to work and gives their time, energy and skills to an organisation - not just an employee fulfilling a certain job or role. 

 

If your organisation is serious about providing truly relevant wellbeing activities and initiatives for your employees you must put effort and time into understanding the individual factors that affect and influence the wellbeing of your employees. 

Now this may seem like a lot of time consuming work. And sure, for the average employer or person in a leadership role there is, unfortunately, very little time put aside for this type of relationship building with your employees. This is where an external (to the organisation) wellbeing speaker and coach can come in. There are a lot of benefits to bringing in an external expert, the main one being that they can remain neutral and objective when it comes to understanding and listening to the challenges of the employees.  

A skilled wellbeing speaker will teach his or her audience how to hold open and honest conversations about their wellbeing. They will facilitate a safe space for the audience to open up about their health challenges and provide them with effective wellbeing activities - tools, methods or ways of thinking - that respond directly to the expressed challenges and can easily be applied in their daily and work life. This curated space will open up for deep sharing between employees leading to better and stronger work relationships thus more overall harmony in the workplace. 

A wellbeing speaker is not simply a motivational speaker but also functions as a wellbeing coach. It is not enough for the wellbeing speaker to have an inspiring story of their own life struggles and how they found true wellbeing (however it is important for the speaker to have some inspiring and real life experience like this) the speaker must be able to guide its audience through a customised learning journey towards true wellbeing thus function as a wellbeing coach.  

If you can see the value in this customised approach then I’m your wellbeing speaker. Get in touch today here.