Wellbeing

Organizations “have to” do something about it, but this usually only happens when the urgency is high, for example due to increasing absenteeism or high turnover. I often heard “things are not going well with the team”. Signals of this are recognizable when employees express feelings such as:

• Not feeling safe at work

• Too high workload

• Burn-out complaints

• Lack of appreciation

• Stagnant growth/development

• Bore out (boredom)

Costs

These signals not only show that there is room to improve the well-being of your employees. This will also be directly related to increasing absenteeism, higher turnover, lower motivation, lower quality of work and decreasing effectiveness. This results in increasing costs, such as recruitment costs but also absenteeism costs (1 employee with a burn-out costs an average of between €60,000 and €90,000 per case).

And then I haven't even mentioned the costs that fall in between. The individual initiatives that are used to do "something" about wellbeing: a core values brainstorming session, an inclusion & diversity workshop, the fruit bowl, the sports subscription for the entire company, the bicycle plan, the annual MTO and maybe even organize that ice bath training?

These are all wonderful initiatives but incidental, preventive or curative. Band-aids that you stick on, without really investigating the underlying cause or precisely outcomes that are not followed up. Lack of support, leadership and measurability ensure that the effect on the total wellbeing of your entire organization remains small. The MTO report disappears into the cupboard (until next year). In that same cupboard disappears the workbook of the diversity workshop and beautiful core values from the retreat. The sports subscription is only used by employees who are naturally concerned with health, just like your bicycle plan and fruit basket.