Organisations continue to understand the positive impact gained from placing an emphasis on employee health and engagement in their managerial process. DFP’s recent forums on employee well-being have shown that there’s still more learning required for organisations to be able to successfully design and implement a well-being strategy. Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) has put together a list of 11 of the most common mistakes found in workplace well-being.

Mistake 1 – Not shooting for the stars

You infinitely improve your odds of creating a sustainable well-being strategy if you can gather buy-in from senior management. HR professionals often overlook the fact that CEOs and boards are willing to grant them funding for a well-being program that actually works. The people sitting in the big leather chairs at the boardroom table understand the importance of walking the talk – and doing it in front of an audience. They see well-being as a demonstrable way to show employees that the organisation cares and has a genuine interest in their health, happiness and well-being.

Based on today’s data, of every 100 employees you lead:

• • 28% will have hypertension

• • 8% will have type II diabetes

• • 8% more will be pre-diabetic

• • 50%+ will be overweight or obese

• • 19% will smoke

• • 6% will be in treatment for depression.

Source: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/

These numbers prove the scope and necessity that exist in a single organisation. If your wellbeing initiative is to have any hope of reaching out to such a varied audience, then you will need your CEO helping you to lead the charge.

Mistake 2 – Thinking you can get something for nothing

Many organisations try to create a well-being strategy without allocating a budget, but if your budget is nothing, then that is exactly the return you can expect to see on your well-being strategy. However, if you instead think of workplace well-being as a way to fine-tune your employees – who, remember, are your company’s most valuable asset – then you start to apply the same thinking that you would apply to having your company’s machinery serviced. You understand that you need to do it regularly, before problems arise, and more importantly only entrust the job to technicians who have the right tools and experience. A well-being strategy is a major undertaking, and adequate funding and the right partner are critical to a successful program. In fact, exposing your human capital to a poorly planned and assembled program that bores, demotivates and confuses them is the best way to ensure they drop out and become far more resistant to your future initiatives. Contrary to popular belief, there are many ways to find the money. While some employers allocate a central budget from the HR department, others get creative by encouraging regional or departmental managers to contribute a proportion of the cost. Salary sacrifice and employee contributions have also proven successful for others.

In this five part series, we’ll take you through the 11 mistakes organisation make in their well-being programs as outlined by GCC.