Employees are more likely to stay with a company if they offer employee well-being benefits, according to Health Assured, the employee well-being business.
In a survey of 1226 employees, 78 percent stated they would stay long-term with a company that cared for their employee’ health needs and well-being.
The survey also highlighted the work-life balance issue, with 36 percent of respondents saying it is common practice to respond to work emails once they got home. Almost half (46%) say they regularly work through their lunch hour, and a third (33%) of employees admit to checking emails or making calls to the office while on holiday.
David Price, managing director of Health Assured says:
“Employers are taking great strides in implementing employee well-being measures; however more action is required in order to tackle the work-life balance. Automatically assuming your employees will respond to work emails out of hours or work through their lunch is unacceptable.”
“Businesses need to look at the work they allocate employees and make a greater effort to encourage employees to leave their work at the office. Managers must also do more to encourage workers to take advantage of their lunch hour. Responding to work emails when at home or on vacation may seem harmless; however when the volume of emails increases, so does the time it takes to respond to them, leading to valuable personal time being taken from the employee.”
Price continues, “Most of the time employers are unaware that their employees are doing work during their own time. I have heard several stories whereby employees have worked tirelessly during a vacation in order to avoid the stress of returning to work and facing a mountain of paperwork.”
Forward planning, communication and to some extent delegation are the keys to resolving the issue of work-life balance. A job that consumes a large part of your personal time is likely to have a negative impact on the individual’s morale and may affect their general health and well-being. Despite the fact that employers are implementing employee well-being programmes, it is definitely worth reviewing workloads to see how it impacts an employee’s work-life balance.”
“Businesses that address the importance of attaining a positive work-life balance and who introduce well-being benefits into the workplace increase the likelihood of retaining their staff. Therefore, it would be in the best interests of employers to look at the bigger picture and to ensure management are dealing with the issue promptly and effectively.”
Amie Filcher is an editorial assistant at HRreview.
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