Measure the wellbeing among your employees
A good working climate is a key factor in any workplace. A high degree of employee wellbeing is a strong basis for success for employees, management, and the bottom line. Therefore, it is important that leaders and managers have insight into how employees are doing, and that managers know how to create better circumstances in the work environment. A tool that can be used to map out the employees’ wellbeing is HR-ON Thrive – that is, if you, as the employer, know how to take advantage of the tool’s full potential.
In this article, we focus on how HR-ON Thrive can create value for companies, the 5 central questions to ask your employees, and, last but not least, how you, as a leader/manager, can create a positive work environment.
Short summary (TL;DR)
Employee wellbeing is essential for creating a healthy work environment and preventing stress and burnout. By measuring wellbeing regularly, organizations can identify early signs of declining wellbeing and take action to support employees. The WHO-5 model provides a structured way to measure key factors that influence mental wellbeing.
In this article, you will learn:
- Why measuring employee wellbeing is important for both employees and organizations
- How the WHO-5 model measures wellbeing through five key factors
- How regular wellbeing measurements help identify changes over time
- How managers can use wellbeing insights to prevent stress and create a healthier work environment
In short, measuring employee well-being is only the first step. By monitoring wellbeing regularly and acting on the insights, organizations can prevent potential challenges, support employees, and maintain a healthy work environment.
Why measurements of employee wellbeing is important?
Job satisfaction is created by the following factors: management, a good, open work environment, working conditions, and interrelations at work.
Research conducted by Det Nationale Forskningscenter for Arbejdsmiljø (NFA) (the national research center for work environment) shows that stress is a big problem. It is a problem for the employee as well as for the company’s processes. Among other reasons, this is because stressed employees have more sick days, which leads to economic challenges for the company. For this reason, it is important that company leaders address challenges such as stress and burnout among employees. However, it is equally crucial to prevent low wellbeing in the team.
A measurement of employee wellbeing gives you, as the leader, important insights into the work environment and the degree of wellbeing among your employees. The measurement needs to be actively analyzed to determine whether there are declines in well-being and to identify where actions are needed. In other words, the measurement is meant to provide a basis for all efforts to improve circumstances for well-being across the various departments and employees. It is the leader’s responsibility to translate this insight into strategies to improve or maintain well-being levels.
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5 central questions for measuring the wellbeing among employees
For the measurement of employee wellbeing to have an effect, it is central that the questions you ask employees are meaningful and create value. According to psychologist Peter Richter, this is why you have to take the whole person into account.
Professor Per Bech founded the WHO-5 model, which is a job satisfaction index for figuring out the level of wellbeing among employees on an ongoing basis. The model makes it possible to monitor for spikes or drops in measurements that need attention. The model has been supported by more than 200 scientific studies and assessed as a very reliable and useful tool. The questions revolve around these five factors: sleep, mood, relaxation, energy, and motivation, which indicate whether the individual is thriving. HR-ON Thrive’s measurement of employee wellbeing follows this model.
The questions that employees are asked every 15th day are:
In the past 14 days:
- Have I been happy and in a good mood?
- Have I felt calm and relaxed?
- Have I felt active and energetic?
- Have I woken up cheerful and well-rested?
- Has my daily life been full of things that interest me?
What do the five factors mean for the wellbeing among employees?
The five factors influence employees’ psychological wellbeing. According to psychologist Peter Richter, it is important that people stop and consider how they are doing. Wellbeing can decline over time, and by regularly reflecting on how they are doing, an individual can get help.
Richter believes that a good mood is the most important factor for well-being. This is because many factors in people’s personal lives influence how they act at work. These can be challenges such as critical illness, economic problems, deaths, infidelity, and other things, which can affect a person’s mood and thereby also how they approach their work assignments.
Why sleep and motivation matter
In addition, Richter considers sleep especially interesting and compares it to charging a cellphone. If a person is challenged at work or in their personal life, it can result in sleepless nights and worry about various things instead of getting rest. Stress and burnout have a significant effect on a person’s life and functioning.
Furthermore, it is important that the individual can see a point in their job and that they work with something relevant. In the course of a person’s working day, there might be job assignments that aren’t as exciting, but whether they work with something they are motivated to work with overall has a big influence on whether they thrive in their job.
A survey conducted by NFA shows that it is important to focus on employee wellbeing across all aspects, as well as on favorable conditions for commitment. This is because it affects employees’ sleep quality, mood, and illness-related absences. Conversely, these things can also influence a person’s work performance. For this reason, the personal aspects of employees’ daily lives are also important to their working lives. This is the company’s social responsibility.
Get insight into your own wellbeing curve
With HR-ON Thrive, you can, as an employee, see your own level of wellbeing as well as your department’s index.
When you answer the questions, your responses will be collected and converted into a total score between 1 and 100. A high wellbeing score is above 50, and an average score is between 35 and 50, whereas you will get a low score if it’s below 35.
Richter compares a low wellbeing score to the warning lights on an old car (the time before you could tell whether it was the oil or a tire that needed changing). The light blinks, but it can be anything that makes it go off. This is why HR-ON Thrive combines wellbeing measurements with professional support. When the tool detects signs of declining wellbeing, the Response Team can proactively contact the employee and offer confidential support from professional psychologists and physiotherapists. HR-ON Thrive helps employees handle the different challenges they experience.
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Wellbeing is an important and ongoing task
In some companies, employee wellbeing is measured through conversations with the closest leader, in which the employee discusses how they are doing. Not all employees are that open about sharing challenges and concerns with their leader.
According to psychologist Peter Richter, an employee is typically more vulnerable to fluctuations in job satisfaction and well-being. Conversely, some leaders struggle to navigate how personal they should get with their employees when employees are challenged.
Challenges in an employee’s personal life are probably not common to discuss at work, but they are undoubtedly connected to the employee’s overall well-being. As a leader, it is therefore important to create an open work environment where you and your employees can discuss tough topics.
How managers can support employee wellbeing
If you see a drop in the wellbeing measurement, you can look into whether your employees are overwhelmed by a heavy workload and show empathy by offering support. This can, for example, take the form of sessions with a psychologist, greater flexibility, or the like. Your employees can get professional support through HR-ON Thrive.
It can be hard to maintain employee commitment when they have to repeat the same tasks over and over. Regular wellbeing measurements enable tracking changes in employees’ wellbeing and identifying potential challenges at an early stage. When the wellbeing measurement is conducted regularly, you can, as a leader, track any drops in wellbeing levels over time. Also, you can determine whether the things you implement help increase wellbeing.
Learn from high wellbeing scores
Peter Richter points out that it is important that you, as the leader, discuss the wellbeing measurement and assign value to it, which can be easily compared to the value of, e.g., protective gear such as work shoes and helmets. As a leader, you also have to be attentive to collecting good stories to show your employees that focusing on their mental well-being is actually valuable to them.
“As a manager, you shouldn’t just look at what is bad, but also at why some employees get high wellbeing scores. It is just as important to look at what makes employees get high scores, and you also have to remember to focus on these high scores, so you can keep a high level of job satisfaction,” Peter Richter points out.
Professor Per Bech wrote an article for the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, and based on data from the wellbeing solution now known as HR-ON Thrive, it concludes that employees who experienced low wellbeing and got support from the Response Team benefited greatly from the preventive efforts, and that HR-ON Thrive has helped create better wellbeing in workplaces.
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What should you know about measuring employee wellbeing?
Why is it important to measure employee wellbeing?
Regular wellbeing measurements help organizations identify early signs of stress, prevent burnout, and create a healthier work environment.
What is the WHO-5 wellbeing model?
The WHO-5 is a scientifically validated tool that measures mental wellbeing based on five factors: mood, relaxation, energy, sleep, and motivation.
How can organizations measure employee wellbeing?
Organizations can use regular wellbeing surveys, such as the WHO-5, to track changes in employees’ mental wellbeing over time and identify areas that may need attention.
How can managers improve employee wellbeing?
Managers can use wellbeing insights to identify challenges, offer support, encourage open communication, and take action to prevent stress and maintain a healthy work environment.
