Today marks Employee Appreciation Day 2019, and staff wellbeing and motivation has been at a topical talking point for the past year, with a push to businesses across the globe to focus on well-being and creating a mentally positive workforce, which in turn, generates motivation, increased productivity and ideas to innovate companies.
Employee appreciation has been around forever in reality, (as some of us older ones will recall), we grew up in an environment of work where we compliment those who have done well, recognise hard-work with a social pint after work, and local businesses give out bonuses for company growth – but has this methodology changed over the years?
Global brand Apple recently announced the biggest trend of 2018 was self-care, and this trend is expected to follow into 2019. Self-care is now seen as an essential part of life and not just a luxury; studies also show the link between mental wellbeing and job performance. This is this is why corporate wellness is such a fast-growing industry with HR and wellness professionals have put together strategies to keep employees happy and healthy.
But are they a minority nowadays, and something that only corporates and larger brands are committed to? We think not…and nor should it be.
To us, who proudly boast our ‘family ethos, ‘caring nature’ and ‘team at the heart of everything we do’, these terms aren’t simply marketing gimmicks and words on a website – they are the values in which we operate.
Well-being of a team isn’t as simple as it was back in the day. Additional thought should be put into new challenges affecting our population, such as financial constraints on a difficult economy, family frustrations as work is both harder to come by, and more necessary, and burnout and stress have become much more apparent in the world of work, at least since I started my career. I’m not saying there weren’t stressful situations when I was c-suite management, because of cause there was, however, I notice that my team also carry ownership and a much stronger investment in how we do business, nurture clients and do the best job that they and we can, and that in turn is obviously going to impact stress levels.
It’s important to let staff take time out to relax and recharge.
Personally, I couldn’t run a business where I didn’t care about my team, and their well-being, both personally and at work.
There are several ways to do this, depending on your business model, and the people you have within your team. There isn’t a right way to be conscious or implement well-being structures in an organisation, it can be as simple as celebrating pancake day and cooking/ sitting together eating and catching up, NOT about work (as we most certainly will be next week!), through to profit bonus and creating better work environments and cultures, which undoubtedly, all contribute towards a nicer place to work.
Today is a great day to assess your current culture, and how you support your team on the whole. This day shouldn’t just be a day to celebrate; it should be an ongoing methodology of progress to do better.
Lastly, thank you to all my amazing team who every-day does such a tremendous job supporting our clients, and each other – you are awesome!
Claire Curzon – MD, Brighter Directions
