Are you ready to unlock the true potential and transform your business & health by improving the health and well-being of your people? In this post, we’re diving into the power of well-being in the workplace and will explain why this topic is so vital for each individual and for businesses as a whole.
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What is Well-Being, and Why is it Important to Transform Your Business & Health?
We all know what well-being is, at least our own view of it, but do we stop to think about how broad of a concept it actually is? We often see well-being as our own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual welfare, which is true. But in the business world, well-being is everything from workspace safety to organizational systems and processes that enable individual and collective well-being.
And this is what makes holistic well-being so crucial. But what affects or defines individual and collective well-being? An excellent illustration of this is the balanced, holistic well-being framework by Reiman & Väyrynen. So for you to feel safe and well at work and for the business to leverage its full potential, external and internal factors have an impact.
Global phenomena such as regulations, economic status, social structures, and attitudes impact collective and individual well-being. But also internal aspects, including the quality and dynamic of a company’s culture, flexibility and benefits that an organization provides, and the general job conditions and people dynamics.
But a third yet often neglected aspect is individuals’ health and social relations, hobbies, and tasks outside the work environment. These are usually carried to work and impact individual and collective well-being in the workspace. But how do all these pieces fit together?
How to Manage Your Workplace Well-Being to Transform Your Business & Health?
Improving holistic well-being is the key to creating a sustainable business. But what does that mean? When thinking about bringing sustainable development into the business world, we cannot pinpoint something specific, such as “let’s have flexible hours and recycle, and we’ll improve the sustainability of the business.”
That would certainly improve a part of it, but it’s a much wider and more complex topic than that. Sustainability considers a broad spectrum that includes all the layers, such as societal, organizational, and individual, and, most interestingly, how each layer interacts with the others. Overall, when talking about businesses, we must remember that we are talking about humans.
At their core, businesses are a group of people working towards the same shared goal. With that in mind, it’s clear that a focus on improving individual well-being can significantly impact a business’ sustainability. This means that if a company implements systems and practices which are constantly being updated to improve its well-being on all the different layers, it will truly harness its potential.
Organizational Effects
Now that you know how well-being can be managed at the workplace, maybe you’re curious to hear the effects and benefits of it. Let’s start with organizational benefits and then move to the individual ones.
So the main advantage of focusing on well-being is often better overall performance. When individuals are well, and the business processes and systems support that, a company is more prone to grow sustainably. So, well-being can be seen as a portal for effective business growth.
We have to remember that growth is the sum total of each individual’s efforts, so by enabling better individual performance, you actually enable better business performance. In contrast, poorly managed well-being has the opposite effect on performance and can cause considerable losses in talent, resources, and even loyalty within the workspace.
This, of course, can have detrimental effects on the overall company and its future.
Individual Effects
Let’s finish by taking a closer look at the individual level. What does your personal life have to do with your workplace? If you think about it, it’s pretty explanatory. Imagine that you work at the company of your dreams, and everyone is working towards the same grand mission, but you are morbidly obese and have a problematic relationship at home.
What is in your private life will leak into your work life, making you perform at a lower level, be grumpy with your colleagues and less satisfied with your work. The other side of the coin, too, needs to be considered. If you are in the best shape of your life and have a fantastic relationship at home, but your work is miserable, your overall well-being will still not be optimal.
If you and your business adopt a sustainable approach, both your well-being will improve and vice versa. In fact, what happens on the outside can negatively affect you and your business. For example, overly competitive and unstable work conditions could create a stressful environment that would cause stress and potentially even burnout, heavily affecting your career and private life too.
On the contrary, if both you and your company are well-optimized for sustainability, you’ll feel more engaged at work, there will not be excessive stress, and your personal life will be more fulfilling. Of course, nothing is perfect, but it’s up to all of us to do our part toward building a thriving future collectively.
Maybe you wouldn’t have thought about all this when hearing the word “well-being”, but isn’t it fascinating how holistically important this topic is? We genuinely believe in the power of each individual, and we want to help companies recognize this power that they have. Because by acknowledging it, nurturing and supporting the well-being of your influential individuals, you can leverage your business’s full potential.
If you’re curious to learn more about us and how we help businesses maximize their potential, you can read more about our Business Maximization Coaching program!
