For a business to be successful in its endeavors, its staff needs to be both physically and mentally healthy. However, managing employee health goes beyond following COVID-19 SOPs or securing your premises to avoid slips and falls. To maximize workplace productivity and operational efficiency, you must consider employee wellbeing a key business metric and foster a culture with policies that encourage a healthy body and mind. With evolving trends and changing times, organizations have no choice but to humanize their workplace and employ emotional intelligence to get the best out of their workforce.
Here is some great info about why your health should be a key business metric.
The Importance of a Healthy Workforce
Your staff needs to be at their 100% to give you their 100%. On average, an employee spends 30% of their lives in the workplace, meaning employers have a grave responsibility on their shoulders offer them more than just a paycheck for their services by ensuring they’re physically and mentally healthy. Doing so will only induce a win-win situation with the following benefits:
1. Improved Productivity
It’s not uncommon for employees to take sick leaves, being human and all. However, healthier employees are less likely to take time off for many reasons, including better fitness and diet, less stress, a manageable workload, and realistic expectations from their managers. Therefore, they’re more actively engaged in their tasks and get more work done by the day’s end.
2. Healthier Employees are Happier
When you’re happy, your brain releases endorphins that boost cognitive functions and give your body a positive feeling. Tweaking up your workplace to elevate the mood or including policies that encourage exercise and strategic breaks during shifts.
3. Lower Healthcare Costs
Healthier employees don’t frequently visit the doctor’s office compared to their unhealthy counterparts. So, you can imagine the impact improved employee health can have on insurance or legal costs. And, all you have to do is make some smart investments to ensure better workplace hygiene and reduces hazards to prevent injuries.
4. Improved Competition
Every employee working in your organization is a brand ambassador. Their health, performance, and behavior are a reflection of your company so if you want to create a positive image and show the world your organization is the place to be, improving employee health is the fastest way to get there.
5. Reduced Employee Turnover
Studies have shown that lack of happiness and poor work satisfaction are among the main reasons employees quit. Many are even willing to take a pay cut as long as their new job offers them a healthier work environment.
Health as a Key Business Metric
To ensure that your company becomes successful, you need to actively monitor and maintain every department, process, and activity in the workflow. The best way to do that is by setting key metrics into your business model to enable real-time tracking, allowing your team leaders to identify potential issues and devise workable solutions. The following are some of the key metrics employed by most businesses in the market:
- Revenue
- Growth
- Profit Margin
- Gross Margin
- Website and Social Media traffic
- Customer Satisfaction and Retention Rate
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Employee Satisfaction
- Task Completion Rate
As you may have noticed, most businesses have failed to include employee health as a key metric, ignoring the fact that most of their metrics are dependent on your workforce performance. By monitoring the actions of employees and employing health monitoring software, managers and leaders can potentially improve all their other key metrics. Secondly, health as a key metric can help identify the risks that could harm the overall performance of your organization. Furthermore, since technology is used for improving every aspect of the business, it’s about time it’s used for the people that ensure business continuity. For example, if any employee is suffering from physical or mental symptoms, managers could proactively take measures to help them before their condition worsens.
The following are five metrics you can use to help evaluate employee health:
1. Productivity Levels
This can be done by setting your happiness rating against revenue, growth, or overall success? Are your employees happy, and is your business able to achieve all its goals?
2. Absenteeism
Absenteeism is a smart metric that can be used to monitor burned-out employees, dissatisfaction, and genuine health issues.
3. Feedback
Asking questions is the best way to understand how your employees are feeling. Using emotional intelligence, leaders should regularly extract valuable feedback and solicit opinions to resolve their issues and improve the workflow.
4. Fluctuation Rate
This metric can be used to monitor and evaluate the performance levels within your organization. If this rate increases all of a sudden, it shows that your employees are either not happy or distracted.
Wrap UP
Proper employee health management is the key to success in the modern business world. By making health a key business metric, you can quantify your employees’ physical and mental wellbeing and make changes accordingly. At Percento Technologies, we’ve helped hundreds of businesses adopt different business technologies and practices to optimize performance. Feel free to reach out to us regarding our managed IT services and other value offerings. www.percento.us/expert-services
by Bobby J Davidson
I love our companies and we love what we do. For more information on the Davidson Family of Companies, visit www.bobbydavidson.com/about. Sign up for my Newsletter at the bottom of this page.