Work-life balance: why quality data and personal development tools are crucial for employee wellbeing

The Guardian

a day ago

Employers have long recognised that promoting wellness and helping employees achieve a good work-life balance are key to business success. Staff who have a healthy work-life balance tend to be happier, more engaged and more productive. They take less time off sick and they stick around longer because they enjoy their jobs. Moreover, companies that are known for this tend to become employers of choice and attract the best staff, creating a virtuous circle.
But while many businesses strive to promote employee wellbeing, the area is in a state of flux and uncertainty, leaving many employers and HR professionals unsure about how best to approach it. Problems can be difficult to pin down, and the effectiveness of interventions can be hard to measure.
For one thing, recent upheavals to typical working practices have prompted a host of fresh challenges and workplace stresses – from managing hybrid teams to knock-on effects on staff engagement and a sense of belonging. Likewise, there are still many lingering bad habits from the pandemic-related lockdowns, when work and life seemed to merge. One example is an always-on culture. When people worked from home, they would often reply to emails at 10pm because there were no boundaries between work and life. But this isn't desirable, either for the business or its employees.
The accelerating pace of new technologies can present further challenges. For instance, wellness programmes devised three years ago may not factor in the impacts of AI.
So what are some of the best ways to ensure a mentally and physically healthy workplace, one where staff want to be and deliver good work because they're happy?
Lampros Sekliziotis, a product leader at software company Sage, says data plays a key role. 'If you spot a problem based on insights from the data, you can target it.' This might be through training or it might be flagging wellness initiatives. Both these can be targeted to individuals.
Employee pulse surveys – short, quick surveys that are sent to employees on a regular basis – have long been particularly useful for gathering insights, says Sekliziotis. 'You could ask: 'Are you aware of the various wellness initiatives that we have?'' Alternatively, he says, data around holidays, timekeeping, and job satisfaction might suggest 'the company isn't as good as we think in terms of life balance'. Again, interventions can be targeted, and their effectiveness can be measured. Pulse surveys are one of the features built into Sage People, an all-in-one HR and payroll solution.
Another key part of wellness is a feeling of personal fulfilment and life progression. HR systems have therefore been extending their capabilities and offerings to help businesses nurture a more fulfilled, happy and productive workforce. For example, micro-learning platforms can give employees all the joy of gaining new skills and knowledge in their own time and at their own pace without them feeling overwhelmed.
One such offering is Uptime, a learning and personal development app that Sage offers to its customers. Kate Travers, principal solutions consultant at Sage, explains how Uptime can help: 'This has been designed to help users absorb key insights from books and podcasts, documentaries and courses, but all filtered down into just five-minute chunks.' It taps into the way people use streaming platforms to pick and choose the content they consume. 'It's designed to provide user engagement through learning, combining smart technology with a people-first approach.'
Another way Sage's platform can be used to improve wellness and ensure a good work-life balance is by providing a single point-of-entry for employees. This is important because properly promoting wellness and wellbeing can be an extremely wide-ranging and holistic undertaking. After all, wellness takes in areas ranging from time management and job satisfaction to engagement and office design.
For example, what kinds of new training needs should HR identify to help people upskill and reskill? How can office spaces be better planned to best suit employees who haven't been in the office for years, or who are reluctant to return? What provisions should be made for staff to improve their commutes? Do employees feel like they're doing meaningful work? Do they feel empowered and in control of their work and careers? And how can you keep them better engaged and informed?
This is why good businesses now realise that work-life balance and wellness need to be baked into the company ethos and mission rather than just an afterthought. And it also means that wellness tools should be easily accessible and seamlessly integrated into the wider workplace experience. Steve Watmore, HR and payroll product manager at Sage, says familiarity with an app can be a huge help here. 'If you use a platform or an app regularly, you're always in that space, and anything else that happens within that app is engagement,' he says.
The more that people use these apps, the better they know them and the better they become at leveraging their resources. Staff soon start to view these tools as places they can go to not just for information but for personal growth and development, and that can be very empowering. 'It becomes a real focal point for employees,' says Watmore. 'We see that within the Sage People app and we've seen that with the Sage People platform.'
Giving people the right tools is a huge part of fostering engagement. Staff feel happy when they're in control and making their own decisions. This perhaps shows us where the thinking about wellness is going next. In the past, you might have provided some wellness initiatives, but now you have more of a smorgasbord of wellness-related initiatives, ranging from distraction-free zones to cycle parking and illness policies to mental health support. You offer them to employees, but staff make the choices themselves, and are all the happier and empowered for it.
Discover more about the importance of a work-life balance and employee wellbeing