Putting people and their wellbeing at the heart of business

The facts are clear: happier and healthier employees are more productive and cost less for businesses. Either through sick leave days taken – of which there were 12.8 million in the UK in 2019 alone – or employee attrition, the impacts of a low level of staff wellbeing can be detrimental.   

What is less clear is how to create a ‘sticky’ wellbeing agenda for your organisation. ‘Sticky’ meaning that it’s not just a one-off event or short-term outlook; this agenda has to ensure that your employees recognise the tools available to help support their health and wellbeing, while (ideally) appreciating the organisation providing them.

Given the current global environment, which for some brings empowerment and additional quality time with loved ones, but for others brings worry, stress or isolation, caring for employee wellbeing has never been more important.

As part of a five-year-old small to medium-sized company, I wanted to share some of the practical things we have done, and continue to do, for our highly valued colleagues. 

A growing company

Established in 2015, Cubico Sustainable Investments (Cubico) is a leading investor in, and long-term owner and operator of, global renewable energy projects. We are passionate about playing a key role in the clean energy transition and supporting the communities in which we operate.

What really makes us different though, is our people. Having grown from around 30 employees to more than 150 in our first three years of business, we started a wellbeing initiative in 2018 to emphasise the importance of looking after mental health, both at work and home, to our staff.

Starting an employee wellbeing initiative

Built on a culture of doing the right thing and supporting each other through regular one-to-ones, the first year of new wellbeing investment started with the introduction of an employee assistance programme (EAP), which is available to all staff and their family members. This benefit is reasonably inexpensive, and we share regular reminders through our internal communication channels along with posters and presentations on the breadth of support our EAP offers, whether it be emotional, financial or legal advice. As a global company, we upgraded the service to ensure that all employees in our countries of operation have access to a local number with mother tongue speakers available.

We used World Mental Health Day as an opportunity to keep our support resources in the spotlight by bringing our EAP consultants into the office to discuss their experiences and the benefits of the service. Using EAP consultants means that we can keep the investment sensible – and they are well equipped to run these sessions virtually too!

We have also invested in talks by leading external speakers to share their personal stories of how mental health can impact us all. For organisations with individuals willing to share their personal stories of mental health and wellbeing, this may work even better.  

 Running with what works and getting innovative

Our second year of the initiative looked to build on the previous World Mental Health Day communications by asking employees to get involved in wellbeing activities throughout the year. These activities included mindfulness sessions in London, exercise classes in Italy and massages in Brazil. World Mental Health Day 2019 was recognised in every Cubico office around the world, including the smallest with between one and three people, as the language of mental health and wellbeing became normalised and commonplace.

The investment can be as small as a healthy lunch or an exercise class held by a colleague who is trained as a yoga teacher. Such initiatives not only help to keep costs low, but more importantly involve team members in the delivery as well as the receipt of activities.

We ended the year with the introduction of mental health first aid training. Over two days, 16 volunteers from across our European offices dived deep into what it means to both self-care and be prepared to help others – at work or home – who may need mental health support. In particular, at this time of increased isolation, I will be reminding our teams of who is available to talk to internally as well as externally.

Looking forward

 As we enter the third year of this initiative and now have well over 200 employees, we are exploring a new area of wellbeing: financial. As a company which has become comfortable talking about the mental health agenda – including focusing on men’s mental health as part of International Men’s Day – exploring different facets of wellbeing is a sensible next step. In addition, our quarterly team or office events seek to aid social wellbeing.

Employee feedback is one of the most important outcomes and to date we have had many of our employees open up about their mental health journeys or the experiences of friends and family. Our last survey showed our employees rated us 8 out of 10 on the question ‘the company really cares about their mental wellbeing’. We will be increasing our feedback mechanisms during this time of increased remote working.

The recent need to work remotely has also challenged us to get more creative with how we communicate and engage people globally, but the principles we are using build on those above: regular communication. We have looked at how we can maintain face-to-face contact through virtual tools such as FaceTime and Skype, as well as varying global collaborative exercises such as ‘rate my plate’, quizzes and riddles and shared music playlists, which are all on the agenda for the coming weeks.

 As we look ahead longer term, we will continue to reiterate key wellbeing messages while exploring what else might work for the business. We are empowering local teams, led by office managers, to try office initiatives based on all four wellbeing pillars: physical, mental, social and financial health.

As a family-oriented company, we also want to help employees with the mental health of their family members and will be exploring relevant training in 2021.

What we have learned

 As a small company, we inevitably have the same challenge as many others, including large organisations: we have to choose our investments wisely. Investing in wellbeing doesn’t need to cost the earth. There are plenty of free providers and an EAP service is a reasonably cost-effective way to help employees when “life happens”.

It’s important not to be afraid to try, fail and try something else, as not every speaker, presentation or tool will work for every organisation. Employees value both the day-to-day conversations with managers and colleagues, as well as the wider initiatives, so try those which are aimed directly at staff as well as line managers.

Small victories make a huge difference, so explore different options and see how you go.