Nearly 600 respondents participated in the inaugural EMA Workplace Wellbeing Survey 2021 which was delivered in partnership with nib New Zealand.
The results highlighted challenges, and the connections between wellbeing and engagement, retention and productivity for businesses. Small business choices have the most significant everyday impact on your people – and ignoring them could be a huge risk to your business.
While 84% of survey respondents strongly agreed that staff wellbeing initiatives contributed to the retention of high performing employees, the most common methods of measuring staff wellbeing relate to turnover and retention levels (65%), absentee rates (63%) and exit interviews (48%).
Survey findings indicated that one in six companies do nothing to track and measure wellbeing, and of those, 33% were small businesses with less than 15 employees. On a positive note, small businesses were seen as particularly good at responding to requests for flexible hours, with 62% of respondents from organisations with less than 15 staff saying their employers did so ‘really well’, compared with 43% overall.
nib highlighted that strong communication and support during the height of the pandemic saw 55% of respondents report improved job satisfaction over that time, but that worryingly these levels have since dropped.
In addition, 32% of respondents were concerned about the health of their family (up 10% from pre-pandemic levels), one in four had concerns about their own health (up 11%), closely followed by 23% being concerned for the mental health and wellbeing of their family (up 6%).
Given that one-in-three employee respondents also believed their employer could be more proactive at prioritising, adapting and implementing wellbeing strategies, it’s time for businesses to do something different.
