The health and wellbeing of your organisation’s employees is becoming increasingly important if you are in a business that wants to not only survive in today’s economic climate but wants to be successful.
Proactive Works, an organisation that specialises in helping businesses deal with absenteeism and presenteeism issues said:
“Having healthy staff is an essential part of running a healthy business.”
According to The Wellbeing Project (Europe) Limited a company that specialises in employee wellbeing initiatives and who offer a free well-being audit :
“If your employees are in robust physical and mental health, feel happy in their work and are well supported by managers and leaders, they will be more engaged, more motivated, more productive, more resilient, less prone to absenteeism and more likely to stay with your business for longer.”
What we do know is that organisations who do not take adequate care of the health and wellbeing of their employees have a higher risk of increased costs associated with health claims, lack of productivity, poor customer service, absenteeism, etc. This reduces profits and can be very damaging for any organisation.
So, does the additional cost of initiatives to improve employee health and wellbeing really translate into actual bottom line profits?
The answer is Yes! The Work Foundation concluded that
“for every £1 invested in wellbeing initiatives, businesses get a return of £3”!
So, having established that investing in the health and wellbeing of your employees is likely to have a very positive impact on the profitability of your organisation, the question then arises; What is the most effective way to do this?
There are many initiatives that can be implemented – here are just a few examples:
- Cycle to work schemes
- In-house gym or discounted gym memberships
- Office refurbishment
- Interior planting scheme
- Provision of free fresh fruit
- Background music or sounds of nature
- Work-life balance and work-from-home schemes
One very effective option is the introduction of interior planting throughout the workplace. Office spaces and break-out areas can all be enhanced quickly, effectively and economically with plant displays.
Not only does the introduction of beautiful, designer planting instantly enhance the visual appearance of your premises but it actually helps create a healthier working environment.
A complete transformation of your workplace can be enacted in just an hour or two with the introduction of plant displays designed to suit your premises. This has a huge advantage over any office refurbishment project which can take weeks or months to complete and can often require major transition plans, disruption to workflow and can be quite stressful in the meantime. Additionally, the cost of planting is only a fraction of a refurbishment project.
Installing real living plants in your office environment also provides a number of health benefits for your organisation’s employees. Plants have been proved to:
• Remove harmful toxins from the air
• Increase oxygen and remove carbon dioxide
• Raise humidity levels
• Provide acoustic softening
• Reduce VDU eye-strain
• Reduce stress
• Create Biophilic attributes
• Increase productivity, creativity and satisfaction
• Reduce sick leave
You can find out more about these benefits here.
The introduction of plants for employee health and wellbeing is very easy to implement too. A skilled design consultant will go through every stage of the process with you to ensure the final scheme fits perfectly with your ideas, goals, budgets and timescales. And you’ll find the whole process is very enjoyable, interesting and satisfying!
