Wellbeing Leaders Roundtable: Culture of care and business case for wellbeing
As the world starts to return back to normal after the pandemic, many organisations are starting to notice the importance of wellbeing at work.
During our previous roundtable, we identified that layoffs, rising costs, the return to office and travel have increased stress and burnout within the workplace.
To combat this, building a culture of care in the organisation has become increasingly crucial. However, for many, trying to incorporate a culture of care into their workplace has been nothing short of challenges and obstacles: From not knowing how to build a culture of care, to not knowing how to build a business case to secure leadership buy-in and resources to fund wellbeing initiatives.
At Calm Collective’s second Wellbeing Leaders Roundtable this year, we decided to ask well-being leaders these very things:
Building a culture of care: What does an effective culture of care look like in an organisation?
Building a business case: How do you build a compelling business case for wellbeing?
What happened at the Roundtable?
Held virtually over 1.5 hours, we welcomed 20+ leaders from around the APAC region. Calm Collective’s second Roundtable of 2023 was co-hosted by Sabrina Ooi (CEO, Calm Collective) and Marlene Ditzig (Workplace Wellbeing Consultant, Calm Collective).
We kicked off the Roundtable by exploring the different ways to build a culture of care and the elements involved in an effective and authentic one with Ernest Lee (Head of HR Singapore & Indonesia, Shell). Subsequently, we ventured into the levers of building a business case and ways to track the efficacy of wellbeing initiatives with Meiliany Wu (HR Leader, ex-Gallup Consultant).
To close the session, we invited the wellbeing leaders to share their insights on today’s topics
Sabrina Ooi (CEO & Co-founder, Calm Collective), Meiliany Wu (HR Leader, ex Gallup Consultant), Marlene Ditzig (Workplace Wellbeing Consultant, Calm Collective) and Ernest Lee (Head of HR Singapore & Indonesia, Shell)
What We Learnt: Building a Culture of Care
1. Leadership is key to Success
Building a culture of care inevitably takes time, but it is dependent on managers and leaders setting aside time intentionally to foster connection. Effective cultures of care often happen when leaders pave the way by demonstrating care for their people and making these behaviours visible. Wellbeing resources and policies help to build an awareness level but by making these behaviours visible, leaders move their teams from an awareness level of care to experiencing it. It is in experiencing care that employees can then go on to replicate it to build a culture of care that will then spread to the other layers of an organisation.
2. Authenticity is important
While it is important that a culture of care starts from leaders in an organisation, it is also important that these efforts to create a culture of care are genuine and authentic. Organisational structures like policies and resources create the foundation for a culture of care to be built on but without compassion and authenticity, the actualised transition to a culture of care cannot be achieved. Initial leadership buy-in is generally easy but maintaining momentum and driving transformation is hard. A true culture of care can only be created by recognising that it is necessary for communications and interactions to be authentic and organic, rather than being forced into the organisation.
3. Small actions can have large impacts
Think big but start small. To build a culture of care, we can start with small acts of kindness: Get an extra cup of coffee for your colleague, and ask them how their day was. Care and wellness start with the individual. This can help people to start talking about their mental wellbeing, thereby creating trust, connection, and psychological safety in the workplace.
What We Learnt: Building a Business Case for Workplace Wellbeing
1. Embracing wellbeing as a “must have”, not just a “nice-to-have”
At this point, most organisations and leaders implicitly understand that workplace wellbeing is an important lever to building a healthy organisation.
That said, without a solid business case, wellbeing programmes and initiatives are hard to justify amidst declining business performance and cost-cutting measures. The lack of leadership buy-in and resourcing leads to one-off, inconsistent wellbeing initiatives that have minimal impact on the organisation and its employees.
As the Champion building this business case, recognise your role in helping your organisation embrace wellbeing as a “must have” to support its employees through both good and bad times. Once organisations embrace wellbeing as an important part of their business strategy, more sustainable and impactful wellbeing programmes can be run.
2. Ask the Right Questions to Identify the Business Problem You’re Addressing
The starting point for building a business case for wellbeing is to understand your organisation’s goals and context from a business standpoint. When goals are identified, you can align your wellbeing initiatives with business metrics for measurable outcomes.
Here are some questions to get started:
What is the business goal we wish to address through wellbeing?
Some goals could be around talent retention, increasing productivity and engagement, change management, navigating digital transformation, improving the organisation’s employee value proposition, or risk management.What are the indicators to measure where we are right now, and where we want to be? These could be quantitative measures like employee churn or sickness absence, or qualitative measures like self-reported wellbeing and belonging indicators through employee engagement surveys.
What are the costs of poor employee wellbeing?
This could be the cost of a missed workday, increased insurance costs, or the cost of replacing an employee. For instance, In Singapore alone, anxiety and depression could be costing businesses close to S$16 billion a year (Source: IMH, Duke-NUS study).
With the broader business context in mind, you will find more clarity around what needs to be done moving forward to balance both company goals and employee wellbeing.
3. Measuring Actionable Impact
The employee engagement survey is a useful tool for uncovering opportunities for improvement and measuring impact around wellbeing. During the Roundtable, Meiliany Wu suggested that survey questions can be better crafted to create more actionable impact from the feedback garnered.
For example, instead of asking “Do you have 1-on-1 meetings with your manager?”, a better question would be “Do you have meaningful conversations during your 1-on-1 meetings with your manager?”.
This enables managers to have greater accountability for their 1 on 1 meetings, and actionable insights for organisations to train their managers to conduct better meetings with their employees. Following the intervention, a similar survey may be conducted to measure the impact of the programme.
Our questions for you:
What does a culture of care look like in your organisation?
How would you build the business case for workplace wellbeing in your organisation?
Calm Collective Asia helps organisations normalise mental health conversations at work through our consultancy services, programmes, and training. Learn more about our corporate offerings for workplace wellbeing here.
If you would like to attend Calm Collective’s future Wellbeing Leaders Roundtables, you may indicate your interest here.