External research, including reports by the, CIPD, Deloitte and Oxford University all show that investment in employee wellbeing leads to better retention, increased productivity and less sick leave. Whilst these statistics may be powerful in securing a healthy wellbeing budget, it is only through measurement that you can track your progress, refine your approach and demonstrate effectiveness to your senior leadership team. Without this data the continuation of funding for your wellbeing programme could be at risk.
The CBI (Confederation of British Industry) found that half of businesses measure employee health and wellbeing through either surveys or feedback forms. While this is an excellent way of gathering wellbeing data, it’s often just a starting point. Businesses should go further by taking wider data points into consideration, otherwise they might overlook important warning signs.
In this article, we highlight the KPIs that matter for employee wellbeing at work, explain how businesses can gather data to measure them and why it is key to set clear, business-aligned goals.
Aligning employee wellbeing goals to business goals
Before measuring whether employee wellbeing initiatives have been successful, you need to decide what success looks like and set clear goals. Unless your goals align with the objectives of the business, you are unlikely to impress leadership with your achievements. For example:
- If the business needs to increase productivity then the wellbeing programme should be looking to reduce presenteeism and sickness.
- If the business needs to hold onto key employees then a wellbeing objective should be about boosting retention rates.
- If the business needs more people in order to grow, one of your wellbeing goals should be to attract new talent by creating an attractive wellbeing culture.
In addition, you mustn’t forget to measure if the initiatives you are running are actually contributing to an increase in wellbeing.
Setting employee wellbeing KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are set to ensure that the business can keep a close eye on whether their objectives are going to be met. Whilst every organisation is different, below is a list of the most useful wellbeing KPIs
Employee turnover rate
Although you cannot meet everyone’s needs, high employee turnover would suggest a significant level of dissatisfaction within the business. Research by Koa Health discovered that 40% of employee turnover in the UK was down to stress so an increase in employee wellbeing should have a positive impact.
Absence frequency, type and severity
A reduction in sickness due to poor mental health and less time taken by employees for musculoskeletal and frequent headaches, colds or stomach ailments are a good indication that staff wellbeing resources are working.
Strength of workplace wellbeing culture
Building a wellbeing culture will have a positive influence on recruitment, retention and productivity.
Key indicators include:
- Employees feel psychologically safe and trust their colleagues. This can also lead to better health & safety and lower sickness rates.
- Staff are engaged with their work and talk positively about the company – A Gallup study showed that engaged employees can be great brand ambassadors.
- Employees have a good work-life balance – the BBC found that employees put this high on their company wish list
- Staff and Leadership are aware of mental health issues and are happy to talk about their own wellbeing
- Levels of unmanageable stress are low
Awareness of wellbeing initiatives
There is no point in providing something that no one is aware of it. Key to Employee Wellbeing performance it that staff know what is available and where to go to get it.
Use of wellness tools, apps and other benefits
Following on from the above, low usage of wellbeing tools may indicate a lack of awareness or that they are not the right benefits.
Measuring employee wellbeing
KPIs must be measurable or they are meaningless. For some this is relatively straightforward but for others the information needs to be teased out. Below, we suggest best practice ways for measuring employee wellbeing.
Turnover and absence
All companies will keep a record of joiners and leavers but it is also worth spending time asking questions about mental health, wellbeing and engagement in your exit interviews. You are likely to receive honest feedback so it can help understand the influence of your wellbeing programmmes.
Most HR departments will have software that can track absences, but this should be broken down by department and the types and severity of absences. This will help identify what impact different wellbeing initiatives are having.
Wellbeing culture
Anonymous employee surveys are the bedrock for measuring the success of establishing a wellbeing culture. Wellbeing questions can either be included in employee satisfaction surveys, or in specific wellbeing surveys. Either way, they should be regular so that progress can be measured.
There are other ways of measuring key aspects of the wellbeing culture:
- Managers noting if staff are working long hours and sending emails or messages after work or at the weekends.
- Looking at the number of people using mechanisms set up for providing suggestions and feedback to Leadership.
- Looking at the number of times HR is dealing with incidents of bullying
- Sending out feedback forms immediately after any training sessions to ensure awareness for mental health issues has increased and issuing follow-up questionnaires a few months later to see if staff are actively applying what they've learned.
Awareness and use of wellness initiatives
Whilst it is easy to monitor attendance at events and how many people are accessing apps, you should back this up with asking employees:
- why things are (or are not) being used (including the fact that awareness is low), and
- when used, if people consider the initiatives useful.
Don’t be afraid if usage suddenly increases. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the culture is getting worse. It could demonstrate that an internal mental health awareness campaign has encouraged people to make more use of the services.
Wellbeing focus groups
Surveys are a quick, relatively easy way of gaining feedback but they should be backed up with wellbeing focus groups which can uncover subtle nuances and hidden stressors. In addition, they are a great way of demonstrating your commitment to getting direct feedback.
Make sure you pick a diverse mix of people from around the business, ideally from different teams. You should be prepared to accept difficult feedback, but as long as the conversation is facilitated in a way that focuses on what can be done to make improvements, it will be a valuable experience for all.
External workplace wellbeing audits
Partnering with an external consultant who specialises in workplace wellbeing can provide an objective assessment of your current situation. Employees are likely to feel more comfortable speaking to a third party, which can help to get to the heart of any issues that may be affecting overall wellbeing.
How Altruist can help
Do you want to quickly assess the strength of your wellbeing provision? Try our free 3 minute Mental Health Workplace Audit
We also offer a comprehensive Workplace Wellbeing Audit service, which can help you measure your current wellbeing provision and provide recommendations for developing a workplace wellbeing strategy.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help.
You can discover more insights into on how to measure wellbeing by reading our article on how to track workforce analytics on a budget.