/ Glossary / What is Employee Wellbeing?

What is employee wellbeing?

Employee wellbeing refers to the physical, mental, and emotional health of employees both in and outside of the workplace. This wellbeing is affected by relationships, communication, tasks, expectations, and the work environment.

Maintaining a high level of employee wellbeing means more than providing a healthy snack bar, game room, or gym. Organizations should understand that employee wellbeing goes beyond physical health; there are complex factors like mood, environment, leadership, and company culture.

Maintaining a holistic perspective of overall wellbeing and satisfaction is increasingly important now that many people are working from home full or part time.

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What affects employee wellbeing?

Several dimensions affect employee wellbeing, across three categories: physical, mental, and social.

Physical wellness wellness involves encouraging employees to maintain healthy habits and get adequate sleep, and providing healthy food choices at the workplace. A comfortable and clean work environment is also part of the physical wellbeing of workers.

For the remote workforce, this can be a challenge. Sometimes companies need to be creative by providing laptop stands, ergonomic keyboards, or noise-canceling headphones to ensure employees are comfortable.

Mental wellness is also a critical aspect of employees’ wellbeing. Having the right tools in place, such as designating “no meeting” days, encouraging employees not to be on 24/7, and providing supportive resources, contributes to employees’ mental wellbeing—and the bottom line.

Social wellness refers to interactions and the sense of belonging. Areas that may affect an employee’s social wellbeing may include team and leadership activities, volunteer opportunities, inclusive company culture, and opportunities for social interaction.

What are the key elements of employee wellbeing?

Employers can help attend to these five elements of employee wellbeing.

  • Social: Facilitate meaningful relationships in the workplace. The social aspect at work should be encouraged. Even when working remotely, plan social interactions, give employees a way to send congratulations to others, or have virtual social meetings.
  • Career: Support your employee’s career goals, promote learning and development, create a succession planning program and most importantly, support work-life harmony.
  • Physical: Create comprehensive programs to meet the employee where they are, whether sleep, nutrition, physical or mental wellbeing programs and resources.
  • Community: Create a sense of belonging at work. Allow for networking within common interest groups. Create employee resource groups.

Benefits of implementing a digital wellness plan for employee wellbeing

One way to achieve employee wellbeing is undoubtedly by focusing on digital wellness. This means achieving a healthy relationship with technology in the workplace and in employees’ personal lives by reducing the burnout.

Taking digital wellness action may include using productivity tools that block notifications during focused work hours or improve the employee experience inside a digital workspace. Some of the benefits of implementing digital wellness may include:

Lower anxiety and stress

When employees are working non-stop or using excessive technology, it may lead to them having lower confidence levels and taking more sick days. Companies that focus on digital wellness see more productivity and employee satisfaction. 

Better employee satisfaction

Wellbeing initiatives, especially those with digital wellness, provide the work-life experience for employees that’s critical for job satisfaction. By adopting wellbeing practices—such as flexible work schedules—companies have more satisfied employees.

Increased productivity

Digital wellness activities increase productivity partly by simplifying tasks. By promoting digital wellness, not only will employees be more productive and engaged, but worker burnout will be reduced. 

How to improve employee wellbeing with technology

Companies can adopt wellness apps and technologies to promote their employees’ wellbeing, such as apps that remind people to take breaks to stand-up and move at designated times during the day.

Digital wellbeing can also be achieved through digital workspaces. Digital workspaces are powered with AI and machine-learning technology that determine how an employee is most productive. It optimizes their workspace by presenting the apps, data, and tools they use more frequently in an intuitive interface. The centralized and unified workspace minimizes distractions and simplifies tasks.

These workspaces allow users to create their own micro-apps that streamline workflows, making them more efficient. The automation of simple tasks saves time and effort. This means employees can focus on the core work instead of wasting time on endless approvals or calendar invites. Since users can also customize their automation and micro apps, this gives them a level of flexibility that lowers stress levels, making their work easier.

Integrations can also help ease employee stress. Having to work with separate apps that don’t integrate can be a nightmare, wasting time and effort. Workspace solutions facilitate the integration of new software and apps. Since all applications work inside a unified workspace, it’s easier to add new features or apps.

Citrix solutions for employee wellbeing

Citrix digital workspace solutions help organizations improve employee wellbeing by providing easy access to apps and data from any device, so people can work seamlessly from anywhere.

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