Staff wellbeing programs gaining in favour
Author: Miriam Hechtman
Date: 23/03/2005
Words: 828
Source: AFR
Publication: Australian Financial Review
Section: Supplement
Page: 18
  
 
Many firms are finding that a staff work/life balance is crucial to the bottom line, writes Miriam Hechtman

Long hours, stressful environments and the continual climb up the corporate ladder allow less time for the personal. Add on the high costs of absenteeism and retraining new staff and you have yourself a problem. Throw in a swanky new gym, some yoga classes and ergonomically sound chairs and you may be part of the solution.

Many companies are discovering that responding to the work/life balance challenge is essential to their bottom line.

"A person who is happy at work is a lot more productive", says Michael Stone, director of Holistic Services Group, which provides corporate "wellbeing" services.

Before founding his company, Stone worked for several years at Arthur Andersen, where he says there was a "lack of focus on the person as a being you were just part of a corporation". He later worked for a hedge fund on Wall Street in New York, where he faced similar concerns. "There was no recognition or reward for good performance, except in terms of a monetary component."

He says companies need to administer continuous wellbeing programs so that employees feel a company is looking out for them in the long run, not just as a result of one incident.

"People are working longer hours but at the same time there is an awareness that people's personal lives are also important."

Citigroup human resources director John Eddy says companies now expect people to do more with less.

"The unfavourable response around excessive workloads has been the motivator for us to look at the alternative," he says.

Citigroup offers a number of programs, including a fitness centre that offers yoga and pilates, and a "winter wellness" program that offers the traditional flu vaccine and/or an aromatherapy session as an alternative way to fight flu.

"Excessive workload is a challenge for all of us," Eddy says. "I see the programs as maintaining a balance between employees' private lives and their role in the business. A lot of the programs we offer are done in company hours on the premises, so employees don't have to go anywhere to do these things."

Eddy says he does not foresee the workload getting any easier. "You have got to work around or through the workload in the best way you can and we need to help employees to do that."

Natalie Wareham is an occupational therapist who specialises in stress and wellness management. She has treated many "burnt-out" corporate clients from dealing with stress and anxiety. This includes teaching coping skills and "helping people get through it and get back to their lives".

Wareham says she now has a passion to "start getting out there earlier to try to stop people actually getting to that point".

She practises "preventively", working on what allows people to get sick in the first place.

"Happiness and health and wellbeing is a 24/7 thing, so we cannot put stress and health on hold while we go to work and then try and address it in the one hour that we have outside of work."

Ernst & Young's new gym, which opened in its new offices in January, is being labelled the best corporate gym in Sydney. Geoff Applebee, Sydney executive partner at Ernst & Young, says the company wants to "create an environment where employees can keep themselves healthy while working a very busy work schedule".

"If you respond to the things your people are telling you then it just makes the place more conducive to work, and that's what we're really setting out to do."

Applebee says employees need to be able to balance the stresses of their lifestyle so they can perform better. "We owe it to them because we put quite big demands on them. It's part of the give and take of being an exceptional employer in today's environment."

The director of Work Life Balance International, Barbara Holmes, attributes the increase of work/life strategies to a combination of factors.

"People are not just focusing on the programs that they can provide or on the compliance issues," she says.

"They're really focusing now on developing a culture within the workplace that really is responsive to people with a whole range of work/life issues."

Holmes says the strategies are about educating both managers and employees and encouraging mutual responsibility in the workplace.

"It's about pushing the responsibility back to the team and the individual. It's about moving away from that 'gimme' attitude.

"That's where employers certainly the human resources specialists who are achieving best practice are focusing their efforts."