Health and wellbeing key to prosperity and adjusting to change for Jersey

It is somewhat fair to suggest that the most valuable personal asset we can have is our health. It’s also fair to conclude that we can’t possibly think we can be a prosperous society if we are not healthy enough to be productive. A staggering number of days are being lost each and every year due to absence in the workplace as a result of stress and poor mental health. The Tera Allas report (2015) demonstrated in technicolor that Jersey’s productivity is in decline and this hasn’t improved since its publication with the overall productivity of Jersey’s economy declining in real terms by 1.6% in 2017 (Future Jersey, 2018), meaning it has fallen in each of the last three years.

Despite Jersey’s comparative wealth it also hasn’t fared well in the recent Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey Report (2017) with Jersey coming out worse than the UK with regards to average scores across all wellbeing measures (satisfaction, feeling worthwhile, happiness and anxiety). Whatever the underlying complex reasons for this lack of productivity and life satisfaction, it is a real concern for Jersey’s sustained prosperity.

The capitalist powerhouse that the modern workplace has become has been seen by many health professionals as a key systematic cause of lower productivity as a result of poor work life balance and resulting stress. The sad reality is that many organizations either fail to accept that their work practices may be the route cause of their lack of productivity or they blissfully march on regardless putting the blame firmly at the employee’s door!

The intense corporate shift where the focus on outcomes is paramount, and where work habits such as multi-tasking, late nights, working through lunch and working through the weekend have all become “normal” are playing havoc on our health and wellbeing. We are asking people to do more and more with less but what resources are we investing in to ensure our workforce is developing habits that maintain their health and resilience. Rather we are allowing the promotion and reinforcement of unhealthy habits that we believe are the key to productivity but paradoxically are making us less and less productive.

We are also asking people to quickly adapt to change implementing poorly thought out and poorly managed change management programmes without due care and attention to the impact this organizational redevelopment is having on the wellbeing of the people who have to go through it. Organizations are often criticized for mechanistically working through change forgetting that they are working with humans not machines, people who have thoughts, feelings and emotions. People who rightly or wrongly are not always able to act rationally when under intense pressure and when all they have ever known has been thrown up into the air and they have no idea how it will all land. 

Organizations are also often quick to say we NOW live in a change culture and change should be seen as normal but they have failed to properly prepare, educate and give the workforce the necessary resources to learn how to live and work in this new world. Without a doubt change in the workplace is associated with the highest increase in disgruntled staff and decline in employee wellbeing.

What leaders and managers often fail to understand is that if your workforce isn’t happy then productivity goes out the window. Happiness at work is a highly underrated management tool in promoting and maintaining productive employees- there is a very strong correlation between happiness, positive mental health and outcomes yet we devise all these sophisticated measurement tools and equations ignoring health and wellbeing as a key indicator! I urge organizations who care about their productivity to add Happiness to their KPI list.

The challenge here is that organizations generally in Jersey are behind the curve in providing well thought out corporate wellbeing programmes where the key goals are preventative as opposed to curative. I speak to so many health professionals who are being asked by organizations in Jersey to work for free, or way below the market rate for their expertise as the organization has little to no budget to implement a robust corporate wellness programme. This I have always struggled to understand, budgets are set for training, skills development, entertaining, business development, the list goes on but what about your employees well-being and happiness. There are some fantastic examples of good practice out there but currently Jersey has a lot of work to do.

Organizations who put the health and wellbeing of their employees at the heart of their company vision and who view health and wellness as a key strategic benchmark for success have potential to secure not just their own organizations but also Jersey’s prosperity. There is no question that if you invest in promoting and maintaining a healthy workforce that many of the most popularly measured KPIs of success will improve as a result of the simple fact that your employees are better equipped to become healthier and of course happier.