As an employer or HR professional, there’s no avoiding the topic of employee wellbeing. Whatever approach your business takes, it’s a topic filling your news feeds and inboxes daily.
The message is being received, with businesses understanding the value of nurturing a healthy and resilient workforce. Our recent survey of over 1,300 UK employees found that 81.25% have access to mental health support at work.
While we’d love to see that number at 100%, it’s a massive step in the right direction.
Why Employee Wellbeing Matters
As part of our research, we asked our employee respondents how much time they’d taken off work due to mental health issues in the past year. 16.78% had taken 3-5 days, and 10.81% had taken 6-10 days off work due to mental ill health.
ONS data from 2022 estimated that 185.6 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury – a record high! This averages 5.7 days per employee. As such, out of the employees taking time off work for mental ill health, 10.81% were above average – and this is without considering time taken off due to sickness.
With our research finding that 40.97% of employees felt like there wasn’t anyone at work they could talk to about their mental health and 32.88% experiencing ‘mental health challenges at work’, these high figures aren’t surprising.
In this blog, we take a look at: why employee wellbeing matters, wellbeing washing, employee wellbeing as a business strategy, and embedding employee wellbeing into your business with Sodexo Engage.