At WorkLifeWell, we believe there is incredible value in knowledge sharing and learning from others, so we’ve rounded up some of the most prominent trends of the year so far from our clients across a breadth of industries. 

Whether you have a full-blown wellbeing strategy but aren’t resting on your laurels, or you’re still in the developing stages, we hope these ideas will help you on your journey to happier, healthier workplaces for all.

The five employee wellbeing trends of the moment

1. Help with Hybrid.  While it’s no longer a new working practice, bad habits are easy to fall into, and for some, it can amplify feelings of isolation and belonging - especially new starters. To address this, increased help with hybrid working is being offered on topics such as ‘Managing in Hybrid World’ and ‘Managing Energy for Productivity’ - covering tools and techniques for structuring days at home, managing flow, and workstation...

Many organisations know that they are investing time, effort and money into wellbeing activities which don’t seem to have an impact. But before adding new activities or culling those deemed unsuccessful, conducting a wellbeing audit will enable you to strategically plan and develop an evidence-based approach to wellbeing across your organisation.

As a diagnostic tool, a Wellbeing Audit is the first stepping stone to assessing both overall wellbeing and your offering, before planning and delivering activities which attract, engage and retain your biggest asset - your people.

So, what are the bigger benefits and where should you start?

Conducting a Wellbeing Audit will enable you to…

1. Listen and understand how your people are feeling physically and emotionally, and how their wellbeing and happiness levels are impacting on performance. By understanding the baseline, you will have a more robust starting point to measure against moving forward. 
2. Identify...

One of the outcomes of opening up the conversation around mental health is that there might be a lot more employees who want to come and talk to you! As a leader, HR professional or line manager, listening and supporting your employees is core. But how do you balance their needs with the rest of your responsibilities, provide the right support, and avoid feeling overwhelmed, drained or burnt-out yourself by the end of the day?

Taking care of your own mental health and ensuring you have strong support systems and networks around you is vital in enabling you to be there for others in the best way possible. 

We share some of our suggestions and those from our clients:

1.) Host dedicated drop-ins on a specific day and time of the week. They can be group sessions where employees benefit from the support and ideas of others, or one-to-one slots, but either way, ring-fencing time can help contain and focus your energy.   

2.) Upskill. If you’re often approached by...

As we step into the New Year, many organisations are thinking about what lies ahead and how to make their businesses even more successful in 2023. While we may often think of success purely in terms of profit margins, there are numerous other areas that dictate how successful the business really is, including innovation, recognition, reputation, customer satisfaction and staff morale. The most successful organisations recognise that employees are the driving force of a business and research shows that businesses with happier staff are more productive, more efficient and more effective. This naturally results in higher quality work being produced and ultimately more business being done.  

So what can leaders, team managers and those responsible for people, do to make a meaningful difference to employee wellbeing and happiness? Here are 5 simple steps, and it is as easy as ABC, (not forgetting D and E!)

Aligned thinking - When there are clear objectives, this creates a...

Permacrisis; an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events - Collins English Dictionary 2022 Word of the Year.

As this lengthy period of political, economic, social and environmental challenge continues, no wonder many of us feel apprehensive going into the new year. So, what can you do to best support your colleagues, as well as yourself, during this time? Here are some practical tips to start 2023 positively as we navigate the permacrisis.

1. Create certainty. In times of change, people like certainty - create some wherever you can. This can be the small things - like keeping to regular scheduled team catch-ups, getting a tea or coffee together on Monday mornings or sending ‘Friday Thank You’ messages to those who have gone the extra mile that week, or someone you wouldn’t normally remember to thank.

2. Have a clear plan of action - and communicate it as early on in the year as possible to...

The festive break is meant to be a time to relax and unwind, right? But following a couple of years of unwanted Covid-shaped stocking fillers, high expectations of Christmas 2022 may add extra pressure for many of us. Stressors such as social anxiety from resumed work parties, economic uncertainty and the cost of living crisis, can be a lot to deal with - all while trying to get everything off our desks before the end of the year.

So amongst all of this, how can you maintain your sense of calm, and, if not peace on earth, then at least in your mind, this Christmas? 

Try these mindfulness tips for the festive season (and beyond):

1. Give yourself the gift of morning meditation 

Do you reach for your work emails on your phone as soon as you wake up? Before you do anything, start your day with 5 minutes of meditation. Use an app, such as Insight Timer (free), which has guided morning meditations, or simply gently close your eyes, relax your jaw and focus on the...

If we think of our mental health as a continuum; burn-out at one end of the scale, languishing in the middle and flourishing as the optimum, anything less than flourishing is a watch-out signal for managers and businesses. It means we are not getting creativity, productivity or performance. 

Flourish; to grow or develop successfully: to achieve something aimed for. - Cambridge English Dictionary.

When we’re flourishing at work, everyone benefits - colleagues, the organisation, and those we do business with. So how can you best support yourself and your colleagues in order to thrive?

Three ways to spark flourish

1. Flow; the art of getting completely absorbed in a task, losing a sense of self and time - not worrying about the past, future, or how one will be perceived, and when the ‘doer’ and the ‘doing’ become one. In flow, we’re moving away from stagnation. One way to experience flow is through single task focus. Did you know, ...

Weary of hearing about Quiet Quitting? Us too. Instead of focusing on the negatives, let’s instead draw our attention to recognising when colleagues are languishing and how to help lift them up - benefiting them and the organisation in the process.

What is languishing? 

Languishing; to be weak or fail to improve. to exist in an unpleasant or unwanted situation, often for a long time. - Cambridge English Dictionary

It doesn’t sound like a place anyone wants to be, does it? 

Languishing sits at the crossroads of mental ill-health in one direction and flourishing in the other, and has a slow, draining and sapping effect on our workforce. 

Did you know that 40% of employees feel stagnant since the pandemic, and 1 out of 3 feel unmotivated? It’s hardly surprising, given how working environments have changed to create the perfect storm: reduced human face-to-face interaction and shared experiences, and lack of variety and change means many employees...

Food - fun and healthy….not a chance I hear you say, but there are ways of being creative with food which will keep even the fussiest eaters coming back for more.

If you’re struggling to get your ‘5 a day’ into your daily routine, or worse are still struggling to get the nutrients into your children (if you have them), then smoothies can be a healthy and fun alternative.  There are however certain do’s and don’ts…

The don’ts

The main problem with blending all your fruits into one giant drink is that there is a high likelihood that it will be a sugary paradise and the exact reverse of what you are trying to achieve.  Blended fruits have a lot of the fibrous (sugar stabilising) content broken down while at the same time liberating large amounts of fructose sugars.  The combination is stressful on your liver, bad for your blood sugar and will assist you on a pathway to adding fat to your body which is probably not why you...

If you’re like most people, when the new year comes around, you’re full of good intent to make positive changes in your life.  In fact around 25% of us make resolutions in January with the majority focused towards weight loss, exercise and nutrition.  

The difficulty with nutrition based goals is that there is a great deal of confusion with what is good and what is not.  All the way back to 1992, the UK government published nutritional recommendations with four key components 1. eat more fruit, vegetables and salad,  2. cut down on fat,  3. eat more fibre and 4. eat more starchy carbohydrates. 

When researchers asked the public ten years later if they could name some of these recommendations and despite spending significant sums of money on awareness campaigns, only 16% of people interviewed could remember even 3 or 4 of these core principles.   

On reviewing the current nutritional guidelines provided by...