The fundamental importance of staff wellbeing

When leaders talk about styles of leadership, what they tend to miss out are the undefined styles of leadership that others deliver which provide long-term job security, good mental health, job satisfaction and above all fun.

Fitting the leadership box is old hat and those that continue to deliver the same old programmes will gradually reach a point where they have nothing left to say that has not already been said.

We often talk about empathy as if it is just a word that is nice to say. However, empathy should be inherent in all of our practices and it is the leader and/or manager who should have the core welfare of the staff at heart that will keep the workplace a great place to be.

A toxic manager makes a toxic company and this toxicity is spread from person to person until the whole environment becomes impossible to work in.

I have seen this happen at universities where their senior staff forget that is not about them and their links with the great and the good but actually about students and the value for money that they are getting.

What we need to do is take a breath and think, ‘am I really that important to the business’ and invariably one will come out with ‘no’ as an answer.

So, if we are not that important to our business, then who is? The answer, of course, is our team and our clients. So, if they are important we should be doing everything possible to make them feel valued and an important part of the vision of the company.

Wellbeing is contagious and a happy company creates happy clients.

Staff wellbeing is neglected not because people don’t know that it is important but because people don’t know how or where to start.

It is not about more money, although of course, this is nice. But staff would rather have a more conducive place to work than a raise. A raise only lasts a short while whilst the environment is still there when this wears off.

• Put your staff at the centre of the business so it revolves around them and not you.
• Shelve your ego, walk the floor and become approachable.
• Support those with problems and don’t make them feel like lepers. Make their problem your problem and put yourself in their shoes.
• Forget profits and bottom lines and just grow your people as growing your people will mean that the profits will follow.
• Communicate with everyone and be transparent.
• Find real empathy by getting to know the staff and what they like to do.
• Give people time to think and reflect don’t keep piling the work on. Don’t push how you feel onto them, think about the consequences and how you would feel
• Share the good times and reflect on the bad times.
• Look at flexible ways of working to suit the individual. It’s hard but it pays dividends.
• Above all, think before you do anything, run it through and get the team involved because to do this they are part of the process.

So many companies fail because they set their targets too high and can never reach them.

This is often the problem with the boss who believes in himself but forgets the team.

My team is really important and their ideas and thought are the centre of our away days. I am too close to the business to see the things that make it work and those that work against growth but I trust my staff implicitly to identify any needs and then resource these to make sure that we are moving forward together.

There may be no ‘I’ in team but there is certainly the right sort of path in empathy.

If it is of interest, Mind Over Matter Consultancy delivers a range of interactive, highly-pressurized programmes for high performers in companies across the world, underpinned by applied leadership and management theory. These are lead by experts in their fields.

We are able to support the following areas:

• Communication
• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Talent Identification
• Decision Making
• Motivation
• Problem Solving
• Teamwork

Try our bespoke #BlowYouAwayDays programmes where you and your team will be pushed to the limit in anything from RNLI training or kidnap scenarios to dance development, a rollercoaster crash, a grand prix circuit or the SAS.