Wellbeing in the workplace – reducing stress of charity employees

16 September 2016

Guest blog by Ian Bird, Founder of the employee communication portal Mybenefitsatwork

In general, charity employees tend to feel more job satisfaction than other professionals, as they usually work for a cause they are passionate about. In fact, a recent study¹ highlighted that 35% of charity professionals are more likely to have experienced a sense of achievement in their job, in comparison to the average UK worker.

This is a positive statistic for the charity industry. However, it’s equally important to mention that the charity workforce is also 25% more likely to have experienced stress. So, I wasn’t surprised when I learned that 80% of charity employees said they have experienced stress in their current job – a very high number.

Stress in the workplace could be associated with a number of reasons. As a charity employer, I’d argue that it’s essential to adopt a holistic approach to employee wellness and wellbeing in order to tackle this issue (if you don’t already); the focus should be physical, mental and financial.

Putting a wellbeing programme in place is a great start, but it’s not just a case of selecting an attractive sounding list of benefits. You need to choose benefits to help build a healthy and happy workforce, such as flexible working or gym memberships. Employee assistance programmes, for example, are designed to help staff deal with any issues before they become more serious. It’s also important to consider protection measures for employees, so they are supported financially during long periods of absence.

Once this is done, the next step is to communicate your wellbeing programme effectively to your workforce. And a regular multi-channel approach to communication is best. After all, if your people don’t know about it, and feel that they benefit from it personally, they can’t and won’t appreciate it.

According to our research², 89% of charity employees would be more loyal to their employer if they understood their benefits. It is therefore vital to develop and maintain a communication strategy to keep a workforce fully engaged.

On Wednesday 5th October at 11am, Mybenefitsatwork will be hosting an exclusive webinar for ACEVO members: Combining employee wellbeing with effective communication.

The webinar is designed to provide HR and those responsible for implementing benefits at work with some learning objectives, these are centred around: