Employee Well-Being: The Key for Workplace Productivity

When your employees’ well-being is thriving, your organization directly benefits — they take fewer sick days, deliver higher performance, and have lower rates of burnout and turnover. But when your employees’ well-being suffers, so does your organization’s bottom line.

What is the Cost of Poor Well-Being?

The impact of well-being extends far beyond how people feel — it affects the number of sick days employees take, their job performance, burnout and likelihood of leaving your organization. Here are just some of the costs of poor well-being:

# 75% of medical costs accrued mostly due to preventable conditions.

# $20 million of additional lost opportunity for every 10,000 workers due to struggling or suffering employees.

# $322 billion of turnover and lost productivity cost globally due to employee burnout.

# 15% to 20% of total payroll in voluntary turnover costs, on average, due to burnout.

The good news is that your organization can do something about it and take steps to improve employee well-being.

Well-Being Affects Employee Engagement

We know that engaged employees produce far better outcomes, but Gallup recently discovered that engaged workers who are not thriving in their lives are much more vulnerable and add risk to your organization.

Comparing employees who are engaged but not thriving with those who are engaged and thriving, those who aren’t thriving report the following risks:

# 61% more likely to experience burnout often or always.

# 48% more likely to report daily stress.

# 66% more likely to experience daily worry.

# 2xmore likely to report daily sadness and anger.

This relationship is also reciprocal. As mentioned, career well-being is the foundation for the other well-being elements. And employee engagement is the single biggest driver of career well-being.

In the absence of a good job and fulfilling career, there is no net thriving. When organizations intentionally address both well-being and engagement, the effects are additive and mutually beneficial for employees and business outcomes alike.

What are the Five Common Elements People Need to Thrive in Their Lives?

In partnership with leading economists, psychologists and other scientists, Gallup studies well-being in more than 98% of the world’s population. The five common elements that people need to be thriving involve aspects of life that you can do something about.

We find that the most important element – and the foundation for the other four – is career well-being.

1. Career Well-Being: You like what you do every day.
2. Social Well-Being: You have meaningful friendships in your life.
3. Financial Well-Being: You manage your money well.
4. Physical Well-Being: You have energy to get things done.
5. Community Well-Being: You like where you live.

Source: Gallup