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Employee Welfare – How Your Business Can Support Your People

By Nina Wyers – Marketing and Brand Director of The Floorbrite Group.

There is no one in the world that can say 2020 has been a walk in the park. If they did, they would be lying.

From worry and fear, to sickness, the loss of loved ones, panic buying, isolation, working from home, not working from home, keyworkers, redundancy, loss of jobs and businesses and the inevitable and yet somewhat massively underestimated toll on mental health.

What can we do to soften the impact of Covid-19 on our employees? What can we do to ease their fears at work and support them with their daily challenges so they can provide for their families and function well in their job roles?

Being a cleaning service provider, we obviously must talk about increased hygiene in the workplace as a necessity to mitigate the threat and fears of Covid-19. However, as an employer of 1600 people, we can also offer our experience and the ideas currently helping our team in other areas too.

Hygiene in the workplace

Back to basics. Your cleaning regime must be visible. Are you providing hand sanitiser and placing visual reminders about hand hygiene and social distancing guidance around your premises? Communicate the daily cleaning schedule to your team so they have confidence in returning to the workplace. Are you providing additional cleaning throughout the day to high touch point areas like door handles, push plates, handrails, washrooms, and canteen areas? Are your cleaning teams using additional virucidal chemicals? If so, it would be worth communicating these points.

If you have a confirmed case on site, how is this being managed? From isolating those close contact staff to decontaminating and sanitising the affected areas, do you have a plan to safeguard the remaining employees on site?

Managing remote working

How are you supporting your remote workers or those working from home?

In March 2020, the novelty of working from home for those normally office based might have been appealing for a short time. No commute to work. Extra time to spend with the children and virtual meetings in jogging bottoms which was perfectly acceptable when the boss couldn’t see.

Nonetheless, we believe for some the novelty has worn off and created additional issues to deal with. The lack of a daily chat with colleagues in the canteen or catchup meeting over a coffee is impacting many people’s lives.

As the countries regions are currently dealing with shifting lockdown tiers, many larger businesses in the office sector are not returning to their workplaces until 2021. Many others though, have returned and like us, have adopted a hybrid scenario to maintain their business function and culture. Working part time in the office and part time from home to ensure adequate social distancing levels can be maintained in the workplace. We have found this option an acceptable balance.

Yet how are those employees in other businesses expected to cope until 2021, with what could be a full 12 months working from home without a choice?

During the national lockdown, our departmental heads had and continue to have regular group virtual meetings with their teams. But for other businesses, the social element of these interactions may be that colleagues only other human contact on a given day. Rather than those meetings always being of a business nature is it possible to inject sociable activities into the calendar. Virtual quizzes, bingo, fizzy Fridays, there are even virtual event companies who can create bespoke, branded, corporate events for you and manage the entire virtual experience on your behalf.

Employee recognition also goes a long way to boost morale and employee engagement. Do you have an employee of the month award? Special awards for employees who go above and beyond as voted for by your customers or staff. Charitable and seasonal events for the staff to get involved in with internal committees to manage them?

Can your business provide practical support for those employees who can’t work from home and come into regular close contact with customers or the general public like our cleaning teams, retail assistants, transport or delivery drivers and essential service workers? How can they be protected from the immediate health risks? Provision of personal PPE including face coverings or visors, gloves, and personal hand sanitiser and regular communication about the latest company and government guidance are simple solutions.

Supporting health, mental health and day to day issues

The toll of this year has seen an incredible impact on mental health and fortunately there is a growing awareness around this point, but what practical measures can be put in place to help your employees?

Employee Assistance Programmes - At this time a supportive chat with your line manager might not cut it. And let’s face it, as best as we might try, our expertise probably doesn’t lie in professional counselling either. The NHS counselling services are overwhelmed and waiting lists are months long for services which are required immediately. However, for as little as £4.00 or £5.00 per employee per year, your business could provide an Employee Assistance Programme free to all staff.

All staff can benefit from support including 24/7 unlimited helpline support. Every call is answered by a fully trained mental health counsellor to ensure immediate support and guidance. And with no limits or charges, your employees can call as often as they need, gaining access to E-counselling, face-to-face counselling sessions and psychologist assessment and case management for more complex cases. This service enables employees to access the counselling they need, discretely and confidentially at a time and place that fits around work and home.

Employees can also access 24/7 expert medical information via a helpline through experts including nurses, pharmacists and midwives and life management guidance on a range of everyday matters, such as financial, legal, consumer, family care and housing issues, invaluable when partners may be facing redundancy or have already lost their jobs or businesses.

For your line managers when day-to-day team management becomes challenging, whether it’s providing guidance on approaching difficult conversations, tackling performance issues or managing long-term absences, experts are on hand to ensure your managers have first-hand support when dealing with complex situations.

Additional online support and guidance provides innovative tools and expert information such as video links dealing with stress, managing sleep and even yoga, mindfulness, and meditation sessions.

Health Cash Plans – Starting from as little as a couple of pounds a week per employee, a health cash plan is a fantastic and affordable way for your employees to claim money back towards essential health costs such as dental check-ups and treatment, contact lenses, glasses, chiropody, therapy treatments, homeopathy and much more.

Wellbeing Training – As well as all the above, we are working with our wellbeing training provider to deliver a series of live webinars for participants to gain awareness and understanding of the principles of mental well-being in the workplace in order to reduce stress and burnout and build a well-being workforce.

If these ideas are not an option for your business at this time, why not create your own internal focus group and collect information for your team through numerous free online and charitable resources.

We hope you have found our article and experience helpful in some way. Any step however small is a step in the right direction towards a happier healthier workforce.

The Floorbrite Group is a leading commercial cleaning and soft FM services provider, delivering solutions across the UK. For more information about The Floorbrite Group visit www.floorbrite.co.uk