What is Workplace Well Being?
Compare and contrast the impact of a range of occupational health and wellbeing issues in the workplace. Identify factors which influence the management of occupational health and wellbeing in the workplace place.
A healthy workplace environment helps a business to grow up in a prosperous way and keep the employees motivated for the work. Workplace well being is a common and popular terms in case of modern business process. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), workplace well being concentrates on both quality and safety of working environment and manage to improvise an atmosphere so that the workers can remain healthy and satisfied in the workplace. In the present time, many countries are giving additional emphasis on workplace well being, as the development of business criteria is very much depending on this mandates. There are tons of workplace problems cropped up such as stress, conflicts, abuse, mental pressure and that may affect the employees and the productivity of the organisation. Therefore, employee wellness programs are necessary. In business countries like Singapore, workplace well beings play an important aspect for gradual development. According to the Director of Health Promotion Board of Singapore, Mr. Sim Beng Khoon, it is the duty of the government as well as the employers of the respective companies to take proper care for the well being of the employees so that they can lead a healthy life. CEO of AIA Singapore, Mr. Patrick Teow concentrates on the strategic development on the employee health. There are certain legislations that have been implemented for providing workplace safety to the workers of Singapore. Organising well being program has been treated as the duty of care of the employers.
Workplace well being issues:
The main objective of the workplace well being is to concentrate on the physical health of the employee so that the working problems can be overcome. The mental health of the employees must be stable for the gradual improvement of the organisation and therefore, well being plays as the game changer in the business organisations. The significant attribution of the wellness and the influencing factors of the well being issues are the main discussed topic in this report and an attempt has been taken to point out all the related provisions on this topic. Before entering into the main topic, it is important to understand the objective of the company. Every company put additional emphasis on the increment of performance and productivity. Employees are the main source of these improvements. Fenton et al., (2014) in their report on Workplace well being programmes had pointed out the importance of workplace well being and various issues that affected the employees’ performance and organisational behaviour.
The workplace related issues can be categorised as stress, mental agony, workload, abuse, smoking issues, conflicts and these may create negative implication on the workplace and directly or indirectly affected the employees. Excessive work pressure creates stress and that leads to the workplace conflicts. Pressures are treated as one of the business motivation processes but excessive pressure may lead to the mental agony of the employees and the health of the employees may also get inflicted for the same (Putz-Anderson 2017).
Importance of Workplace Well Being
It has been observed in many cases that the excessive stress in the workplace causes mental imbalance within the employees and it is not possible to detect the exact time when stress causes mental agony. According to James K. Harter, the excessive pressure may lead to create psychological problem within an employee and the employees become discouraged from doing the work properly (Sears et al. 2014). That creates implications on their performance and productivity of the organisation.
According to the CNN Health Article 2009, smoking causes serious impacts on the performance of the employees and it has been noticed that the healthy workers sustained more stamina and abilities to perform effectively (Day, Kelloway and Hurrell 2014). Emotional well being is also necessary in these cases. It has also been prescribed that abusive mentality of the workers or conflicts in between the colleagues can hamper the working culture and the mental agony of the employees can be increased. The overall effect of these issues will deteriorate the gradual development of workforce and the company will lost its flow in case of all future events.
However, there are certain criticisms generated against the workplace well being program. It has been observed that the companies have to invest lots of money behind the wellness programs and the employees are also not regular in these programs. The terms of the program are costly and the result of the program is uncertain in nature. In the words of MT Schimitt (2014), the privacy of the employee can be infringed during the training program (Gonzalez-Mulé, Mount and Oh 2014). The process of health screening can identify an underlying health issue of the employee and that can be shared within the office premises. Team resource can also be a threat for the effective employee’s wellness programs. A specific team should be employed for managing the whole program. However, it is not possible for every company to appoint separate team and therefore, complexities can be cropped up. Additionally, it can be stated that conducting employee wellness program is not mandatory. In a company where there are healthy employees, conducting these programs is not right fit. There are certain scopes of legal liabilities also present. The well being programs makes an attempt to change the diets and life style of the employees (Ferfolja and Hopkins 2013). There is a possibility that those strategies can cause harm to the employees and they can fall in ill. The wings of the employee program should be effectively chalked out and any mistake regarding the method could lead towards the ultimate failure of the entire program.
The Workplace Safety and Health Act 2006 deals with the workplace related problems in Singapore and according to chapter 354A of the Act, in case of any safety or health issue arises from the workplace can apply to the government for further action (Teo, Ofori and Tjandra 2015).
In spite of these loopholes, workplace well being programs is important in nature. According to Poorna Rodrigo (CIPD, 2017), the employers of the Singaporean companies are promoting creative ideas to reduce the work stress. However, job stress is the common factors and can be generated due to excessive task load. Job complexity can cause challenges to the employability skills and motivational forces. Job complexities give birth to emotional and psychological deterioration to the employees and the flow of productivity of a company is being affected. According to Kember (2010), workload and task complexities create negative significance within the workplace environment (Kyndt et al. 2013).
Workplace Related Issues and Their Negative Impact on Employees
Psychological stresses are working as a multi-dimensional factor in a workplace and it affects the attitude and behaviour of the employees. Stresses are working as the intermediary in between the work pressure and performance (Beehr 2014). Active participation of the employees will assist the company to develop their status and productivity. On the contrary, if the employees become stressed, adverse situation can be taken place. Job complexities may create harm on the interaction of the employees and many employees will become introvert and lost their energy for completing a task actively. According to Hughes (2014), these emotional barriers create a negative relation in between the employees and laxity in case of interpersonal skills takes place (Hughes et al. 2014). In the words of Terrion (2002), appropriate expression regarding certain emotions help to reduce the working pressure within the employees but job complexities provoke the negative sides of the employees and they will lag behind in their work place. Therefore, it is important to resolve all the issues related to the workplace and well being program of the employees are needed to be conducted with utmost priorities.
Impacts on employer behaviour and organization performances:
The nature of the workplace has been changed a lot in modern times and the working methods have become more complex and collaborative. Social skills are important to deal with this new job performance (McGurk 2014). However, it can be observed that there are certain complexities cropped up in the workplaces now a days that create negative impacts on the behaviour of the employees/ employers and on the organisational framework of the company. The workloads are increased gradually in the work places and dilemmas are generated due to workplace complexities. Employees and the employers are playing an important role in job place and therefore, the impacts of the job complexities on them should be discussed on thorough basis.
There are certain behavioural elements present within the employers and the employees (Gekara et al. 2014). The nature of these behaviours is quite important to deal with the clients and perform the organisational works. Employers are treated as the representative of the respective company and the clients are determining the behaviour of the company by experiencing the behaviour of the employers. Therefore, attitude of the employers are secured an important place. Attitude of the employers are depending on the job environment. In case of any complexities, the attitude of the employers can be affected and the anger can be reflected in case of client dealing process. In case of any adverse situation, the nature of the attitudes of the employers can create negative impression on the customer relationship.
Job complexities create dangerous impacts on the performance of the employees and the employers. If the workload of the company is excessive and most of the employees are experiencing emotional stress that will definitely reduce the performance stamina of the employers. Mental agony could lead towards the professional failure. It is the duty of the employers to take necessary care for the employees and conduct all possible trainings for reducing the threat to the employees. If the job complexities harm the employees, the performance of the employers will also get inflicted (Ohme and Zacher 2015).
Benefits and Criticisms of Employee Wellness Programs
Further, it can be stated that an employer has to perform certain duties that are serious in nature. They are the representative of the company. Therefore, they need a proper workplace environment without any complexities. If job complexities arose and the employees become affected due to this, the job performance of the employer will also get affected and that will reciprocally affect the development process of the workplace.
It has been pointed out by Hughes (2014) that job complexities are creating a destructive effect on the interpersonal skill of the employees and they become introvert due to this. Interpersonal skills include the communication power of the employees and the employers and the development of a company is depending on effective client communication skill of the employers (Hughes et al. 2014). In case of non-communicative nature of the employers, huge distraction within the employees may take place and the respective company has to face lots of dilemma regarding the same.
In the words of Lisa McQuerrey (2012), corporate representation is getting affected due to job complexities (Vandhana and Sowmya 2015). Employers are working as representative of the company and therefore, any misbehaviour to the clients can be proved as detrimental for the company in the long run.
The organisational complexities can affect the behavioural change of the employers in four ways such as cognitive competence, social competence, psychological contract in between employees and employers and procedural changes. Cognitive competence means ability of the employers completes a task in different situation (Simon and Halford 2015). It is the duty of the employer to execute a task effectively by the employees. In this case, the employer needs to have certain skills such as analytical skills and judgmental capabilities. If complexities are cropped up within the workplace and affected the employees, the behaviour of the employer will automatically change and kaleidoscope thinking capabilities of the employer will be endangered (Weissberg et al. 2015).
The performance of the employer creates impact on the overall performance of the organisation. In the words of Olivier Serrat (2017), tackling the dynamics of organizational performance is difficult (Serrat 2017). He disaggregates performance and its management into several critical components, including performance discouraging factors; performance metrics; talent management; and, learning at the organizational level. According to him, organisational performance may be getting affected by way of certain processes such as office politics, organisational learning, organisational adaptability and inability of the workplace in case of managing top talent.
An example of performance discourage in the workplace is office politics. However, office politics owe to more than the mere absence of corrective mechanisms. The structure of an organization itself can fire them up. Hierarchical, centralized, or control-oriented structures tend to separate thinking and acting, and entrust strategy and policy making to particular departments, offices, and senior managers. Their top-down flows are often inimical to teamwork within and across units. They exacerbate office politics: in the worst cases, the priority of staff members is not collaboration but protecting or advancing their position, unit, or budget. Performance measurement systems that feel the pulse of the organization and feed lessons back to the system are essential. Regrettably, even if interest in performance measurement grows daily, the state of the art leaves much to be desired. Performance indicators are simultaneously misunderstood, over-promoted, and misused (Pettigrew 2014).
Legal Implications of Employee Health Initiatives
Pfeffer (2015) has argued that the empirical support for contingencies is sufficiently weak that a “best practice” perspective should be the preferred approach (Goh et al. 2015). However, even within the best practices approach, researchers have much to learn about what constitutes a high performance Human Resources strategy. Studies of so-called high performance work systems differs significantly as to the practices included and sometimes even as to whether a practice is likely to be positively or negatively related to high performance.
According to Swarbrick (2016), the nature of relationships and the organisational culture make a huge amount of difference at times of stress (Dowding et al. 2016). The tendency is often to “splinter and retreat into our own little groups, rather than help each other – and leaders are clearly critical in role-modelling the latter”. But HR has a role in every organisation, not only in developing leadership capability but also ensuring that there is space for open and honest conversations that generate positive action rather than blame.
Conclusion:
To sum up, it can be stated that the workplace well being is an effective measure that has been taken for the betterment of the employees so that they may not getting inflicted mentally or physically by the organisational complexities and perform in a smooth manner. It has been observed that there are number of workplace complexities present in the workplace that can create negative impacts on the performance of the employers and the organisation as well. The main objective of the workplace well being is to concentrate on the physical health of the employee so that the working problems can be overcome. The mental health of the employees must be stable for the gradual improvement of the organisation and therefore, workplace well being plays as the game changer in the business organisations. However, the development of business organisation is depending on the performance of the employees and the employer. Therefore, well being program for the employees should be conducted and the complexities should be removed for the gradual improvement of the commercial institution.
References:
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