What gets measured, gets managed. This mantra has been at the foundation of plenty of companies for years and years. Now, with a more focused and intentional approach from companies in the field of organizational culture and wellbeing we're often asked, "What's my ROI?" or "What can we expect from doing this?". It's a fair question, but a complicated one nonetheless. Here, we're going to put a few metrics out to help you get a grip on measuring your success of having a culture of wellbeing.
First, I want to address the elephant in the room that there are, in fact, things that can't be measured. The employee that decides to help someone on the street instead of going by - how is that measured? In monetary effort? In time spent getting to know the person? Maybe in smiles from those who are affected by it? Maybe in the amount of Oxytocin shared between everyone while they help others...and so on and so on. Having a culture of wellbeing will affect your people to the core, and some things aren't measured in ROI but rather VOI: Value On Investment.
Now that we've covered that, let's get to some that can, and should, be measured by any company. Some of these are (hopefully) likely already being measured, but it's important to see these through the wellbeing lens to get a better picture of your employees and how strong your culture is. We'll be looking through these different pillars: Financial, Social, Purpose, Mental, Community, Career, and Physical Wellbeing.
Financial Wellbeing: This has more to do with feeling financially secure than making a lot of money. One of the easiest metrics you can get is to ask your 401(k) provider the percentage of employees contributing to retirement plans. Now, this will be drastically different if you have an opt-in process (shown to be low participation) vs an opt-out process (shown to be above 80% participation) so be sure to understand and speak with your financial partner on what you can do to increase participation for your employees.
Social Wellbeing: This area of wellbeing refers to the quality of relationships people have in their lives. It can be a little trickier for organizations to determine what metrics will give them a sense of this, however, one tool that we've used and helped companies develop is a self-reported satisfaction via employee survey. Questions like "I have a best friend at work" enable us to track and rate how the company is doing overall.
Purpose Wellbeing: If employees feel like they have a sense of purpose within the organization they perform better and stay with the company longer. Other than the previously mentioned employee survey, measuring the percentage of employees taking advantage of training and development opportunities is crucial. If right now you're saying "I don't have any of those" to yourself about your company, you'll want to immediately (Your competition is).
Mental Wellbeing: Metrics used here should reflect a good sense of resiliency and work-life balance and having enough mental energy to get important things done each day. This is an opportunity to work with your benefits broker and talk about your aggregate mental health-related medical and disability claims. As a precursor to that, take a look at the antidepressant and anti-anxiety prescriptions report from them as well. Having those numbers and tracking these are good but always remember, don't try to artificially change this but instead focus on creating and fostering a supportive environment for your employees to make the right choice for them.
Community Wellbeing: This area of wellbeing considers how connected people feel to the community in which they life. Take a look at the percentage of employees taking advantage of volunteer time-off benefits. Don't have that benefit? Well then just take a look at the percentage of employees participating in charitable giving campaigns offered by the organization. If you're not doing this as a company, you can't expect your employees to do it either.
Career Wellbeing: Whatever metrics you use in this area should best reflect if people like what they do every day. A standard metric here is employee turnover. One thing you will need to keep in mind is what your industry standard is as well as that there is a healthy amount of turnover (yes, we said it now give us our medal).
Physical Wellbeing: Metrics used here should reflect some of what contributes to good physical health and having enough physical energy to get important things done each day. These are things like average sick days (if sick is separate from vacation), lifestyle-related medical claims, and workers' comp claims.
If your company is interested in having a culture that thrives, we'd love to come alongside you in your journey, so feel free to Contact Us today!