When the going gets tough the tough get going

As employers we rely on our people to succeed. Yes, we need a sound business offering – great products and services – but we also need great employees to deliver top services and develop innovative products.

Let's face it, in the current economic climate the large majority of organisations are operating with a relatively tight budget and a slimmed down workforce. So when the work picks up or large projects come in it is not uncommon for us to rely on our employees to have to pick up extra slack until we can justify the extra head count.

At times like this we need to be able to rely on our people to take a ‘can-do’ and ‘will-do’ approach and it is our strong and engaged employees that will work hard to meet this challenge.

Why? Because engaged employees value their organisations and therefore are generally more motivated to put in the extra effort and want to support the organisation when things get tough. However, they can only do this to the best of their ability if they are in good health and have the resilience skills to withstand pressure.

So if we are to rely on our employees to get going when things get tough or a little difficult we need to ensure that they are not only engaged but also healthy and able to withstand the pressure.

What does this mean in practice? Employee engagement does provide some of the answers in terms of motivating staff and improving performance but it doesn’t provide all of them. Employee wellbeing needs to be firmly on the agenda – organisations need to prioritise and invest in the health of their workforce, putting interventions in place to support their wellbeing.

Investing in the health of your staff is not only good for employee wellbeing but it is good for business.