As COVID restrictions begin to lift and the UK slowly moves into the easing of lockdown, attention has begun to move towards whether employees will move back to their offices.
There is definitely a mixed bag of approaches.
In March, The FT reported that 20 major British office employers are planning to move towards hybrid working including HSBC and British Telecom.
This month City AM reported finance houses JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs had invited employees back and that they were “returning in droves.” Many stated they preferred the structure of a working day in the office.
One factor that many are considering in this question is the wellbeing of employees. How will people feel about being back in the office after three lockdowns? What fears or anxieties will exist? Has home working produced happier and maybe even more productive employees?
As employers assess these questions, one helpful tool is to have a way to ask staff what they feel and how they’re doing.
Space to Breathe’s Wellbeing Audit is designed for that very purpose.
We first put the audit together in the Summer of 2020, wondering as we all did whether we’d be able to return to the office. Sadly that return was short lived but now as we make decisions for 2021, it is important to be able to gain an accurate insight into the wellbeing of staff. The Wellbeing Audit does exactly that.
Based on the Warwick Wellbeing Scale, and our own work on Workplace culture, the Wellbeing Audit asks a number of questions with a 1-5 scale response. The audit concludes with an imaginative picture question aimed at enabling respondents to speak freely. We then collate responses into a report with conclusions and recommendations. The report becomes a valuable tool to help make decisions about working patterns, support and office culture moving forward.
So far we’ve worked with a number of schools and companies to deliver Wellbeing Audits and provide insightful reports. Could this be a service which helps you take the next step as you plan for future working?
Here’s Jo Edwards from our team to share more.
But there are also other ways you can support yourself, your teams and your organisation.
You might be thinking about continued dispersed working - with some at the office, some at home, some mixing between the two. Our experience is that that approach will prove quite popular.
In that instance, the wellbeing challenges we’ve heard back from your are twofold. Firstly how do we all stay connected, how do keep up the chats and conversations that used to happen over coffee? Secondly support gets a little harder - dispersed working may mean more 1:1’s and less group support. How can I keep my staff going well and doing well when we’re working like this?
Over the pandemic, we’ve been running more and more wellbeing seminars for teams. These webinars, designed to sit within a team meeting of 45 mins to an hour, are a great way to keep connected. We start those kind of coffee machine conversations about wellbeing through creative exercises, imaginative ideas and giving some space to breathe.
These sessions can be about a bespoke topic but cover things anxiety, mindfulness, finding peace, lifting stress and other such issues. You can book a member of the team for £125.00 for an hour session. Why not get in touch for a chat?
The other tool we’ve found you’ve really appreciated is the Self Care Pack. This great set of 15 digital resources for wellbeing is a pack that you gain the rights to use internally forever. The ideas are great for personal use but can also be useful resources for team meetings or discussions about wellbeing. These are 15 of our best ideas, packaged for you, so that you can use them with all your staff forever. Check out Self Care Packs via the button or at the bottom of the page.