WELLBEING
16
People Management Middle East
PORTRAIT SIDDHARTH SIVA
“The wellbeing agenda is critical in retaining and attracting talent”
Cooper outlines the components he believes make up a wellbeing culture: socially, emotionally skilled line managers; wellbeing audits to find out where the problems lie; employee assistance programmes for those who aren’t coping; and flexible working. The return on investment comes in a reduction in stress-related sickness and enhanced productivity: unsurprisingly, healthy employees produce more. “Line managers are a critical component here,” says Cooper. “We just don’t have the middle managers to manage people in the new economy, where we’re doing more with fewer people. They need good interpersonal skills – the ‘soft’ skills people always talk about.” Other challenges include beating the mindset that working long hours means you are more effective and productive. From a wellbeing point of view, Cooper believes companies should let people work flexibly if they can. “Most of our jobs aren’t in manufacturing now, so there’s no reason that we can’t, and even in manufacturing it is possible to allow people to work flexibly if you manage it.” While we might view wellbeing as primarily a reactive discipline – for example, by looking after staff suffering from long-term conditions – being proactive about issues like flexible working is just one tool employers could deploy to tackle underlying issues that negatively affect wellbeing. Whether it’s used to take the stress out of coping with sick children, avoid the rush hour or just get to the gym, it is a zero-to-low-cost change that can have a big psychological benefit, including boosting perceived trust (when US university MIT introduced flexible working, 62 per cent of staff reported an ‘improved feeling of trust and respect’). For international payments company Mastercard, taking a flexible working approach has been one of the key changes to the way it manages people. “We’ve reviewed some of our policies that play in the wellbeing space and now espouse a flexible working culture,” says Scott Tierney, Mastercard’s senior vice president of human resources for the Middle East and Africa. “People are much freer to choose their working hours, SUPERSTOCK
already doing a lot of work in these areas, one of the new frontlines in the war so the first exercise is to set a benchmark on against the waistline – a point not missed what we are doing now, and how effective by insurers, which have gone on record it is, to make sure it works as a coherent suggesting employers need strategy,” she says. “Then we will be able to set to take the initiative realistic KPIs and measure ourselves against to help their those. As a government organisation, we are insured staff get very aware of our responsibility healthier if they to ensure we are maximising want to control every riyal we spend premium costs. in the best possible Wellbeing, in way. That means we this way, can be have to be working described as a moral effectively and imperative – taking efficiently 24 hours a holistic view of a day, seven days a health is simply week – and to do the right thing that, having a healthy to do as a good workforce is critical.” employer – but That a medical there is also a cold, organisation is taking hard business case the lead on a holistic view that you get more of wellbeing should not be out of people when a surprise. The surprise they feel at their best. is that relatively few “It used to be business leaders feel that businesses saw compelled to follow wellbeing as a soft, their lead, because fuzzy thing at best,” wellbeing is becoming says Professor Sir Cary a macro issue. Cooper, psychologist, The GCC region has With high rates of obesity president of the CIPD and some of the highest rates of obesity one of the world’s leading and diabetes, employers in the GCC could benefit in the world – a 2014 report by authorities on workplace hugely from introducing medical journal The Lancet found wellbeing. A turning point healthy eating initiatives obesity rates at double digits across in this attitude came in all six Gulf states – and it fares the aftermath of the global little better in diabetes, with data from the recession, when one of the driving forces in International Diabetes Federation pointing many countries was the public sector, which to the disease afflicting 23.9 per cent of the had to act to reduce epidemic levels of stress adult population in Saudi Arabia, 23.1 per to increase productivity. cent in Kuwait and 19.8 per cent in Qatar, “Lots of organisations in the private compared to a global average of 8.3 per cent. sector, meanwhile, see turnover as the Employers stand to issue that forces them to look at this,” says be among the biggest Cooper. “They became so mean and lean losers if these public that if they lost any more people, they health concerns simply wouldn’t be able to carry on. They continue to worsen, needed a strategic approach to wellbeing – courtesy of increased and, beyond that, they needed to create a sick days and rising wellbeing culture. health insurance “A wellbeing culture helps reduce premiums, pushed stress-related sickness, and in particular up by the cost of presenteeism – which can cost twice as managing chronic much as absenteeism. It also enhances conditions. This productivity; it’s no surprise to discover makes workplaces that healthy employees produce more.”