From free healthy meals and an equipped gym, to a rewarding package of financial and moral rewards, and sessions dedicated to meditation and psychotherapy, until it came to offices that are suitable not only for the human race, but also for pets that their owners cannot leave at home. The concept of well-being at work takes different forms around... The world has been evolving with the progress of time and its changes since the journey began with the Italian doctor Bernardino Ramazzini, who is said to be the first to introduce the concept of well-being at work in the seventeenth century through his book “Diseases of Workers,” which is considered one of the first books to give the subject of occupational diseases a space in the world. interest.
From that moment until today, many changes have occurred in the concept of “well-being” in general in the context of practical environments or outside of it, but what is certain is that many studies have shown that the lack of well-being at work, in its various forms, has led to a decrease in employee loyalty and an increase in... Rates of absenteeism from work, which had clear effects on the level of productivity.
The truth is, when we look at the matter from a time perspective, we find that employees spend most of their time inside the workplace or for work if they work remotely, and therefore, as the owner of an establishment or company, you cannot wait for that scene in which you see the employee burning the stages for you and working hard with all enthusiasm and passion. Love is not accompanied by an environment that grants him his rights and provides him with sufficient support and motivation, and if he is forced to be prejudiced against himself, the matter will not last long, because in the end, a candle cannot revolt in the face of darkness forever, it must be overcome by blackness.
Perhaps many employees today do not demand a luxurious gym like the one at Google, for example, or a virtual environment full of entertaining challenges between employees like the one created by Salesforce, and perhaps they do not care much about whether they eat free meals at their desk or not, instead all of that is what they demand. Providing an atmosphere of appreciation and motivation that guarantees their rights and helps them develop and advance themselves and their organizations, an atmosphere in which the employee does not feel sad and frustrated due to the reduction in his work, the lack of equality between him and his peers, or being assigned more than he can bear. An atmosphere, in short, that does not make him wake up every morning with a sigh that hides a lot behind it. From suffering in order to earn a living.
Therefore, well-being at work has become a matter of interest to many companies around the world, because they have begun to deal with this issue from a perspective that goes beyond “welfare,” as it is ultimately about achieving interests and goals, and in business language this is not important, but rather the only thing that matters.
Today, there are a number of international organizations, such as the Global Center for Healthy Work Environments (GCHW), which sets a set of incentive awards for organizations that place well-being and health as their priority, and also there is the American Gallup Foundation, which for nearly two decades has been granting an award in this scope, which it called the Exceptional Work Environment. Exceptional Workplace Award is a prestigious award reserved for organizations that meet the required criteria set by the largest comprehensive study ever conducted on work environments, which includes analysis of more than 2.7 million workers belonging to more than 100,000 teams around the world.
Here a set of questions come to mind: Who was offered to bear work pressure as a basic advantage for which a candidate is presented and another is excluded? Yes, we all know that there is no work without responsibilities, and it is very natural that these responsibilities carry with them some pressure, but what pressures exactly must the employee bear? Are those generated by the nature of the work itself or by pressures created by the employer himself? Perhaps the most important question is: Is work pressure a purely individual responsibility or an important one whose impact on health and psychology is reduced with cooperation and support?
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sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446786/
https://www.globalhealthyworkplace.org/about/
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/how-we-encourage-wellbeing-at-salesforce/
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/329768/gallup-exceptional-workplace-awards.aspx
