7 Ways to Encourage Employee Self-Care in the Workplace

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Encouraging self-care is essential for ensuring your employee's well-being and health is a priority within your organisation. But what even is self-care and how does it differ from employee well-being? People often get the two mixed up so it’s important to differentiate the two. Employee self-care can be described as the actions your employee takes to improve and maintain their physical, mental and emotional health, both inside and outside of the workplace. In contrast, employee well-being can be defined as broader organisational and environmental factors that can impact an individual's health and happiness.

When your employees practise self-care within the workplace, it comes with several benefits, such as:

• Improved productivity
• Better retention
• Reduced burnout
• Creating a positive work culture
• Increased Productivity
• Happier employees
• Decreased turnover rates

With your employees spending the majority of their time at work, it’s essential to prioritise their well-being and self-care habits, if you want them to show up, be engaged and be happy within the workplace. That’s why, in this article, we will be sharing our top 7 tips to effectively encourage self-care within the workplace.

How to Encourage Employee Self-Care

Throughout this section of the article, we will be sharing our tips and tricks for employers who want to promote and encourage a workplace culture that prioritises self-care.

1. Educate Employees on Self-Care

The first and probably most important way to encourage employee self-care is by educating employees and creating awareness around it. When you encourage your employees to educate themselves on their self-care needs and offer the resources for them to learn more about it, you're demonstrating that as an organisation it’s something that’s a priority. When employees are educated on the amazing benefits and the impact self-care can have on their lives, then they will be more willing to focus on it. From learning the different self-care practices that they can incorporate into their workday to researching new ideas that could potentially benefit the whole team, building awareness is key to creating a workforce that prioritises self-care.

2. Make Flexible Working an Option

People have more on their plates than either before. This is why if you want to encourage and inspire employees to practise self-care, then flexible working needs to be an option. People are busy, but a flexible working schedule allows your employees to make time for things that are important to them. Whether that’s picking up their kids from school or even attending medical appointments, your employees need to feel comfortable enough to get things done in their personal lives, without the fear of consequences. From flexible working hours to flexible working arrangements, these simple adjustments make a huge difference in reducing the stress levels of your employees, whilst helping them improve their work-life balance.

3. Provide Mental Health Resources

Mental health is an essential component of self-care and is something that should be a focus for any business that values its employees. Your organisation must be able to create a culture where not only is mental health prioritised but normalised. To encourage employee self-care, you need to be offering mental health resources to all your employees. Providing things such as counselling services where your employees can speak about their troubles, offering mental health days or paying for employees' subscriptions to mental health apps, are all a step in the right direction to ensuring the well-being and self-care of employees are truly supported.

4. Offer Stress and Time Management Learning Opportunities

High levels of stress and lack of time management are some of the leading reasons for negative well-being among employees. If you want a happy and healthy workforce, then you need to consider offering stress and time management learning opportunities. Whether these learning opportunities take the form of internal webinars or external courses you can provide to your employees, teaching them how to manage stress and their time is a great way to facilitate self-care. When your employees manage their time more effectively, they will feel less stressed at work. These lower stress levels will result in reduced burnout cases across the workforce, more engaged employees and a lower employee turnover rate.

5. Establish Work Hours

It doesn’t matter the size of your organisation, from a 6-person start-up team to a global 2,000-employee workforce, you need to establish online and offline hours that you and your employees adhere to. Establishing work hours goes a long way in encouraging self-care and will be appreciated by your employees. We’ve all stayed later to complete important tasks, but if it’s a regular occurrence you need to have boundaries in place. Your employees shouldn’t be worried or stressed about work when they aren’t even in the office or on the clock. Make sure to set work hours where your employees are not expected to respond to work emails, attend meetings or complete work tasks.

6. Prioritise Mentoring

Mentoring comes with many benefits, from improved diversity and inclusion, to skill sharing across an organisation, but did you know that mentoring can play an important role in promoting self-care and well-being within an organisation? As mentioned, well-being and self-care go hand in hand. Mentors are there to support and guide their mentees, with whatever challenges they face. As self-care in the workforce is all about having employees that prioritise their mental and physical well-being, having a mentoring program in place can encourage employees to discuss these matters with a more senior professional who can suggest their best tips and advice for practising self-care in the workplace.

7. Lead by Example

Everyone should practise self-care, including business leaders. Employees look up to the leaders and managers within their organisation as role models and as a leader, when you act as a role model, not only will it benefit your own life but it will also show to your employees that practising self-care habits is a priority for the organisation. When people see leaders taking care of their own well-being and self-care, they are more inclined to do so. Things such as taking mental health days and only completing work during established hours inspire employees to do the same without fear of negative consequences. Leaders need to model the behaviour and habits they want to see in the workforce if they want to see their employees thrive.

Summary

To summarise, encouraging self-care in the workplace is something all organisations need to be doing if they want to have a healthy workforce that is productive and engaged within their roles. Educating employees on the importance of self-care, introducing flexible working, providing mental health resources, offering learning opportunities, establishing work hours, prioritising mentorship and leading by example are a few simple ways you can promote employee self-care. When you encourage employees to look after themselves and their well-being, you're setting them up for success which will ultimately lead to some impressive benefits for your business.