What are the 5 pillars of employee wellbeing?

The five pillars of wellbeing represent significant factors that affect employee health and include:

  • Mental and physical wellbeing: When a person is in good mental and physical health, they’re more resilient. They’re also more productive because they have enough energy to focus on their work and make time for colleagues.
  • Financial wellbeing: A strong financial wellbeing indicates a person has enough money to live comfortably. A lack of money is a significant worry for a lot of people and the anxiety it induces is very distracting.
  • Emotional wellbeing: Teams who celebrate each other have strong self-worth and feel valued. Don’t forget — we’re social creatures and meaningful interactions are integral to our emotional health!
  • Social wellbeing: When employees all get along and are members of several social groups, you have a strong culture. To keep this sense of togetherness alive for years to come, communication and transparency are key.
  • Digital wellbeing: With more people working from home, there is greater pressure to stay online past working hours. But as we all know, this isn’t a healthy way to work and can result in burnout.

Employees celebrating their wellbeing policy with a handshake

How to use the 5 pillars of employee wellbeing in your strategy

Here, we share how you can incorporate the five pillars of employee wellbeing into your organisation.

1. Take care of employee mental and physical health

Taking care of your teams’ mental and physical health has many benefits. Generally, employees who are happy and healthy thrive, which is great for everyone. Nevertheless, we do recognise that employee health can be a dry topic, especially when selling its benefits to your teams. But, by introducing wellbeing meeting games, you can make it a more engaging subject.

Making healthy habits as easy as possible will also help your teams make better decisions about their wellbeing. With Perkbox, you get content created by industry experts. From energising workouts to relaxing yoga flows, your teams have plenty of choice. And, because all of the content is accessible 24/7 via an app or online portal, it’s ideal for remote working employees who are on the go.

Want to kickstart your own wellbeing programme? Learn more in our helpful guide

2. Support your employees’ financial wellbeing

As the cost of living increases, everybody is starting to feel the pinch. To help, you could introduce a comprehensive discount scheme that saves employees money all year round. Perkbox has over 9,000 discounts with global and local retailers. But, if you’re not able to offer more compensation or perks, free money management webinars are a great educational option.

Learn more about how you can support your employees’ financial wellbeing with our helpful guide

3. Make celebration part of your culture

Everyone wants recognition for their hard work. Receiving praise doesn’t just validate we’re good at what we do — which is a big self-esteem boost — it also shows that our colleagues appreciate us.1 Encouraging your employees to celebrate each other means some have to step out of their comfort zone and be a little more social. But with a Perkbox they can break the ice by sending a quick recognition message over the app. It could even lead to a catch-up in the canteen or a quick call over Zoom.

4. Maintain community in a changing workplace

Everybody is experiencing a shift in routine as hybrid working becomes the norm. However, maintaining a community that exists in the online and offline world needn’t be challenging. Perkbox enables you to share what matters most in one centralised location. Using visual cards you can publish company news, updates, and more. Plus, each card supports a variety of attachments including video files. Keeping everyone in the loop has never been easier.

5. Use digital solutions for the right reasons

There are big pros to new HR technologies and they’ve contributed to great advances in employee experience. Additionally, digital learning platforms have helped employees learn new skills from the comfort of their own homes — invaluable for those who can’t attend classes in person.

But for all the pros, we can’t ignore the cons, such as the anxiety of feeling constantly available.2 Of course, while this problem didn’t have quite the same impact 5 years ago, it must be taken seriously now. If you begin to notice a culture of working late taking root in your organisation, remind your employees that office hours are the same wherever they’re working. To protect your teams’ mental health you sometimes have to set boundaries for them.

We share how to recognise and combat employee burnout in our webinar

Support employee wellbeing with Perkbox

Developing a successful wellbeing strategy requires self-understanding from your organisation. To achieve this you need to collect data on anything that has positively or negatively impacted on employee wellbeing. This could include workload, targets and attendance reports.

Remote HR manager inspecting employee wellness metrics

For example, when engagement is higher than usual, ask yourself what you've done differently. Have you hired more staff, or rolled out a new digital training program? On the other hand, when engagement is low, is workload high? Is there a lack of emotional support for issues they’re having?

Nevertheless, regardless of how your employees are feeling, you should support their wellbeing through the good and trying times. With Perkbox your teams can stay physically active by following a range of HIIT and weight workouts. Additionally, there are guided meditations and relaxing bedtime stories for those who struggle to switch off and get enough sleep.

Find out how Perkbox can help you reach your wellbeing goals

5 pillars of wellbeing: your FAQs answered

What are the 5 pillars of wellbeing?

The five pillars of wellbeing most relevant to employees are mental and physical wellbeing, financial wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and digital wellbeing. If any of these pillars are unsupported it will negatively impact on the employee experience. Because employees have different needs and experiences, knowing which pillars to work on can prove difficult. However, in our experience, practising active listening is the most effective solution. You can achieve this with anonymous surveys, polls, and even employee focus groups.

What are some wellbeing strategies?

Why is employee wellbeing important?

Optimise your employee wellbeing strategy and prevent burnout

We've put together this guide to help you create the best possible employee wellbeing strategy.

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