Your how-to: Developing a formal wellness culture statement
Developing a formal wellness culture statement for your organisation is a critical step towards promoting employees' mental wellbeing. It is a concrete declaration of your organisation's commitment to prioritise and foster mental health. This statement provides clarity on how the organisation views wellness and outlines its role in ensuring a healthy workplace.
Particularly in Australia, with the implementation of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, employers have a legal duty to safeguard their employees' psychological health making such a statement fundamental. This initiative involves articulating values, guidelines and actions the organisation will take to promote mental wellbeing. A robust wellness culture statement is clear, concise and actionable. Importantly, it should be integrated with the overall organisational culture and strategy, acting as a guiding document in HR policies, management practices and everyday interactions within your business.
Step by step instructions
Initiate the Conversation: Before starting with drafting the wellness culture statement, it's important to involve key stakeholders in the conversation. This can include senior leaders, HR personnel and representatives from the employee network. Hosting a round-table discussion or a brainstorming session is a good starting point to gauge the current sentiment around wellness, and to understand what needs to be done.
Assess the Current State of Wellness: Conduct an evaluation of the current state of wellness in your organisation. This can be through surveys or focus groups. Let employees express their perspectives about the efficacy of existing wellness practices, if any, making sure to maintain anonymity to encourage honesty.
Draft the Wellness Culture Statement: Based on the goals outlined, start working on the draft of the wellness culture statement. It should reflect your organisation’s commitment to employee wellness and the responsibility it takes to ensure a healthy workplace.
Finalise and Announce the Wellness Culture Statement: Once the feedback has been incorporated, finalise the statement. An official announcement should be made internally, using a platform that reaches all staff members. This could be through an all-hands meeting or a company-wide email.
Define what Wellness means for your Organisation Wellness is a broad concept and what it means can differ from one organisation to another. You might want to focus on mental health, physical health, work-life balance or a combination of these and many other facets. Once you have your definition, it should guide the formulation of your wellness culture statement.
Outlining your Goals for Wellness: In this step, lay down clear and actionable goals that your organisation hopes to achieve with respect to the wellness of its employees. These goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound.
Gather Feedback and Improve: Share the draft with your stakeholders and all employees. Consider their feedback and revise the wellness statement. Any improvements should still align with your goals and definitions of wellness.
Integrate the Statement into Practices: Remember, the wellness culture statement is not just a written document but a guide to everyday activities and policies. Ensure its principles are integrated into HR policies, management practices and serve as a guiding document within your organisation.
Use this template to implement
To ensure you can execute seamlessly, download the implementation template.
Pitfalls to avoid
Never overlook the importance of involving employees in the process of creating the wellness culture statement. Their input is key to ensuring the statement reflects the needs and values of the employees it affects. By engaging your team in the design process, you'll foster a more authentic and therefore effective, wellness statement.
Your wellness culture statement should accommodate the diverse requirements and lifestyles of your workforce. Ignoring this could alienate certain staff members. Diversity includes but is not limited to, physical abilities, mental health, family commitments, religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and lifestyle choices.
Once your statement is developed, communicating it effectively is vital. A well-crafted statement that isn't appropriately circulated and explained to the staff will miss its mark.
When crafting the statement, it’s easy to get carried away with complicated jargon or abstract concepts, making the message unclear. Remember, your wellness culture statement should be straightforward and universally understood by every member of your organisation.
Ensure your wellness culture statement is in harmony with your existing company culture and values. A disconnect between the two may lead to confusion amongst staff and a lack of commitment to the wellness initiatives.
A common mistake is to produce the statement and then forget about it. However, it should be continually reviewed and refined. This allows adjustments to be made as your company grows, and employees' wellness needs evolve.