During the Global Wellness Summit, SRI International (SRI) revealed early findings from the Global Wellness Institute’s upcoming research report into wellness at work.
The full report will be published in January 2016. SRI’s Ophelia Yeung and Katherine Johnston said bad working conditions worldwide were undermining the wellness of the planet and productivity.
“Wellness at work is the right to work in a manner that is healthy, safe, motivating and edifying,” said Johnston. “We are responsible for conducting work in a way that improves our wellness and the wellness of others.”
Their research found that existing workplace wellness schemes are valued by less than one in ten workers because they are suspicious of company’s motives in delivering them.
Workplace wellness is worth US$40bn (€38bn, £26.5bn) globally as an industry, but Yeung said many workplace wellness programmes miss the mark because they are seen as an HR function, instead of being integrated into the company culture. Yeung suggested companies should adopt a wellness culture across the entire organisation.
SRI identified seven trends for the future of work:
1. Both companies and governments will demand change due to rising costs and worsening health.
2. Wellness at work is going to explode across the world in the coming 5-10 years: employers need to keep workers well to stay competitive.
3. Workplace wellness programmes as we know them today will disappear; in their place, companies will create a culture of wellness, and embed wellness in long-term strategy.
4. People will take more responsibility for their own wellness and how work affects it.
5. Companies that do not provide well working environments will not be able to recruit and retain good people.
6. Doing right by employees and the community is good for business. People will be less interested in companies associated with the destruction of the environment or those that don’t treat their employees fairly.
7. Governments will become more aggressive about mandating wellness, including in the workplace.
