Hello there, Fan of Plans! It’s that time of year again – it’s back to school for the kids, the end of the meteorological summer, and all too soon we feel the nights drawing in. 

Now is the time to think about our wellbeing and how we are going to get through this busy last quarter of 2022. We can feel like there is a lot of pressure put on us in these 3 months, both personally and in the workplace. 

One thing I read about recently came from the CEO of Timpson, an organisation that always seems to come up with some great employee wellbeing initiatives. For employees whose children are starting school for the first time, the organisation gives parents the day off – what a truly lovely gesture for a time when parents must be anxious about their little ones. 

It doesn’t have to be grand gestures – small things like this can really make a difference to an organisations’ morale, and when put together with all the different wellbeing initiatives, can really help to make employees feel cared about. 

Now, it’s not only having these great benefits in isolation, they need to be brought together in a coherent way. Your organisation may have a variety of wellbeing benefits including health insurance, an employee assistance programme, money off schemes, cycle to work schemes, gym members and so on but do employees know about all of these and how they can access them? 

This is where a wellbeing strategy comes in. An initial audit on how many employees are actually using these benefits and also how many employees know about these benefits needs to be measured. Are they getting the use out of the benefits on offer, or are there any benefits that you could be offering that you currently don’t. It’s always worth canvassing your employees to find out what is important to them and what they would make the most use out of. 

Giving your employees this choice will really help them to feel involved in these wellbeing initiatives – arguably this is now more important than ever with the cost of living crisis on everyone’s minds. 

So fans of plan, let’s take this back to school and see what we can learn from our employees about what is important to them on now we can help to support their wellbeing this last quarter of 2022.