Employee Wellness

The annual conundrum of the corporate Christmas party - a tradition so fraught with potential for both mirth and mayhem, it's like playing a game of office charades where everyone's trying to guess who will be the first to wear the lampshade as a hat. 

Empact Group, a purpose led partner for catering, cleaning and integrated facilities management solutions in Southern Africa, reaffirmed its commitment to employee well-being with a highly successful Employee Wellness Day recently. The event, which took place across the country at the company’s regional offices in KwaZulu-Natal, Cape Town, Gqeberha and Gauteng, offered staff a variety of health-focused activities, reinforcing the company’s beliefs that a healthy and thriving workforce is the key to long term success.

PepsiCo South Africa is enhancing its holistic approach to employee wellness by launching Carrot; a wellness programme that provides comprehensive personalised guidance to help employees and their families. Carrot provides guidance to help employees navigate surrogacy, pregnancy and postpartum, adoption, perimenopause/menopause, and more.
 

Sometimes we need a mental and physical break from our busy lives for the sake of our well-being. Taking breaks helps us recharge and refocus on what is important in life.

As the global economy is in constant evolution, the ability for businesses to adapt and continuously learn is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and ensuring long-term success. South African businesses, while rich in opportunity and entrepreneurial spirit, face distinctive challenges that significantly impede their ability to adopt a learning culture.

It’s not uncommon for individuals to feel stuck in a rut in their professional lives. Despite putting in the work and the hours, they may still not see the progress or growth they desire.

As a leader in your organization, it is crucial to embrace the task of continuously fostering growth and development within your teams. This approach holds the key to not only enhancing existing leadership skills but also identifying untapped potential among individuals. 

In today’s fast-paced and often disrupted work environment, mental health and overall wellness can’t be avoided. It demands attention from employers and employees alike. Essentially, taking care of your own and your team members’ well-being means trying to help them stay in a toward state and switched on where they can function at their best (i.e., avoiding triggering the fight/flight/freeze response that put people in an away state and switch them off). 

Multitasking involves working on two or more tasks simultaneously, switching back and forth from one thing to another, believing we are achieving greater efficiency. 

Every company wants a healthy and productive workforce, and there’s growing awareness of the benefits of including nutrition in employee wellness programmes.  Without this focus, the workplace can inadvertently foster unhealthy eating habits. 

Health economists estimate that unaddressed mental health conditions cost the South African economy R161 billion per year due to lost days of work, presenteeism (being at work but unwell), and premature mortality.

Creating a harmonious work-life balance or work-life integration is critical to improve not only our physical, emotional and mental well-being, but it’s also important for your career.

Over the past three years, the world has seen the biggest workplace shift since the industrial revolution, with the introduction of hybrid and remote work options as a result of pandemic lockdowns.

In recent years, the term gaslighting has entered the public lexicon after this toxic behaviour became better identified and understood in personal and romantic relationships.

Contrary to popular opinion, the law firm of the future will not be populated by highly intelligent, unemotional, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots who make cold and calculating legal decisions based on massive databases of legal knowledge. Rather, law firms will be home to a new breed of lawyers that have adapted to operate in a connected world. 

On 18 March 2022, the Minister of Employment and Labour Minister published the ‘Code of Good Practice on the Prevention of Elimination of Harassment in the Workplace’ (Harassment Code).  

While mental health problems affect many employees both at home and at work, the unfortunate reality is that due to various stigmas associated with mental health issues, they are not acknowledged and dealt with appropriately in the working environment.

Businesses have incredible power to influence the communities in which they operate as well as society as a whole. They should use this power to help create awareness around important social and socio-economic issues, such as the ongoing fight against breast cancer.

If you're running a business, especially a smaller business, there are many thing you need to worry about. For starters, you need to ensure that the company is running smoothly at all times, your employees are satisfied and that you're making a good profit. However, these things cannot be achieved if your employees have poor health. Here are 6 reasons why you should be concerned about your employees' mental and physical well-being.

South Africans are largely considered to be resilient – we’ve weathered a pandemic, political instability, rampant unemployment, water issues and load shedding.