Majority of UK businesses taking steps to address employees’ mental health

Latest findings have revealed that UK businesses are so far delivering on employee engagement in the current Coronavirus pandemic.

The research, compiled by Wazoku, found that 86% of respondents say their organisation has provided enough technical information for them to work from home effectively, 70% say their employer has taken steps to ensure their mental health and well-being is addressed and 72% have been consulted about how best they can all approach home working during the crisis.

Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku, said, “Employee engagement is always an important part of business, but during the pandemic it is taking on a much more human importance.”

“The technical side is actually pretty easy and it’s the one-to-one connections that really make a difference. A daily video call might be the only contact with another person that an employee has that day, so way beyond what employee engagement can do for general motivation and involvement, it also makes a huge difference to mental health and well-being.”

Keeping employees engaged throughout this crisis is one of the most important challenges that many businesses are facing, with 80% of respondents believing the Coronavirus crisis is the biggest challenge they have known in their working life, while 71% admit to feeling cut off from the wider workplace community.

This feeling of being cut off and a lack of collaboration when homeworking is characterised in some of the business issues cited by survey respondents as being most impacted by recent events. Beyond a full understanding of their day-to-day priorities, the areas of business most affected by people working from home were identified as internal collaboration around ideas (28%) and external collaboration around ideas (23%).

UK businesses have mostly made great efforts to keep their employees engaged and motivated, in what is a challenging and difficult time for all concerned. While the c-suite has a host of other pressing issues that need addressing, firms have provided many measures to motivate their staff.

The top five were identified as follows:

• Regular one-to-one calls (44%)
• Specific best-practice tips and guidance on working from home (31%)
• Daily company-wide video calls (28%)
• Subscriptions to online video conferencing software, such as Zoom or Teams, (24%)
• Virtual team lunches (13%).

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