Employee wellness is very important. Health is wealth. I’m always referring to someplace I used to work. But I’m usually making a point.
One time someone put up a poster on the notice board – something about finding a balance between working and living. And the last line stuck with me.
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“Stay in touch. When you fall sick, your work won’t take care of you. Friends and family will.”
Harsh, but true, nonetheless.
The most unfortunate part of this story is that the general manager overheard me discussing that point with some colleagues, and took down the poster instead of taking the lesson – employee wellness.
The industry I resigned from still remains one of the best places an individual can find himself in as far as working in Nigeria is concerned. Yet, there are still a lot of things lacking – infrastructure, especially.
Most of these companies, in spite of the millions they rake in on the backs of their many employees do not take employee wellness into consideration. They still don’t have appropriate healthcare plans for staff. That’s like driving a car without taking care of and properly servicing it. Someday, it’s just going to stop working.
However, while it is easy to blame the employers, the truth is that half of the employees don’t have any idea what their dues are. They have no idea what they are entitled to, what their work packages should be like, and will accept almost anything handed to them.
Asides that, how seriously do we take our own health?
We work very hard, and then play and party very hard. I bet some people only work very hard even with the advent of social media and globalization. It’s a point of concern for me that we do not know exactly how much we do not know about our bodies.
More than half of the adult population has never been to the dentist, has no idea what a ‘physical’ is, don’t know their body weight or blood pressure, so how would they know if they are not getting what they are entitled to at work?
And some of it is willful ignorance.
Some organizations have arrangements with HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) through which they register staff in a chosen hospital and cost of treatment is subsidized. However, with self-medication the order of the day with the average Nigerian, the effectiveness of this method is watered down.
The truth is that the average employee needs some reorientation about his thoughts and attitude toward health and medication. Personal wellness should be a priority for every individual. Employee wellness should be a concern for organisations. Regular checkups and proof of such should be mandatory at the workplace.
It’s in the organisation’s best interest to keep their employees healthy at all times; quite simply, the healthier the more productive. But with the penny-pinching practices of most organizations (who only thinks of cutting cost even at the expense of the employees’ health), employee performance suffers in the long run.
All-round employee wellness should be a priority for organizations. There should be proper healthcare, healthcare plans, and maintenance. There should be proper insurance available for employees.
The organization should invest in educating staff about the dangers of overworking themselves. Employees should learn to pace and time themselves so as to get the best performance out of themselves within the normal working hours.
I once had a boss who insists there’s no reason to work late. His argument is; if we the staff did what we are supposed to do when we are supposed to do it, we should be able to close when we are supposed to.
It turned out he was correct – for the most part.
People die daily, and more often than not no one has any control over that. But we should indeed pay attention to the things we have control over; there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain if we take extra care of ourselves. Exercise, eat right, and follow your payment package at work a little more closely.
But most importantly;
“Stay in touch. When you fall sick, your work won’t take care of you. Friends and family will.”
You matter.
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Photo Credit: ReDahlia
