As we approach a new year, many of us take time to reflect and prepare for a fresh start. Now is the time for leaders to understand how culture and space can foster well-being in new ways in the workplace.

It’s no secret employee well-being, in a post-pandemic world, is suffering. Employees are struggling with stress like never before.

At the same time, new Steelcase research revealed that the top workplace concern for global leaders in this coming year will be employee well-being.

In this blog, we share recent insights and statistics from a Work Better webinar conducted by leading furniture manufacturer Steelcase – who Paramount has partnered with for several years – and is renowned for its innovative workspace solutions.

The objective of the webinar was to better understand how well-being is being redefined in today’s workplace.

Gary Strehlke, Well-being Navigator at Steelcase, shared his insights during the webinar. “It’s important to recognise that employees are really a company’s only renewable resource. Employees are impacted by things happening in the workplace – both positive and negative – and things happening outside – things in their personal lives and globally. When you boil it down, it’s a human person performing a task. So often, we think of the tasks themselves, but we lose sight of the employee. Are they coming to work physically, emotionally and cognitively healthy? Can they function socially with their leaders and coworkers so they can continue to perform at a high level? We must be cautious as a company to make sure we’re not doing things that make our employees less healthy, and at the same time look at how we can enhance the health of our employee population.

At Steelcase we’ve created a destination at our Grand Rapids campus that we call a well-being hub. One of the things companies can do to demonstrate that the well-being of their employees matters is to invest in space. One of the ways we’ve invested in space at Steelcase are our three physical hubs: one in our global business centre, as well as a couple in our manufacturing facilities. While most companies invest in well-being vendors, resources and benefits that exist somewhere in the cyber world or in a benefits manual, we really love the idea of investing in a physical space.”

During the webinar, the audience answered several poll questions with 68% of people saying that well-being is very important to their organisation, and 37% of people saying budget and or resources being the main barrier to preventing their company from prioritising well-being. Yet 14% of people said that their organisation is not considering the impact of space on well-being at all.

Steelcase global research tells us Gen Z, which will be the largest generation in the workplace soon, prioritise their own health and well-being and expect the same from their employer more than anyone else.

Is employee well-being part of your company agenda for 2024? What’s the impact of your working environment?

To learn more from the latest Work Better webinar from Steelcase, please visit www.steelcase.com