We are urging businesses to review their benefits packages to ensure they support employees in combatting the stresses related to home working.
Research has revealed that a quarter of UK businesses are concerned about retaining employees after COVID-19. YouGov research also found that 57% of British workers want to be able to continue to work from home.
Working from home is definitely here to stay.
Research from the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that employers expect the number of people working from home regularly, post COVID, will increase to 37%, compared to 18% previously. This means that the benefits packages that many businesses currently offer their employees, are no longer totally suitable.
Many currently offer benefits such as pensions or healthcare. However, these need bringing up-to-date to work in these current times. They must also recognise the changing dynamic that home working brings. They need to be modified to include flexible working and the provision of tools for employees to do their jobs effectively from home.
We suggest employee benefits include:
- Adequate home office equipment. This includes desks chairs, computer, scanning/printing equipment and for this to be updated with the latest virus protection.
- A package to help with utility expenses. To include offering a yearly fixed rate contribution for home usage such as heating, water and electricity.
- Flexible working hours. This will allow employees to pick up and drop off children at schools and nurseries. It will also allow them to attend appointments and any other family commitments.
- Access to independent wellbeing support such as its De-stress Energy Programme.
We would urge businesses to ensure that their packages come with wellbeing support to ensure that workers are coping well at home. We are happy to work with businesses to offer their employees access to our De-stress Energy Programme, which is one of the key services we provide.
The De-stress Energy Programme enables us to work with companies, providing programme modules for managers and employees.
Our Foundation Package focuses on a businesses’ employee’s lives in general. When your staff struggle with significant personal difficulties, it can have adverse impacts on their wellbeing. This has a knock-on effect to their productivity at work.
The Mentor Package is geared towards Line Managers managing a team. It takes account of the stress and responsibility of the position, including how best to understand their team and provide sensitive support.
Modules are a mixture of pre-recorded webinars, interactive online workshops, assessment and certificate. These include CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) coping techniques with an analytical approach to problem solving, combined with a holistic systemic view – accessing those parts of yourself that are usually difficult to reach.
Anyone interested can watch our introduction video here for more details https://bit.ly/3odABmO.