Live text: Healthiest Companies - preliminary results of OWB Study

Business Review Magazine and D&D Research are announcing in today’s event the preliminary results of the OWB study, the first research project to measure Organizational Well-Being using a scientific instrument, deeply rooted in today’s business culture and context.

Session 2: Dimensions of Organizational Well-Being

Ilinca Paun, managing partner, Colliers International: “The essence of wellbeing depends on the business performance on the company.”

Alecsandra Ionita – wellbeing specialist at Smart Experience: “Most of the wellbeing programs implemented by companies aim to offer employees knowledge and the capacity to make decisions.”

Wellbeing rules:

Develop a solid strategy

Be creative

Use the technology – there are a lot of free apps in the area of wellbeing.

Be consistent in the internal communication – from our experience, we saw that in a company not only the HR departments coordinates such a program, but also the communication and CSR operations.

Integrate wellbeing in the business events – insist that this component is present more in the organization.

Associate wellbeing with professional success – 10 percent of the demand we had for wellbeing services came from department managers that carried out leadership initiatives, for instance.

Create communities/communication platforms – the communities help companies to communicate the intentions regarding the wellbeing program.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel – if you see that there is a lot of demand on physical activities, focus on that area.

Ambassador – there are some companies that understood the importance of ambassadors, companies that identify themselves with a certain area of wellbeing, and these ambassadors will help promote this initiatives through word of mouth.

“In 2016, half of the wellbeing program developed by SmartExperience were in the Arts&Hobbies section,” said Ionita.

Antoniu Panait, managing director, Vastint: “We are a part of the package of solutions that the employer can offer the employee to increase the retention, motivation and profitability per employee.”

“In the development of offices, we are always looking at what will come next,” explained Panait, who added that Vastint is developing two office projects in Bucharest.

“We looked at developing offices as close as possible to the employees,” said Panait. He explained that 30 percent of land surface of the two office projects is allotted to green spaces.

Starting with project facilities and the proximity of the projects, kindergartens, schools, hospitals, are among the first things that companies are asking for, explained Panait.

The employers are asking more questions, are very interested in equipment, suppliers, what we are doing on CSR, said Panait. He added that younger managers are putting more questions about parking spaces for bikes or charging stations for electric cars on the premises of the office projects.

Ovidiu Vasile, corporate affairs director, Regina Maria: “Prevention is one of the most important aspects regarding the health of corporate clients and patients in general.”

“The Romanian patient is a reactive one and uses medical services only when he or she has a health issue,” said Vasile, citing a GfK study.

Most of our clients are active people, working in corporations, said Vasile.

The fact that the companies offer as benefits the health services, it eases the access of employees to such services, said the Regina Maria representative.

We are carrying out information campaign on illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and obesity, explained Vasile.

“Health subscription packages influence the employee retention rates of companies,” said the Regina Maria official.

Andrei Ion – managing director, CEB/SHL Romania and lector, The Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences:

35 percent of the individual wellbeing is due to genetic factors, according to a study carried out on twins, said Ion. He added that three genes were identified as having a strong relation to wellbeing.

The physical activities have medium effect sizes on wellbeing, said Ion, citing a meta-analysis. He added that cardio training has the best influence on wellbeing. Next are the exercises for building muscular mass. Excercises with a moderate intensity have the best results for wellbeing.

“In Romania we don’t have any relation between socio-economic status and wellbeing,” said Ion.

OWB Study attracted 2,537 respondents, out of 20 companies to date

The impact on marriage on wellbeing. In the first months and year there is a higher moderate negative impact of marriage on wellbeing, according to several studies, said Ion.

The kids have a rather positive impact on emotional wellbeing and rather a negative one on the cognitive wellbeing, explained Ion.

Citing meta-analysis, he said the results are mixed regarding the impact of money on the wellbeing of an individual.

The studies say that the level of stressors, workload and pressure is not linked to wellbeing, explained Ion. He added the key is to offer more resources to the employees.

“We can intervene up to 65 percent on the level of wellbeing,” explained Ion.

Session 1: How healthy are Romanian companies?

Mihail Pricop (Autonom): The challenge for 2017 is staff retention. We would also like to see more smiles in the offices.

We embraced the OWB Study because it came one month after the Best Employer study. There were over 90 persons that filled the survey out of over 200, said Pricop.

On the significance of work, people know what they are working for, not just to get a wage. Each employee is able to do projects on education through our foundation, said Pricop.

Ramona Salagean – human resources lead Romania, Accenture: “Accenture is going through a global change regarding the way we perceive global performance”. “We are trying to move the approach so as to encourage more individual performance, not just measuring it.”

“The new elements brought by this survey are related strictly to the individual, such as the dimension of perceived stress which was not that well measured compared to what we were doing up to now internally,” said Salagean.

We have tried through managers to explain to the employees why we are taking part in the study. We have left two apples to the table of each employee – one red and one green and ask them how he or she felt, she explained.

You need to move more in non-email area and try to capture the attention of employees through other means. The development area has been confirmed in the study, loyalty to company was similar to other studies, and the perceived stress level is in the OK area, said the Accenture representative.

Stress and emotional reaction was not something we were measuring through the existing surveys, said Salagean. She invited other companies in the professional services sector to take part in the OWB Study.

The work pressure is perceived more in the outsourcing division compared to the technology one, said Salagean about some of the findings of the research in the case of Accenture Romania.

Corina Ghiatau – organizational development manager, Orange Romania: “We want agility for us in 2017”.

We want to give the ball to the employees on managing wellbeing, said Ghiatau.

“We are measuring the stress levels every three years,” said Ghiatau about Orange Romania.

Dan Petre, business developer, D&D Research: We need more diversity, including more companies and more types of companies.

“This is an unique project which will represent the first study on organizational wellbeing done in Romania,” said Petre.

The average survey completion duration is of 14 minutes.

“There are results for 14 dimensions. Up to now, there are 2,537 respondents, out of 20 companies,” said Petre.

“People consider that the work they do has significance,” said Petre on the findings of the study up to now.

For Millennials, the work pressure is lower compared to Generation x. The stress is a little bit bigger for Millennials, said Petre on the other preliminary findings of the OWB study.

Petre called on companies to participate at this study, after presenting some of the initial findings of the research. He said that in order to have relevant data, at least half of the employees of a company need to fill the survey.

DMCA

PROTECTED