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Wellbeing has long been a focus for CGF members. There are many effective actions that organisations can take to promote mental health in the workplace; research suggests it has strong links to productivity.
Healthy, happy employees are the foundation for every responsible business. As a member of The Consumer Goods Forum, you and your company understand that employees’ physical and mental health impacts their morale, performance and interactions with colleagues, customers, and clients. This year help your business navigate a volatile world – and we’re here with knowledge and support. #WellbeingAtWork.
Thriving workforces mean successful, sustainable businesses. That’s why wellbeing has been a particular focus of many CGF members for some time, through our Collaboration for Healthier Lives (CHL). CHL goes beyond the foundational Employee Health & Wellness commitment, by providing additional strategic and practical value to all CGF members. Because it’s part of all our leadership agendas to care for our employees. To promote company cultures of health and well-being for our people. And to look into ways to help drive ourselves and our industries forward.
Our workforces have never been in greater need of health and wellbeing support. This is a pivotal time. The pandemic has brought losses, uncertainties, changes and hardships. The global economic downturn and cost-of-living crisis has compounded them and is set to continue. And after years of growing awareness, mental health and wellbeing issues have become part of our local, national and global conversations and concerns. Employee’s needs and expectations for support – and the costs of failing to meet them – have risen dramatically. Supporting employee wellbeing is no longer simply the right thing to do, or a means of building a sustainable and competitive advantage. It is now core to business. Whatever the size of our company, how we tackle the challenges we face is both a responsibility and an opportunity.
Globally, almost two-thirds of companies with effective health and productivity programmes believe they perform better than their competitors. Many CGF members know that when they focus on mitigating the impact of non-communicable diseases and make it easier for their employees to pursue healthier lifestyle choices, the company does well while the employees live better lives.
The global workforce has never been in greater need of health and wellbeing support. According to a recent report published with Kin&Co on employee health, most of the world’s 3.4 billion workers are unwell, with 76% reporting they are struggling with their wellbeing. Additionally, A Harvard University study found an average return on investment (ROI) of more than 200% on investments in employee health and wellness programmes. Common strategic objectives include improving productivity, reducing “presenteeism” (when employees are at work but not fully productive due to personal health issues) and disability costs. Workers spend most of their waking time in the workplace – about one-third of the day – making it the critical environment in which to support positive behavioural change.
The coronavirus pandemic has stressed the importance in protecting employees’ health and wellbeing, not only in the workplace but also at home, with the unprecedented numbers of employees working from home during the crisis having to deal with challenges they wouldn’t normally have to face at work, including home-schooling children, isolation, lack of structure and others.
As part of our leadership agenda, caring for our employees is key. It is focused on enabling a culture of health and wellbeing through health and wellness programmes for our people, looking into ways to help drive the industry forward in a collective effort to help employees around the world pursue healthier lifestyle choices and diets. The work goes beyond simply meeting the foundational Employee Health & Wellness Commitment to covering a holistic view on health and wellbeing, and providing strategic and practical value to the wider CGF membership and their 10 million employees.
The workplace is an optimal point of intervention to contribute to the improved health and wellbeing of individuals, and through the Workforce Nutrition Alliance, co-founded by the CGF and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), organisations are coming together to support employers to adopt workforce nutrition programmes. Its goal is to positively impact three million employees in their organisations and supply chains by 2025.
We are entering a new phase for employee health and wellbeing with emerging issues and key learnings from the Covid-19 crisis. Wellbeing and mental health have been described as the epidemic within the pandemic. Our members launched an Employee Experts Conversation Series for HR professionals to share learnings on employee wellbeing, along with practical steps to implement in the workplace. While there is no holy grail to wellbeing, the series was created to try to improve the impact and effectiveness of the Coalition’s actions.
Our expert working group is taking the challenge to cover a holistic view on health and wellbeing and have developed a framework to work towards impact and tracking measurable progress. The framework looks at ACCESS, CULTURE & IMPACT of wellbeing at CGF member companies and how we as an industry can go further together to look after the millions of people that work across our network. We also asked the CEOs on our Board of Directors to share how they look after their personal wellbeing and how they role model it with their teams.
Wellbeing has long been a focus for CGF members. There are many effective actions that organisations can take to promote mental health in the workplace; research suggests it has strong links to productivity.
Published in 2021 by the CGF in collaboration with Kin&Co, this short guide will highlight WHY it is important to embed a culture of wellbeing at work and HOW you can get involved to supercharge your wellbeing culture.
2020 report published with Kin&Co explores global insights on employee health and wellbeing in the consumer goods industry, one of the key themes tackled by the CGF as part of its Collaboration for Healthier Lives Coalition. The report maps out the state of health and wellbeing within the global workforce and seeks to understand the role that business can play to better ensure the health and wellbeing of their employees.
