How an agile wellbeing strategy can benefit your business

Covid-19 has reshaped all aspects of our lives, includ­ing the way we work. But the stress of adapt­ing to new tech­nol­o­gy and alter­nate ways of oper­at­ing has tak­en its toll on employ­ees – so much so that busi­ness­es are now in the throes of a well­be­ing cri­sis. 

So, how do employ­ers sup­port the grow­ing num­bers of staff suf­fer­ing from burnout, or strug­gling to keep up with the changes, while also offer­ing greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in the work­place for those who have appre­ci­at­ed work­ing from home dur­ing the long months of the pan­dem­ic? 

One solu­tion could be to adopt an agile approach. It is well doc­u­ment­ed that busi­ness agili­ty can improve effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but many are unaware of the ben­e­fi­cial effect it can have on employ­ee well­be­ing. And the impact of a hap­pi­er work­force on human resources depart­ments, not to men­tion the ben­e­fits to busi­ness oper­a­tions more wide­ly, can be sig­nif­i­cant. 

There are four prin­ci­ples of busi­ness agili­ty – plac­ing indi­vid­u­als and inter­ac­tions over process­es and tools; putting work­ing soft­ware ahead of com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion; valu­ing cus­tomer col­lab­o­ra­tion over con­tract nego­ti­a­tion; and respond­ing to change rather than fol­low­ing a plan. 

Putting these in place across an organ­i­sa­tion can help to stave off some staff well­be­ing issues before they arise, says man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy BearingPoint’s glob­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty lead, Wiebke Ras­mussen: “Adopt­ing agile prin­ci­ples, if real­ly incor­po­rat­ed for the whole organ­i­sa­tion, ben­e­fits employ­ees’ men­tal health from a pre­ven­tion per­spec­tive.” 

Ras­mussen has expe­ri­ence of imple­ment­ing agile work­ing prac­tices, and under­stands the ben­e­fits it offers busi­ness­es, from her pri­or work in the non-prof­it sec­tor. Non-prof­its, she says, “have a very strong focus on par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach­es and out­come-based solu­tions they work on. They do a lot of things that real­ly have agile at their roots in the non-prof­it sec­tor, although they don’t call it that.” 

Embrac­ing agile work­ing prac­tices is, she says, “an invest­ment in a health­i­er organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture”.

Putting individuals first

But invest­ing in a health­i­er struc­ture requires a rethink of work­ing prac­tices and how employ­ees com­mu­ni­cate. Man­ches­ter-based train­ing provider The Growth Com­pa­ny, which is run as a social enter­prise, adopt­ed an agile strat­e­gy to try to boost employ­ee well­be­ing. With­in six months, it saw sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in staff morale. A sur­vey of work­ers under­tak­en by the organ­i­sa­tion high­light­ed how employ­ees cher­ished the impact that the intro­duc­tion of agile work had had on their work/life bal­ance and, there­fore, their well­be­ing. 

Respon­dents to The Growth Com­pa­ny sur­vey said they felt they were able to be more open and hon­est with their line man­ag­er about their lev­el of per­for­mance and the chal­lenges they need­ed to over­come to achieve their goals. That increased open­ness and made the inter­ac­tions more con­struc­tive, too, which meant the busi­ness was able to adjust work com­mit­ments as well as insti­gate addi­tion­al sup­port for employ­ees who were strug­gling.

Doing, not documenting

“One of the most seri­ous impacts the pan­dem­ic has had on the world of work is on employ­ees’ well­be­ing,” says Derek Irvine, of HR man­age­ment firm Workhu­man. “Work­ers around the world have felt the stress and burnout of rapid­ly adapt­ing to entire­ly new ways of work­ing.” 

Recog­nis­ing that Workhuman’s tra­di­tion­al sys­tems and process­es were no longer ten­able, the com­pa­ny changed tack, apply­ing agile prin­ci­ples to all aspects of the busi­ness. 

“The agile method is all about con­tin­u­ous feed­back – try, learn, deliv­er, iter­ate, try, fail, learn, deliv­er, and so on,” explains Irvine. “Agile works because it keeps peo­ple focused on con­sis­tent­ly mov­ing for­ward. It also enhances employ­ees’ sense of per­son­al con­trol and auton­o­my, due to its focus on flex­i­bil­i­ty.”

The approach has the added ben­e­fit of encour­ag­ing clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion and can reduce the men­tal bur­den on work­ers by chunk­ing up tasks into small­er, eas­i­er-to-achieve goals. That shift in focus to what can be done, rather than mak­ing sure every­thing is per­fect, helps to alle­vi­ate unnec­es­sary stress­es on employ­ees, he says. “I can see how it could eas­i­ly apply in oth­er areas of life, too.”  

Putting workers first

Putting the cus­tomer or end user first – a cen­tral pil­lar of an agile strat­e­gy – is anoth­er boon for well­be­ing. “It’s all about con­tribut­ing to a larg­er goal and feel­ing like your efforts are val­ued – and the pos­i­tive effect that has on people’s well­be­ing,” says Ras­mussen. 

Pur­pose has become a major dri­ver for many employ­ees and a key choice they make when decid­ing where to work. 

Accord­ing to research by man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey, sev­en out of 10 employ­ees’ sense of pur­pose is formed by what they do in the work­place. “I would say it’s about self-empow­er­ment,” says Ras­mussen. 

By putting employ­ees first, and fuelling their inspi­ra­tion, busi­ness­es can height­en well­be­ing and head off issues before they arise, she says. “Feel­ing empow­ered does some­thing to your self-con­fi­dence” – with knock-on effects on the over­all men­tal health of staff as a result. 

Flexible working

A third of British work­ers sur­veyed by Cana­di­an HR firm Life­Works said that offer­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty in the work­space was the most impor­tant action that could sup­port their good men­tal health. 

“Employ­ees want flex­i­bil­i­ty that allows them to man­age life issues as they come up, and to organ­ise their work sit­u­a­tion in a way that works for them,” says Paula Allen, glob­al leader and senior vice-pres­i­dent of research and total well­be­ing at the com­pa­ny, which advis­es busi­ness­es on their agile well­be­ing strate­gies.

Struc­tur­ing work in an agile man­ner is cru­cial for keep­ing well­be­ing high, she says: “Employ­ers need to be mind­ful that the impact of the pan­dem­ic will not be over when restric­tions are no longer in place.” 

Avoiding issues of implementation

There are pit­falls asso­ci­at­ed with the adop­tion of agile prac­tices in a company’s HR func­tion, how­ev­er. While respond­ing to change in an agile way, rather than fol­low­ing a plan, is impor­tant when con­sid­er­ing work­ers’ well­be­ing, for exam­ple, some guide­lines and pro­ce­dures are nec­es­sary for when issues arise. And, ulti­mate­ly, every organ­i­sa­tion is mea­sured by its out­come. 

“Hav­ing this idea of real­ly under­stand­ing what agile means and feel­ing it – and try­ing to adopt its mind­set – is impor­tant,” says Ras­mussen. But “if you think of agile only from a method­olog­i­cal per­spec­tive, that’s a risk”. 

Insti­gat­ing a more agile well­be­ing strat­e­gy must there­fore start at the top, she says. Lead­ers need to feel empow­ered to make a change and require train­ing on how to devel­op an agile approach, and this will then trick­le down to the rest of the work­force. “Let your lead­ers reach out to their peo­ple and reap the ben­e­fits,” she says.

So, as employ­ees return to phys­i­cal work­spaces and con­front a new, post-pan­dem­ic world of employ­ment, com­pa­nies should seize the moment to adopt a more agile way of work­ing that will ben­e­fit not only employ­ees’ well­be­ing but the busi­ness as a whole, says Allen. “Now is not the time to sit still.”