‘Get ahead of wellbeing, rather than behind it,’ Gartner warns HR leaders

More than four in 10 (46%) US employees don’t use all of the annual leave that’s offered to them – including holidays, appointments, and minor illnesses – according to the Paw Research Centre.

Of these employees, 49% shared that their reluctance to book time off stems from the worry of falling behind with responsibilities, and 43% stated that they feel bad for their co-workers who would have to pick up the extra work. 

However, not taking adequate leave can cause employees to feel heightened stress with lower productivity levels, which can often cause burnout and unplanned absences. 

But, how can businesses combat this, and what should HR leaders do to support both employees and employers?

In an exclusive conversation with Kayla Velnoskey, Senior Principal Researcher in Gartner’s HR practice, UNLEASH explores.

Minimizing disruption caused by vacation or sick leave

Before we get started, ask yourself the question: Within your business, are there any roles that are single points of failure, where when one person is on annual leave, the workplace, or at least, the people around them, are significantly disrupted?

For Gartner’s Velnoskey, this is a key question that highlights whether businesses need to think about this issue with greater redundancy, or whether better systems need to be implemented to transfer tasks between employees. 

“Ensuring all bases are covered is not only important for the working employees, but for the person on leave, too,” Velnoskey begins.

Individuals shouldn’t ever feel that they can’t take vacation or sick leave because they are so important to the function of the organization.”

Moving beyond this point, Velnoskey highlights that HR leaders should identify roles that experience high levels of stress or that face undue burdens.

If these are present within a business, leaders must identify how to alleviate these pressures, for example, by splitting up tasks, improving processes, or creating greater redundancy. 

“I think it’s really important to remember that wellbeing is not just programs that we offer to people when they’re already experiencing stress or need help,” Velnoskey adds.

“It’s important to think about how we design work to better support wellbeing. Wellbeing is not just giving employees band aids when they’re hurt – it’s about actually preventing the problem in the first place.

“Whenever there are a lot of employees coming in and out of availability, it tends to be a time period that can put pressure on employee wellbeing.

“So if we don’t have the right systems in place to handle those vacations, we can definitely see more stress on work during that time period.” 

Prioritizing wellbeing by empowering managers

Encouraging employees to take annual leave and promoting a healthy working environment seemingly goes hand in hand.

But rather than just providing wellness support at work, Velnoskey urges businesses to actually build it into the workplace, which she explains, should be done by treating it as a business performance indicator.  

The same way that leaders pay attention to productivity, turnover, and other metrics to gauge whether a business is healthy, they should also think about wellness in the same way,” she adds.  

In fact, Gartner recently profiled a bank in Latin America that created a ‘wellness at work’ key performance indicator, which was effectively things they felt that they, as an organization, can take responsibility for.

This, of course, didn’t span personal life factors that leaders can’t control, but rather focused on what the organization can impact, such as managerial support, or stress management. 

Likewise, to create a culture like this, Velnoskey expresses that any stigma around needing wellness support should be completely eliminated.

However, reducing stigma of any kind can be challenging, but in relation to mental health, Gartner has found that often employees feel that asking for help can make individuals feel like less of a high performer or less of a go-getter.

“Individuals can feel like they’re not high performers if they ask for help, or say they need a change in pace,” she explains. “So, how do we reduce stigma about discussing the need for a work-life balance, or that we need wellbeing support?

“As a starting point, we encourage businesses to think about managers. Often, businesses can think of managers as solutions, asking them to help, lean in, and to be the point of contact when wellness support is needed. But then, we can end up with the same problem with our managers – becoming overburdened and burnout. 

“Managers are being asked to listen and pay attention to whether employees seem stressed, but often there aren’t the right guardrails in place to ensure this doesn’t cause managers themselves distress.”

She continues to explain that managers need to be trained to provide the right level of support, for example, how to be mindful but not under or over involved in employee wellbeing. 

This is a way in which managers can be protected from feeling as if they’re taking on the burden of other employee’s wellbeing, while still providing sufficient support.

Expanding on this, Velnoskey explains: “We have a lot of evidence that suggests that managers are feeling overburdened in general, and last year, we did a study on the risk of manager failure.

“Managers are often given so many tasks that they no longer feel that they can accomplish all of them at a high level. This is common, especially during times of crisis, for example, during the pandemic.”

As a result of the study, Gartner saw many organizations asking managers to lean in and be really empathetic to their employees, but sometimes, it was reported that they didn’t feel prepared for this – or, they simply didn’t have the right tools.  

These findings highlight the need for the correct training and support for all managers.  

Finally, Velnoskey focuses on the importance of getting ahead of wellbeing, rather than being behind it.  

It shouldn’t be left to when someone is experiencing poor wellbeing, or feeling like their work-life balance is poor, for action to be taken,” she shares.

“After all, by this point, they may already have one foot out the door, so coming in with wellness support can be too late.

“What better helps retain employees is building wellness into work and being proactive about how you’re thinking about it.”