Employee wellness should be an ongoing priority for every employer because of the positive impact it has on each employee, as well as the impacts it has on overall culture and function of the workplace. 

 Why Health and Wellbeing Matters 

Health and wellbeing of employees is a win-win for the employee and the employer, resulting in several benefits:

• Enhanced performance and productivity
• Improved recruitment and retention
• Decreased job absence
• Boosts in culture, morale, and engagement
• Increased job satisfaction
• Reduced health care costs

Thousands of years ago, Roman Poet Virgil wisely stated, “The greatest wealth is health.” One of the simplest ways we can give back to our employees is to pay attention to and invest in their health and wellness. Regularly identifying ways we can support employees to achieve and maintain good health–physical and behavioral, including connecting them with resources when it appears they’re struggling, is not only good for business, it’s great for employee and public relations.

 How to Measure Employee Wellness

Evaluation is a critical component of effective implementation of evidence-based practices and is also essential to employee wellness. Measuring employee wellness can be both informal (observation) and formal (surveys and analytics).

As supervisors, ongoing two-way conversations with employees allow for honest feedback and increase the likelihood of improved employee performance and professional development. Regular review and approval of team members’ timesheets, keeping an eye on personal time off and overtime hours worked, is another way supervisors can observe employee wellness because excessive hours in either category can have a direct result on the employee’s well being and productivity. Helping an employee balance overtime and time off helps reduce burnout and improve productivity for all employees.

Employee experience/sentiment surveys are great tools for providing insight specific to employee wellness and workplace culture. For the best results, conducting several employee surveys throughout the year is recommended because doing so provides longitudinal data. Additionally, surveying new recruits upon hire, within 60 days of hire, and again within six months and then at one year of employment can help employers identify individual employee needs, can identify opportunities to improve organizational culture and enhance retention.

Utilization of the Organizational Readiness Survey captures staff and leadership perceptions of the current work environment and their beliefs specific to an ideal organizational environment. With this feedback, organizations can develop a plan to address areas where there are large gaps between perceptions of the ideal and the current environments. The Organizational Readiness Survey can also be used to assess the culture for any large initiative, such as the implementation of evidence-based practices. 

 Pro Tip:

Community corrections is an incredibly difficult job made easier through evidenced-based practices and collaboration. Systemwide, we are all working to implement progressive approaches to supervision that are shown to improve individuals’ lives, reduce recidivism, and create safer communities. As we share our clients’ journeys, it is inevitable that we will take on their stress and vicarious trauma, which can lead to burnout over time. Moving forward with the implementation of evidence-based practices, it is critical that we don’t lose sight of the employees working tirelessly in the trenches to help the individuals we supervise be successful. Trauma-informed care and wellness practices for employees are, indeed, evidence-based practices.

Wellness practices are critical to ensuring everyone’s wellbeing–our own and our employees. With fall approaching and the warm days of summer wrapping up, it’s important to take a minute and reflect on your wellness. What did you do this summer to take care of yourself? Did you take a vacation? Did you set aside time to step away and take care of yourself? Did you spend time with family and friends?

Taking vacation and stepping away from the job are crucial to maintaining a healthy work/life balance. In addition, there are other practices we can implement daily that don’t take much time and help to center us when we’re feeling stressed:

• Take a short walk–invite a coworker to join you
• Journal
• Deep breathing exercises, such as box breathing
• Finger tapping exercises
• Use of fidget toys
• Grounding exercises, such as putting your bare feet in grass
• Talk with a trusted friend
• Meditation, even for just five minutes
• Pet a dog or other animal
• Practice positive thinking
• Set and maintain boundaries

I encourage each of you to take care of yourselves because doing so increases your ability to take care of others. Take a minute to just breathe when the stress gets to you, go for a walk, or talk with your supervisor or a trusted coworker when you need a safe ear to process difficult cases. If you haven’t taken a vacation yet, schedule one. Whether it’s a week or two off in a row or a series of days off here and there, a trip somewhere or a staycation, use your time off to take care of yourself. True time off or away from the office, without worrying about the office, is important to our health and wellbeing.

Thank you for all the incredible work you do to make our communities safer. I look forward to connecting with you soon and hearing about your next vacation or staycation!

 Director April Billet, York County 

Next Month: Sentencing Practices 

Positive change is possible for everyone in Pennsylvania. We look forward to continuing to enhance your EBP knowledge and invite you to submit education/resource requests to askppcji@gmail.com.