How organisations can use the four pillars of workplace health to enhance the employee experience

As the world grapples with rapid technological advancements, demographic shifts and evolving work paradigms, it is vital to invest in workplace health to enhance employee wellbeing.

Why prioritising workplace health is key

Just 22% of people are thriving at work, according to research from Indeed, and a sense of belonging has the greatest importance in influencing work wellbeing.

Organisations which create a healthy environment for their employees see improved business performance as a result. Research from the University of Oxford found that companies with higher ratings for wellbeing have higher gross profits, company valuations, profitability and stock performance.

T.J. Byrne, Chief Operating Officer at Healthy Place to Work, was one of the speakers at our LinkedIn Live panel in December 2024 which discussed how inclusive and healthy workspaces drive business success. He said when people describe their health status as very good, they are more likely to give positive responses in regards to their opinion of their organisation’s leadership, peer support, performance management and more.

“If it’s a healthy culture that you’re working in where you have the opportunity to grow, develop and feel accepted and welcomed, then work will actually be a positive contributor to your health,” he explains.

Four pillars of workplace health

In Healthy Place to Work’s model, there are four pillars of workplace health:

• Connection
• Mental resilience
• Purpose
• Physical health

The connection pillar is focused on how employees need to feel connected to their company, their colleagues and society in general to feel healthy. Mental resilience and purpose are centred on psychological safety and the individual feeling that they are equipped with the right tools and training to carry out their job effectively, and that job is part of an organisation’s wider success. Physical health describes how an employee’s biological health, as well as their workplace environment, supports their health.

These pillars feature a range of subcategories, some of which are influenced by the individual and some are influenced by the company. 

How organisations can build a healthy workplace

1. Embrace a culture of wellbeing

Having a wellness culture is one of the subcategories of the model, but in order to truly embrace this, the mindset must start from the top, T.J. says.

“It needs to be part of the DNA of the organisation – having people front and centre. It’s not enough to have the statements of ‘our people are our most important assets’. If that’s not the lived experience that people have at work then the organisation’s leadership will not be trusted.

Creating a healthy workplace can be done through the organisation but it really needs to be done by senior leaders walking their talk, and they have to exhibit a care and concern for people and their wellbeing.”

There is currently a clear gap between the opinions of workers and the opinions of executives in the wellbeing practices of their organisation. Deloitte research found that 75% of C-suite executives said that leaders often or always make wellbeing a priority and lead with empathy, whereas just 54% of employees felt this way.

One way that leaders can set a culture of wellbeing is to demonstrate a healthy work/life balance. Almost two-thirds of people (65%) say that workload is the biggest cause of stress at work, more than double the next cause. Leaders that can demonstrate a healthy balance of work and non-work activities can help to contribute to a better sense of wellbeing throughout the organisation.

Another way to promote wellbeing is to support employees with wellness initiatives and programmes, which can be done in partnership with a workplace team. ISS worked with a customer to offer curated events for its employees such as mindfulness sessions, belonging events, yoga classes and provided healthy snacks during the day. This approach boosts employee engagement and satisfaction when they are in the office, leading to improved business success.

Wellbeing programmes can also improve employee health in the model’s subcategories that the individual usually influences, such as energy and rest. T.J. describes that there can be overlap between what the employee affects and what the organisation affects:

“If you haven’t slept very well because you’re worried about your finances, you cannot perform at your optimum in the morning. We need to recognise that could be impacting on individual’s capacity to perform, so therefore we might provide some workshops on sleep hygiene or methods of relaxation. That is how organisations can influence thing things owned by the individual.”

2. Build a culture of belonging through inclusive and diverse workspaces

In the workplaces categorised as healthy, 97% of people agree that they feel like they belong in their workplace and 95% agree they can be themselves at work without facing negative consequences.

Organisations can create a sense of belonging through diversity and inclusion, another subcategory of Healthy Place to Work’s model. Building an accessible workspace enables all employees to feel valued, contributing to their overall health.

Margot Slattery, Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion and Social Sustainability at ISS, says facilities management providers have an important role to play in creating these spaces at customer sites.

“We’re quite involved in the design, build, concierge and how a building looks and feels. The part that we can play is to mitigate the circumstances that make people feel less comfortable. We need to make sure the building is accessible, easy to navigate and takes into account all the different users and their different requirements.”

ISS does this in partnership with Mobility Mojo, which provides a full assessment of customer facilities from an accessibility standpoint, providing feedback on areas to improve. Mobility Mojo’s Chief Executive Offer, Stephen Cluskey, was another speaker at the LinkedIn Live session, which you can watch here.

"When a user goes into a building, it's important that something's there when, where and how they need it so that they feel comfortable - this can make their experience go from being negative to positive," Margot adds.

3. Create frictionless workspace amid hybrid working practices

Over half (51%) of UK workers are hybrid working and so creating a frictionless experience in the office for them when they go in also will contribute to greater employee engagement.

To design a space that supports both hybrid and full-time office-based workers, organisations should consider categorising the building occupants, for example into workstyle personas. This helps to group employees based on how they collaborate or their attributes, with organisations then designing areas of the workspace that appeal to specific preferences (read more in Designing Curated Workplace Experiences report).

Similarly, ISS worked with a customer to group its building occupants into fully on-site employees, fully on-site customer-facing employees, hybrid workers and visitors or clients. We then used these categorisations to develop curated experiences and boost their workplace experience.

Customers can also create a frictionless experience for employees through the Workplace app, which has features such as seeing which colleagues are in the office, finding and booking meeting rooms, raising tickets for IT and pre-ordering food to avoid queuing in the canteen.

Having an office space suited to the different types of employees and their working patterns and having technology in place to create a seamless experience throughout the day ensure that workers feel a sense of belonging and that they are valued.

Healthy culture within facilities management provider ensures best outcome for customers

In order to effectively support customers in creating healthy workspaces, Margot says that facilities management providers also need to ensure they have the right culture internally. This ensures that the positive feeling that staff have is then taken to customer sites. 

“It’s about culture, it’s about safety. It’s about you having the feeling that you’re truly valued within the organisation. If we create that feeling within our people then we can send them out with the best attitude to the places they go,” she says.

ISS has a range of initiatives with this in mind, such as our partnership with Tent which has seen us hire over 1,000 refugees since 2022. We have also given over 73,000 placemakers or their family members a recognised qualification, with the goal of reaching over 100,000 by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, our Education for All programme in India provides full funding for placemakers to complete 10^th to 12^th grade education, as only 40-50% of students in the country complete 12^th grade otherwise.

These initiatives provide opportunities for underrepresented groups and provide our placemakers with the skills to maximise their careers. This culture provides a greater sense of belonging within ISS, which in turn provides the best service for our customers.