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The Importance of Staff Welfare In a Post Covid World

Staff welfare has always been important, but in a post Covid 19 world, it is has become even more crucial to check in with staff and make sure they are okay. When you have a lot of staff on the books it can be difficult to prioritise staff welfare as much as you would like, but we’ve found these methods simple and effective:

Have a dedicated Welfare Officer

Having a dedicated Staff Welfare Officer who is on hand to listen to complaints, concerns and ideas can massively improve the working environment. The Welfare Officer should be independent to other departments and will only speak to relevant parties to get a wide view of the situation and work out the best course of action. At Arc, we like to encourage a comfortable space where staff can speak openly about work-related issues or other things that may be bothering them — this can be completely confidential if the team member wishes.

Monthly surveys and feedback collection

To keep improving as a business and ensure you are always listening to what the staff want; it is important new team members are given the opportunity to report worries anonymously and make suggestions via a monthly survey. For those who have been with you for longer try quarterly surveys to gauge what is important to your long-standing workers.

Whatever surveys you do, make sure you let people know what actions you’ve taken since they last gave feedback, otherwise they will stop filling the surveys in.

Monthly newsletters

Keeping staff up to date with all the things they need to know. Monthly newsletters help staff feel part of a bigger picture and community. They can offer staff the opportunity to share things with other team members e.g., events/fundraisers they are organising and want to build interest in.

Worker of the month

A pretty traditional method but one that has proven useful for us. It’s important that team members are being recognised fairly and thanked often. A “Worker of the Month Scheme” can be a great way to achieve this. Staff can be recognised if they’ve received good feedback form a client, have been consistently reliable for shifts or just generally have an extremely friendly and positive attitude.

We do our Team Member of the Month slightly differently, in that for every team member who wins their bonus we also donate the same amount to a charity of the team member’s choice! It’s proven a great way to keep staff engaged and help them make a difference.

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