Finance and accounting professionals face a range of unique challenges — monthly finance cycles and year-end reports, long hours, health issues due to a sedentary occupation, high-level thinking requirements, the pressure of making a high-cost mistake, and more that can negatively impact their wellbeing. The lifestyle of finance professionals such as bankers is also susceptible to the misuse of substances including prescription drugs such as sleeping pills and anxiety medication, alcohol, and caffeine amongst others.
While your organisation may already be offering wellbeing initiatives, a one-size-fits-all approach may be leaving your finance and accounting staff behind. As hyper-personalised employee experiences begin to trend, the same thinking should be applied to workplace wellbeing, ensuring you are offering unique support and solutions for these professionals that directly respond to their specific challenges.
Support both physical and mental health
A recent survey found almost half of working adults in the banking and financial services industries believe their employer is not doing enough to support their physical and mental wellbeing. On top of this, almost three-quarters (74%) believe their employer is not doing enough to support employees through work-related stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues.
Financial sector workplaces have been long regarded as demanding work environments which has led to a rise in mental health-related illness. Finance professionals are also prone to sedentary behaviour, poor nutrition, and sleep deprivation which impacts their overall health and in turn their productivity in the workplace. Your organization’s wellbeing strategy needs to address workers’ total wellbeing by offering the right support services but also changing cultures and behaviours that are causing or perpetuating these problems.
Support workplace transitions with education and training
Increasingly, finance and accounting roles are being replaced with computers and robots due to the rise in technologies such as machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence. Your staff may be left wondering what this will mean for them in the future and if their job is at risk. To stop this weighing heavily on the minds of employees, and possibly causing stress that negatively affects their mental health, your wellbeing strategy should include a comprehensive plan for your company’s adoption of new technologies. This must outline how the organization plans to support the transition of workers to different roles and opportunities. This should include employee education and training programmes to help your people gain new skills as they move through their careers and re-skill if required.
How to rescue your wellbeing strategy
At WellWise, we take a radically different approach to workplace wellbeing. Wellbeing is more than a box-ticking exercise and with the right strategy, it can produce tangible bottom-line benefits while improving the performance and health of individuals too.
Our new whitepaper ‘Why Your Workplace Wellbeing Strategy is Failing and How to Rescue It’ offers insights into the types of challenges your organisation may be facing and provides guidance on how to overcome these straight to your inbox. Download the whitepaper for free here.
