October 25, 2017

Wellbeing named as top priority for 2018 by human resources managers

A vox pop poll carried out by employee engagement firm Reward Gateway at a recent conference claims that wellbeing, pay and benefits and recognition will be the top employee engagement priorities for HR professionals in 2018. The research, which polled 565 HR professionals at Employee Benefits Live 2017, echoes two studies undertaken by the same firm earlier this year. These studies found that companies are looking to invest in areas which UK employees have said are crucial to them, but don’t feel as though their employers are adequately providing: wellbeing and recognition. As the top agenda point, the importance of wellbeing in the workplace was echoed in a study conducted in September 2017, which claimed that 22 million British workers, or 7 in 10 employees (71 percent), have felt stress or financial strain in the last five years. Despite these numbers, the same research also claims that a third of respondents said that their company currently offers no wellbeing programmes.

As with wellbeing, the importance of recognition cannot be understated. A study completed in May 2017 claims that 59 percent of employees surveyed would rather work for a business with a culture where they received recognition, over a higher salary job. The significance of recognition is reflected by the fact that nearly half of employees (49 percent) surveyed admitting that they would leave a company if they did not receive recognition.

The full ranking of employer priorities in the most recent study is: