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Entrepreneur — While eating well, moving your body and getting rest are familiar wellness mantras and advice that continue to ring true year after year, employers can go further for the well-being of their employees in 2025.
I’ve fully embraced the cliche and, every New Year, I make business resolutions. This year, I’m focused on well-being. As a tech entrepreneur in the healthcare space, well-being is often at the forefront of my mind. While eating well, moving your body and getting rest are familiar mantras and advice that continue to ring true year after year, employers can go further for the well-being of their employees in 2025.
After attending a strategic forum for business leaders earlier this year, I walked away with a deeper understanding of wellness and how, as an employer to a remote workforce, I can support employees and their well-being by taking strategic aim at ending the workplace’s most dreaded feeling: burnout.
When exhaustion is up, productivity goes down
At the pace of business today, we’re all at risk for burnout. With calendars full of meetings and an overflowing inbox greeting us before we’ve had our first cup of coffee, many people are feeling exhausted before they even start their day. Need a business reason why exhaustion is detrimental to your company? It’s not difficult to find statistics and research proving exhausted employees have impaired work performance (via the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine).
According to research presented by Frank Giampietro, Chief Wellbeing Officer at Ernst & Young, productivity decreases and IQ starts to drop at 350 digital interactions per day (digital interactions include emails and Slack messages). Have a busy day of solving problems and interacting with colleagues? That 350 adds up fast.
Questions to ask yourself for holistic employee wellness
To achieve holistic wellness for employees and avoid burnout (while keeping productivity up), here are nine questions employers should ask themselves in 2025:
- Are you supporting their physical health?
Supporting physical health can mean times for walks during the workday, friendly step challenges, or gym stipends. Flexibility with workday and meeting scheduling of course creates the most opportunity for physical health. This way, someone can catch their favorite noon yoga class or get in a swim before the workday begins. - Can meeting behavior be addressed?
According to Giampietro, even a 5-minute break between meetings increases well-being scores and lowers anxiety. Stick to meeting etiquette guidelines and include agendas and action items with each invite. Better yet, cancel some unnecessary meetings. At the very least, every meeting attendee should know why they are there and what the outcome is. - Are you going far enough with flexibility?
Schedule flexibility that allows for switching loads of laundry, attending a middle school recital or an important friend gathering is commonplace. Go further and consider what else may impact an employee’s workday and time. There may be a major event taking place in their city or, common in 2024, extreme weather that needs time and attention for preparation and cleanup. Extra time in the day away from work to manage life responsibilities can go a long way for an employee’s well-being.
Read the full article from Entrepreneur: 9 Questions Leaders Should Ask Themselves to Help End Employee Burnout.
