Here’s how to retain your staff and keep them happy and engaged

Wellbeing initiatives the latest in company bids to hold onto staff.

Michael Voigt, general manager of The Goring hotel in London.

Wellbeing initiatives are increasingly popular in workplaces, with employers using them to keep staff engaged and prevent them from leaving at a time of severe skills shortages around the world.

A key measure for gauging happiness at work in The Sunday Times’s best places to work in the UK this year, wellbeing is an area where companies are becoming more innovative.

At Bristol renewables firm OVO Energy, its 4242 employees are allowed up to three paid days a year to volunteer for a good cause, and about 9 per cent is added to salaries for accessing benefits such as gym memberships. Last year, as a relief measure against the rising cost of living, Pizza Express gave its 9242 employees four free pizzas a month. At London recruitment firm 11 Investments, staff are treated to monthly get-togethers and events such as a summer ball; they also get a £500 annual wellbeing allowance, extra holidays, trips abroad and complimentary breakfasts.

The 187 staff at easyJet Holidays can take two hours away from their job every two weeks to do something to help their wellbeing. The 28 employees at Big Bite Creative get a healthy free lunch on top of an average salary above £45,000 plus bonuses; staff also get £750 a year for learning resources or attending industry events.

Marketing firm Awin allows its 441 London employees to work either four days a week or three plus two half-days; they can also access a wellness program and mental health coaches.

Wellness can relate to mental, physical or financial issues, says Lord Mark Price, founder of employee experience platform WorkL, which partnered with The Sunday Times in its quest to find the best places to work.

Pay isn’t the most important factor that produces workplace happiness or engagement, and is often trumped by a simple gesture such as a thankyou note to staff. Employers don’t say thankyou often enough – about once every two months compared to a daily exercise in fault-finding. Companies pay a big price for this fault when employees express their feelings with their feet. “Flight risk” is an avoidable cost, Lord Price says.

The Goring hotel, which won an award in The Sunday Times list of Britain’s most loved workplaces, might have found the perfect solution to keeping staff loyal and happy.

“The focus on staff wellbeing and mental health has become a real priority,” says The Goring’s general manager Michael Voigt, recalling how the pandemic changed every organisation’s thinking towards staff wellbeing.

“And other places which don’t deal as well with it lose staff, and they don’t know why.” He says 92 per cent of The Goring’s staff are proud to be working there. The reasons, he says, are embedded in the hotel’s family culture – “the culture of kindness” – and thinking outside the box when it comes to staff development, which have resulted in “high retention and length of service throughout each department” and “low sickness and absence rate”.

As a workplace, the five-star hotel, which has a staff strength of 180, has a formula for its success in staff retention which cannot be copied by competitors, Voigt says. The recipe includes: “Our heritage of being a family-run hotel for the past 113 years; unique staff benefits, including yoga, puppy therapy, talking therapy (a social psychologist is available at the hotel one day a week to talk to staff about their problems), chiropodist, massages, monthly staff events, nutritious staff meals, staff accommodation, staff development programs.”

To secure staff wellbeing, even break some corporate rules, Voigt says. For example, the hotel got a staff member’s parents out of the Ukraine war zone, absorbing the costs for flights, visas and accommodation.

Pay is an important determinant of staff happiness, Voigt says, but it is not the most important so long as it is fair and competitive.