Dr Wolfgang Seidl from Mercer on the business importance of compassion and resilience in leaders
It is a challenge to get business leaders to understand the importance of compassion, boldness and resilience and how it's related to diversity and inclusion.
"In this context now, we are reminded about what really matters in our lives and health is on top of that list," explains Dr Seidl. "When researchers ask people about life satisfaction they mention mental health first, then quality of work, then relationships."
He goes on to describe the link between wellbeing and productivity and its importance in ensuring that employees perform that their best – and of course this is connected to the need for compassionate leaders, whom people are more willingly to go above and beyond for.
"Employers should focus on being kind to their people, which means meeting people where they are – which speaks to empathy – and taking them with them in terms of the shared purpose and focus," he says.
O'Donovan goes on to ask how employers can find data about these issues and audit their wellbeing offerings to check for inequalities.
Dr Seidl believes that most employers are now at a crossroads with their health and wellbeing at work programmes, where they need to move on from haphazard and uncoordinated programmes to more strategic, evidence-based and meaningful data.
He adds that it is important to recognise that health and wellbeing is the new frontier in the diversity and inclusion discourse, which highlights aspects of personalisation and intersectionality, and so ideally, he would like to see employers cross reference health data against performance data and diversity and inclusion data.
Dr Seidl attended REBA’s exclusive Health and Wellbeing as the New Frontier in the Diversity and Inclusion Discourse breakfast in association with Mercer Marsh Benefits. It brought together employers and industry experts to discuss new approaches to employee wellbeing.
