ONE of the critical aspects of the National Wellness Policy is that it has to be embedded within the culture of organisations.
This is according to Senior Lecturer in Management Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Dwayne Devonish, who spoke to The Barbados Advocate after the Annual Com-monwealth Scholarship Winners Alumni Breakfast Social recently at the Radisson Aquatica Barbados.
Describing the policy, he stated that it comprises four key elements including educating employers and other stakeholders on their respective roles, as well as providing an enabling environment for them to follow through.
“The Wellness Policy is based on a four ‘E’ framework that I developed. So the first E is about educating and that is very important. We need to educate people about wellness and the importance of wellness initiatives and so forth. After educating, we have to enable because it doesn’t make sense that you educate and then you do not create an enabling environment for your employees and for your stakeholders and your partners to engage in wellness and partake in wellness initiatives and so forth.”
It also requires employers to engage their staff in this policy, which means that employees would be provided with a platform where they can voice their opinions and offer feedback on the policy, he said.
“The third E is that you need to engage employees. It does not make sense that you have an educated workforce and an enabling environment and then people are not engaged; they are not satisfied (and) the morale is low. So you also have to work on that, to allow them to participate in the wellness policy; to have a contributory, democratic role or function in developing the Wellness Policy and not based on it being forced down the employees’ throats.
“The last E is encouraging, which uses the incentive aspect and also the sustainability aspect. We have education, we have an enabling environment, we engage employees, but how do we sustain it? It has to be rooted into your compensation and rewards programmes; we have to encourage people in ways that they want to be encouraged and not for you (employers) to decide that these are the kinds of rewards that we are going to use to reward someone who has gained some positive outcome because of partaking in this wellness activity. It has to be a culture of incentivization and so forth.”
He added that the policy would also make it easier for employers to comply with legislation that already speaks to wellness in the workplace.
“The Wellness Policy, as it stands, is also supposed to support legislation because we recognise that legislation places certain demands on employers. But with the policy now, it makes it easier for employers now to comply with the legislation in ways that are safe and in ways that are bearable and manageable and it does not have to be financially unbearable for employers themselves and so on to take on these policies.”