Small Business Academy

The easiest way to lose people is then feel like it's all on them, because that's when you get the out of call messages.

That's when you get holiday messages.

And this is what causes stress, right?

So you want an incentivised, motivated, challenged team up for the fight or do you one that's disengaged.

Everyone's leaving.

They don't know what their role is.

For every pound spent on supporting an employee's mental health, employers get nearly pounds seventy back on their investment into improved productivity.

It's there, staring us in the face.

Most business owners really would not ignore that kind of return.

Stop being in denial and you've got to start taking this bit seriously.

Couldn't agree more.

Hello and welcome to the new look Bupa Small Business Academy where today we'll be discussing why investing in employee wellbeing now can save your small business later.

I'm Holly Tucker, founder of Notonthehighstreet and Holly & Co, and today I'm joined by former Forbes Under entrepreneur Ben Askins.

Ben, tell us a little bit about yourself, your business, your background and why the conversation is so important for small businesses.

Yes.

Thanks so much.

So my name is Ben.

I've been entrepreneur now for ten years.

my first business was a digital marketing agency that specialise in luxury brands.

essentially what we did was we would do all of that online marketing.

and at his peak, with offices in London and New York, I sold that business a few years ago and since then have launched two new businesses.

One is a company called Gaia, which is in the green tech space, and the other is in the content space.

So I do a lot of content around business management, working life and everything like that.

And so yeah, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Well, we've got so much to talk about today.

Today we'll be looking into the impact of employee wellbeing on SMEs three key concerns talent, resilience and productivity.

Discussing our own experiences and getting expert guidance from a super clinician on what SME owners can do to tackle the issue and put employee wellbeing at the heart of the small business.

Attracting and retaining top talent Ben, we're going to start with talent and it's such an important area attracting and retaining top talent.

A statistic that might surprise you is employees are more motivated to choose an employer who offer health and wellbeing support, and yet only % of the million SMEs do so.

I'm wondering why so few do.

Yeah, it's this one, isn't it?

Because I think the obvious con to running a small to medium sized company is that you can't compete with the bigger budgets.

and I think we've all, you know, we're both, entrepreneurs.

We both have our own businesses.

We've all been in that situation where someone simply comes along and offers and salary that you can't match, and you have to sort of say, look, that's part of how it works.

I think what I'm seeing, and I get a lot of these messages on my socials at the moment, is salary isn't as important as it once was.

It's still important.

Of course it is.

It's not something people just don't care about.

But in regards to what the absolute priorities are.

More and more we're seeing people will happily take slightly less if they enjoy the work, if they enjoy who they're working for, if they feel like they're getting a little bit more out of it from a sort of fulfillment perspective or whatever it might be.

And I think that's the area where small to medium-sized businesses that's the real opportunity, because the con of having a bigger company is you're locked into those big processes, those big structures, you've got very little freedom regards to what you can and can't do.

You have a lot of freedom as a small business owner, and that's where I think the opportunity is, is okay you can't say pay the salaries that you might want, but actually you can create an environment where people say, look, I really love it here.

I actually really do, and you can't really put a price on that.

And so for me, the fact that so few are making this a priority when it's such an obvious benefit, I think it's something we definitely to look at.

Why we're failing Gen Z SMEs want to, attract younger workforces.

And I certainly hear this.

And yet poor mental health is stopping a significant proportion from entering or remaining in the job market.

When we talk about attracting the younger workforce, to year olds weren't in work, education or training.

in between October and December which I find astounding.

That's almost in out of work, and two thirds of these people are believed to be economically inactive, so they're not looking for work.

And % citing poor mental health as a significant barrier to employment.

Yeah, it's I hear a lot of these types of stats.

And I think what I say is that by % of the workforce will be Gen Z.

Okay.

We have got to get our heads around honestly, the language I hear around Gen Zs from sort of founders and business owners, they're not a different species, right?

They're human beings, like all of us.

Look, working life has changed a huge amount.

But these are not, these are still people.

They're still going through the same challenges we all went through in a slightly different way, because that's kind of how human society and human progress works.

We need to change the language around this a little bit and start taking ownership of the fact that we have to mental, that this is their first experience of the working life, it’s our job.

We have a duty of care in a lot of ways to say, right, I'm in charge of these youngsters.

I want to give them the best experience.

This is my benefit and best experience because the sooner I train them up, the sooner I give them the vision.

They can then be a lot more productive to me.

Because, you know, the fact of when you start work, you don't know what you're doing and you need to be trained up, but the sooner you get there, the better.

You know, ultimately, small businesses risk losing phenomenal leaders of the future, phenomenal talent to big businesses if they don't prioritise these incredible the new talent coming and their wellbeing, their mental health.

And to year olds have actually cited that mental health training or a supportive line manager, even, it's just those small things it takes to turn this narrative around so that we can actually attract, really, the future of our companies.

Yeah, I mean, I people overcomplicate this topic.

For me, it's very simple.

If it's good for the team, it's good for me.

I what I mean by that is if I can provide an environment or benefits or schemes or whatever it might be, or training or anything like that, that's going to directly improved morale or motivation or engagement or whatever it might be that is only going to benefit me, and that benefits me in a selfish way.

Right?

That benefits me because if they're more motivated, there could be more productive.

That's going to be more output, which is only going to benefit me financially.

So I always say like, this is one of the rare win win moments.

Yes.

Like this is really.

There's so many other things stacked against us.

This is the one area where like, you're doing the right thing and it generally works best for you.

So that's why I get a little bit frustrated when I see people just go, oh, it doesn't matter.

We're just a bit of elbow grease.

And you go, look, you're kidding yourself, right?

The numbers are too large.

We have a really unengaged workforce.

Stop being in denial.

You've got to start taking this bit seriously.

I couldn't agree more.

Building a resilient workforce Okay, let's move on to resilience and the challenges of looking after your existing workforce in order to support them and to basically to prevent them from dropping out.

And a statistic, according to Mental Health UK's burnout report in was just over in UK workers % needed to take time off work last year due to extreme levels of pressure and stress.

Have you had experience in this area?

I've had a huge amount of experience in this area.

I think one of the most common reasons why people approach me on social, you know, and for the record, those don't know.

I get a lot of stories in regards to having a bad boss or bad management or a bad experience at a company.

One of the leading causes is just stress.

I the advice I always say is you've got to listen.

You have to listen.

You have to take this bit seriously because % is so high.

Yeah.

And that like mind, our goal here is like we're looking at growth.

We're thinking about productivity.

We think about the economy.

All these things that everyone talks about.

Having % of the workforce off that's never going to help all of us.

And the numbers are too high for it to just be like edge cases of just for whatever reason, people have sort of cracked.

So we have to acknowledge embrace the problem a little bit.

Dangers of overstretching a small headcount The majority of businesses have to employees, which means anyone who goes on holiday or goes on their honeymoon or has which they have to do.

But these are good things, and it's so important that you do, and you give those people that time off, and it leaves that void.

Because if you are one of ten, your % of the workforce straight off the bat, which is much hard to absorb, especially in a small business where you're all often doing lots of little jobs.

So thinking about the structure and the dependency of where the work is so important because it's just not fair.

The easiest way to lose people is then feeling like that.

It's all on them, and no one else is supporting them, and no one else can do what they can, because that's when you get the out of call messages.

That’s when you get the holiday messages, all these things which every boss knows they shouldn't be doing.

Every boss knows, there's no boss thinks unless you're an absolute muppet.

No boss thinks you should be doing that.

But it's amazing how many do because it's an emergency, because they just need a quick thing.

And and this is what causes stress, right.

You know, it's the modern age.

It's the WhatsApp.

I think WhatsApp plays a criminal part in yeah messaging because it's really slipped into the gap of like, everyone knows you can't mess employees on Instagram, for example, and everyone knows you kind of switch off your Slack's in your teams.

But WhatsApp’s just about managed to sort of walk straight down the middle where bosses feel very comfortable, and they go because they go, oh, it's just a quick thing, but you don't understand what that means because it puts puts you back at work.

So when you're trying to have that switch of time when you're trying to and I've burnt out and I'm sure you've had, you know, and that doesn't make me weak.

That doesn't make me not resilient.

And I struggle with our resilience sometimes because I often think, well, actually, should we not just create an environment where perhaps you shouldn't require resilience as often as people seem to think you should, like.

There's lots of different things about it for me, but I think for me it's first you've got to listen to people, then second you've got to think about it like what is causing it, and think about why is but honestly the Sorry I'm starting to rant now.

But the thing that bugs more than anything else is, is bosses who sit there and try and guess why their team are stressed.

Ask them, sit down, create a safe space and say, what can I do to make your life a bit easier?

And often it's just having Culture and values for promoting wellbeing that initial conversation.

Absolutely.

And if you think about it, if we're talking about two to ten employees, right?

This is a small amount of people, you can actually put them around a table, which I do every single morning.

and whether it's virtually or in person, we actually do have a barometer.

So as part of my, business, Holly & Co, we always say that we're never allowed to.

We have to hold each other accountable.

We're never allowed the barometer to go to ten.

It's one to ten.

So every single Monday morning I ask which number you're on and why that is.

So someone will say, I'm at.

I'm at a, two.

I'm at a three.

We have a rule that you can't get to five without speaking up.

You know, you can't just you can't just turn up and say, I'm at five.

You’d say, well, how come you didn't warn me that you were increasing in your barometer?

Certainly a level eight can come in, but that's normally what I would say is that can be external, that can cause that stress.

But I think to your point, this is because we communicate on a constant basis, the team.

And I think here again, it's culture and values.

If you have a culture and values where absolutely at all points in time, I want to know if things are building.

If you feel the hum of stress coming along, it's your responsibility and I will listen to why that is the case.

And let’s work this out together.

Let's get let's get rid of this so that by Friday maybe we could have alleviated it.

If you haven't got a listening culture, if you've got a culture where they don't feel that they can come to you.

And it's a very simple thing to have a barometer, by the way, and very simple rules that you can put in place and actually also holding each other.

It's not just the boss, it's your work colleague.

You can say to someone, I'm feeling a bit like a six right now.

You get this language that you can talk about things and then ultimately it doesn't become stress, which is very hard to define.

It's something's bubbling, it's not working.

It's causing me anxiety.

I need to talk about it and it's better to have it out than in.

And so I do think that there are very simple things that you can put in place.

But I agree, culture and values, that ethos that the, the, the soul of your company, the emotional, the emotional language that you can use around these things, really, really helps.

Yeah.

And it very rarely the bronze is a great way because if it isn't, unless something huge has happened often personal life, it doesn't go from one to eight overnight.

Right.

It's death by a thousand cuts.

It builds up.

And I think a lot of the stress when when I ask people why they signed off work is it's not that he couldn't handle it.

They just felt there's no end in sight.

That's the big thing.

Like it's people are happy to take the hits a little bit more if they know, look, it's going to be a tough week, they were super busy, etc.

etc.

but next week we've got this.

Or if they feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel, you can work through it.

But it's when there's lack of hope.

That's what kills a business and a culture because people just feel like, look, I've already raised it, or I don't feel like I can raise it or I've spoken up and nothing's happened.

And that's where motivation just drops like a stone.

Because if you don't feel like this one is going to be solved, it just it's really hard.

And I get it.

I'm very sympathetic for people going through that.

And resilience.

Let's face it, when you're running a small business and you have a small work team, we all have to be resilient because there is a lot of pressure on every single individual, to make the collective work, to reach the goals that we set or the ambitions that the company have set.

So we've spoken now Driving productivity about attracting talent and we've tackled keeping talent.

Let's now talk about that link between wellbeing and productivity, because company wellbeing is proven in statistics and the bottom line to be a significant predictor of a firm's performance.

and, and I'm wondering what your experience has been here, if you've actually literally seen that link.

Absolutely have.

And I think what, there's a big question, which I always say to bosses and entrepreneurs or whoever is in charge, I say what are you giving them?

You know, what am I getting out of?

So you're saying you want me to work incredibly hard for you?

I'm open to that.

But what am I going to get in return?

I think that's the big question.

People often forget.

Ultimately, as a boss, you know, your responsibility is to set out, you know, what are we looking to achieve this year?

How are we going to break this down?

What are the what's the what is manageable and what is motivating and and looking at that stuff we've already established it's a small team.

At Holly & Co what I tend to do is look at an individual and I look at what their, goals are, and then I look at their energy goals and we establish what how do they need to gain energy in order to do these things as well?

Because ultimately improving performance and productivity is when it's when you really can say, I know that individual.

I know what motivates them.

I know and not anyone is the same.

So for one person it could be share options is going to really work for them.

for another person, it could be the health insurance.

For somebody else, it could be the flexibility they've got to work around their childcare.

You know, really thinking of people as individuals and what is going to, be their Duracell battery.

How are you going to fill that up every single day?

And I think that that's something we've got to be really wary of when the statistics are saying only % of workforce is engaged.

The % is really interesting because you can either look as that, as the most depressing stat of the day, or you can look at it as a bit of an opportunity and say, look, I need to motivate my team and I'm a top % business.

So as a boss, I take that responsibility because surely every single person deserves their own sort of package that is created in line with what's going to make them the most productive.

I remember the one most fascinating cultural challenges I had was when I sold my first business, and we joined the company that bought us, and we had to merge the cultures.

And the one thing I remember, this huge discussion we had around perks and benefits, because the new business technically had a more expensive benefits package in the sense they spent more per employee.

But our team really didn't like the new one.

And the reason was very simple.

Our team was a lot younger, and the package they’re offering was, you know, ours was around sort of travel incentivisation around things like that, and theirs was around things like dentists and eye tests and, and like, I'm not saying that wasn't of value, but it was just such a sort of different cultural challenge.

So really think about your team and who you want to recruit and that that's why it goes back to who you want to hire in the first place, because you're looking for these personalities, like just because they're not a good fit for you.

They might be amazing for someone else, but it's important to hire on that sort of thing.

And then you build out the package around what you think they want.

And when we actually look at, Deloitte's analysis on this and this is actually not a depressing stat, this is the opposite.

Love that.

it shows that every pound spent on supporting an employee's mental health employers get nearly £ so nearly pounds back on their investment, into improved productivity.

And what's amazing about that stat right.

Think how much we probably both our businesses spend on Google ads or like a to ROI.

We would take that and run, I think how much was pumped into that side of it and how little comparatively this is all spent on that.

So it's such a good point, right?

But it makes sense.

But do you want an incentivised, motivated challenged team up for the fight or do you want one that's disengaged.

Everyone's leaving.

They don't know what their role is.

They're feeling like lost.

Like it's just this no one wants that.

And when you say it as starkly as that, you do just think kind of, what are we doing?

but yeah, it's it's obviously a, a growing space for sure.

Thank you Ben.

That was such an interesting conversation.

I'm now joined by Dr Robin Clark Initial steps for improving employee wellbeing Medical Director for Bupa UK and Global.

Robin, we've heard about the challenges that small businesses are facing when it comes to employee wellbeing.

What are the solutions that are available when it comes to tackling these challenges and helping your small business thrive?

Yeah, I really like some of the points that were made earlier, and if we just take a little step back about actually what are the needs of the business and the business owner and the SMEs in the first instance?

So actually, I think the first step is around truly understanding what's the requirement and what's the objective here?

So actually, what are the needs of your people?

And they're not going to be the same.

There is no one size fits all.

So actually sit down.

Understand.

Do they have a wellbeing need?

Do they have a health need?

Delve into the information and the data around why people taking time off.

Is there anything there that that you can do to support them while they're off, or even prevent them from going off in the first place?

So I think very much getting that that baseline correct is is a really good place to start from, because that at least allows you to then take a step forward and take a step forward in the right direction rather than somewhat blindly.

Bupa, for example, have some really great resources which can help address some of these problems.

So we've got the Workplace Health and Wellbeing Hub.

So that's a free resource that anyone can go on.

So it gives some ideas there around how how to, set up an address, wellbeing issues.

within your, within your company.

and it also has some pointers around things like how to have those conversations, some of those educational pieces, and some materials to, to, to help get you underway.

What practical health Practical initiatives you can invest in and wellbeing initiatives can SMEs actually invest in?

One of the other great resources that we've got is Growth+ that's available to, SME customers.

And there's some excellent content on there.

So, for instance, if you're struggling with getting your wellbeing plans up and running, then there's already some templates on there that you can use to to really help accelerate that.

There's some bite-size videos.

There's training modules for for your your leadership team and another employees.

So some really, really useful content in there to to really help with a kind of a holistic plan and and get things in place.

And one of the other brilliant resources that we've got is through the, the My Bupa app.

So that's our digital portal for healthcare services.

But within there there's, again, lots of wellbeing content.

There's things like exercise classes, yoga, meditation, loads of really, really good things that individuals or at company level they can use to really boost their wellbeing.

So loads of great material to go and have a look at there as well.

Fantastic.

And the statistic around Importance of proactivity for every pound spent supporting employees, mental health employers get back £is such a significant statistic, isn't it?

In the positive way that proactivity, rather than reactivity, is just so much better?

Yeah.

And I think that statistic really should be the call to action.

So again, it really hammers home that point that prevention is better than cure.

But investing in health and wellbeing has a really strong return on investment.

So most business owners really would not ignore that kind of return on investment.

So again, it's they're staring us in the face.

So it's something that really we should, should be grasping and running with.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a huge opportunity for small businesses.

It certainly is.

And I think the final bit is how do you, bring this to reality?

How do you really get the most out of it?

And I think the final point is around making sure that you've got that right culture, that right safe space within your organisation and that you start bringing these conversations up so that people get confident both talking about it and dealing with the issues as and when they arise.

Because, let's face it, there will be people that need health and wellbeing support within the organisation at some point.

It’s far better to be on the front foot and be prepared for it, rather than being caught on the hop as and when these things arise.

I couldn't agree more.

Robin, thank you so much.

I hope you're leaving with plenty of ideas and inspiration to take back to your own businesses.

Take care and we'll see you next time.