Workplace wellbeing is high on most business agendas. If it isn’t on yours, it should be.
According to research in 2023, 76% of professionals experienced moderate to high levels of stress – a percentage increase of 13% compared to data from 2022. Additionally, a staggering 85.8% of employees would be more likely to leave a job if there was no obvious support for employee wellbeing.
Can you really afford not to make wellbeing in your workplace a priority?
If you are not sure where to start though, meet Marianne!
Marianne Rizkallah is PPL PRS’ Music Therapist Expert. She offers expertise on how music therapy affects the brain (specifically how listening to music affects mental wellbeing, both at home and work – from improving mood and motivation, to building relationships).
Marianne praises music for avoiding or alleviating symptoms of more serious mental health conditions like stress and anxiety. She is the Director of North London Music Therapy and Music Therapy Outreach and Enterprise Tutor for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. We sat down with her recently to talk about workplace wellbeing and how you can improve it.
What are your top 3 tips for businesses wanting to improve the wellbeing in their workplace?
- Make time for wellbeing. So many employees feel the pressure to always be performing to the highest level; to ensure there’s enough headspace for wellbeing, it should be booked in. Whether it’s a whole team workshop or more individualised support, if there’s room for it in people’s schedules then you can make it happen.
- Make wellbeing meaningful. There’s lots of research into what makes for a happier, more productive environment, but what do your employees actually want? Even informal surveying across smaller teams can give you insight into what your staff think will work for them.
- Find ways to bring wellbeing into every day. An office playlist, curated by whole teams, is one example of meaningful wellbeing, promoting social bonding within and between teams, that doesn’t break the bank. Implementing this small change can make cultural waves across a workplace and enable stronger working relationships to be formed.
What is the biggest challenge that you think affects the workplace, when focusing on wellbeing?
In the 21st century hybrid workplace, belonging is a primary concern for organisations. The challenge to keep the sense of a team when some people are in the office and some are at home is constant. Issues with communication, whether face to face or via the increasing use of more informal messaging services, creates more instances where tone can get lost or misunderstood and individuals become more isolated. There’s the dynamics of different personality types, and people’s differing relationships to their jobs as well as risks with management styles and those employees needing further assistance with soft skills in order to progress and keep connections with their tea.
In your experience, how have you found that the introduction of music within the office spaces improves the wellbeing of the work force?
Introducing music into the workplace can create a great opportunity for team bonding. So long as the music isn’t so loud it gets in the way of concentration, it can provide a talking point that can spin off into other conversations. A generic enough playlist that will appeal to most palates means the office spontaneously can offer up (mostly positive!) opinions about the tracks, reminisce about their associations to particular songs, and discover more about their colleagues’ backgrounds and tastes.
Have you noticed any differences in the needs for employees of different levels to improve their wellbeing? For example, do CEO’s need different things compared to an entry level employee?
With different roles come different responsibilities and therefore different needs. Entry level employees need financial surety and clear support to know what their tasks are, how they can progress in a way that makes sense to the organisation as well as themselves and how they can gain new skills. CEOs ultimately carry the responsibility of the organisation and of every employee. They need support to manage a high level of stress, emotion and pressure.
In a January 2023 survey, we found that 93% of respondents either agree or strongly agree that playing music can create a calmer working environment and can help to alleviate stress and anxiety. Can you think of any examples of when you have seen this be the case?
Funnily enough, when I stepped into the PPL PRS offices the building-wide playlist and open plan set-up promoted a really collegiate atmosphere within the young team. Team members greeted each other as friends, chatted about the gigs they were going to soon and commented on the tracks being played as they enjoyed listening to them.
How would you suggest that an employer could promote and encourage wellbeing in the workplace?
I would suggest employers think about how explicit and implied communication skills can create social bonding within teams. Everything from providing clear, actionable strategy and tasks, to scheduling time for wellbeing walks, or embedding everyday wellbeing into teams via office playlists – all is valuable and welcome to create more positive, harmonious team working.
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