Keynote Speaker
1. What is workplace wellbeing actually and why is it important?
Workplace wellbeing refers to the state of the employees’ mental & physical health. It is a very important and popular topic and this is why recently, companies established organizational policies to support healthy behaviors in the workplace and to improve mental health. Wellbeing at work can have many faces and expressions, and it can refer to:
● social,
● physical and,
● mental wellbeing.
Besides the obvious implication that long-term neglect to anxiety at work can have for the employees’ overall mental health, poor wellbeing at work can also affect organizations on a deeper level. The implications to companies are mainly focused on lower employee engagement, higher employee turnover, and higher health costs.
It is important to mention that anxiety, burnout, and depression are now recognized by the World Health Organization as important threats to all people at workplaces globally. According to surveys, in Europe and the USA, companies suffer around $300 billion in financial losses due to poor wellbeing at work.
Well-being at work is a necessity nowadays. Companies that do not pay attention to their employee’s emotions at work, jeopardize talent, people, and profits.
2. What has been the state of employees’ mental health during and post-Covid, and what are companies doing to assist them?
In the era of hybrid working, wellbeing is proven to have decreased, and conditions such as remote burnout or “Zoom fatigue” have emerged. Workers are now more than 3x as likely to report mental health concerns than before and a staggering 76% of employees say that work-related stress affects their mental health, leading to increased depression or anxiety. (Forbes, 2021).
The ways that companies try to fight the “burnout epidemic” are usually by applying wellness tactics such as yoga tips, mental health breaks or webinars about wellbeing. However, research has shown that employees are not happy with how companies take care of their employees’ wellbeing. Thus, new ways are urgently needed to accurately measure and effectively respond to the employees’ wellbeing needs.
3. What is the responsibility of companies and economies regarding the humanization of the workplace?
In the post-pandemic era, companies have started to realize more and more the importance of people in their value proposition. According to McKinsey & Co, “Organizations that have been building social capital during earlier phases of the crisis will be in better positions than others as the workforce transitions to the return phase.”
Therefore, although, the nature of managers is to see the financial aspects of the businesses, the time has come to start investing in the relationships that will encourage trust and improve the wellbeing of the employees. Wanting to make an impact and give back to the workforce can only accelerate positive results for economies and the performance of businesses.
So, companies need to emphasize their human side, because it is becoming more and more apparent that companies ARE their people! In this journey, technology, and the use of AI, drastically helps to embed humanization into the timely operations of companies and economies.
4. What is your solution to the challenges of improving wellbeing at work?
The time has come for a new and more effective method for evaluating and boosting wellbeing in the workplace. This solution is Wellbeing.ai! Wellbeing.ai is scientifically monitoring and improving wellbeing at work, using the latest emotion tracking technology and combining this with robust science.
The solution incorporates a platform that will be tracking employees’ emotions at work in real time, and providing a wellbeing score, along with suggestions on how to improve that score. Managers will also be receiving the aggregated data of their team’s scores, which will enable them to evaluate their task allocation and increase productivity and wellbeing in their teams.
Our algorithm is task-based, which means that will allow for comparisons between units, departments, and tasks so that managers and employers will have a holistic view of their company’s wellbeing.
5. How can the ethical use of the Wellbeing.ai platform be ensured?
There are protocols in Wellbeing.ai that protect the anonymity of the data of employees towards their company. Additionally, the users will be controlling the permissions that they give to the AI to capture data. These permissions are about empowering the user to be in the driver’s seat regarding which data is utilized and which are not, increasing trust and independence for the user.
Lastly, at Wellbeing.ai we are completely transparent towards all stages of capturing, storing, and processing data. Transparency and permissions are therefore core to our solution.
6. What is the future of wellbeing?
As companies drift towards a humanistic approach to their workforce and pay more and more attention to their employee’s needs, new solutions must provide both a robust scientific approach to diagnosing wellbeing and practical, integrated, and holistic ways to improving it… for the long run!
Wellbeing.ai is moving in parallel with the positive changes in the workplace and plan to immerse our services with the human need for wellbeing in the workplace using AI. Technology is already an integral part of our lives. It is time that we utilize technology in more human-centric ways at work to benefit humanity as a whole.
The new era of wellbeing AI has started!