Abstract:
Employee wellbeing has become an area of increasing interest to Sri Lanka employers as the effects of poor employees’ psychological and physical wellbeing can be detrimental not only for affected employees but also to the business as an increase in absenteeism and workplace accident. Despite the importance of managing employees’ wellbeing in the workplace being largely recognized nowadays, many employers still feel like they need more support in the area. Thus, this research aims at understanding both employers’ and employees’ perceptions around how employees’ wellbeing can be fostered within an organization and what the most effective initiatives are to enable a discussion around employee wellbeing. The study was quantitative and a cross-sectional survey design. Deductive approach was used in a non-contrived setting. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. Random sampling technique applied to select the sample, and the final sample consisted of 132 operational level employees from a selected apparel sector organization in Sri Lanka. This research project was able to explore different existent literature. It was found that employee wellbeing (psychological and physical wellbeing) had a significant impact on employee job performance and there was a positive relationship between these two variables. The findings underline the importance of a transparent and open culture as well as management support in order to foster a discussion of employees’ wellbeing in the workplace. Moreover, employees found a variety of organizational practices to be most effective in relation to good psychological and physical wellbeing while participating employers underlined offering specific resources for employees with an employee wellbeing problem to foster inclusion.
