Overall wellbeing is integral to the success of your small business

Although May concluded Mental Health Awareness Month, mental health and well-being are issues important to our everyday lives. Recently, the impact of neglecting mental health and wellbeing has become more prominent. However, according to a report by Xero, an advocate for small business owners, studies about the impact of wellbeing on small business owners have been largely neglected.

Between November 2022 and February 2023, Xero conducted international research adapting

the WHO-5 and Gallup Poll global frameworks for well-being in the general population to small business owners. The company identified several issues common to small business owners worldwide.

This research is crucial because small businesses account for around 90% of all businesses, which translates to a great impact on the wellbeing of society at large. This information should be leveraged when developing and implementing holistic strategies to increase the overall success of a small enterprise.

Globally, small business owners reported lower levels of life satisfaction compared to the general population. What’s behind this deficit and what can be done to remedy it?

To paraphrase Xero, wellbeing involves a global evaluation of an individual’s life, including pleasant emotions with the absence of negative ones.

In Xero’s study, the factors used to understand what affects owners’ wellbeing levels were:

• Macroeconomic and business-related financial distress:
• Ever-evolving global economic pressures and the effects of “the great resignation” (i.e., difficulty finding and retaining employees) had the biggest impact in this area.
• Xero suggests measuring success outside of financial metrics, training and upskilling to be better equipped at anticipating and managing financial hardships and digitally automating pertinent business operations over hiring staff.
• Stress management and mindset:
• The biggest stressors were work spilling into personal life and managing employees’ mental health and wellbeing.
• Proactively pursuing a positive mindset, finding ways to co-mingle business and personal time, as well as seeking mentoring from within the small business community on how to get to the root of and manage employees’ personal struggles would prove helpful.
• Prioritizing recovery:
• Especially in the United States, small business owners neglected to set aside daily or weekly time to completely unplug from business, apart from taking scheduled vacation time or sick leave.
• Innovative solutions included teaching owners to completely unplug, participating in social and physical activities, and destigmatizing taking leave.
• Fulfilling work: This represented one of the smallest influences on wellbeing, but was still a factor.
• Accessing support:
• Many small business owners can’t afford or simply don’t have access counselling.
• Policies making counselling more accessible — specifically to small business owners —and to incentivize accessing it should be put in place.

Your overall wellbeing is integral to the success of your small business. You are not alone in your challenges and simple, strategic adjustments can make a world of difference.

Join our LinkedIn group, ALM’s Small Business Adviser, a space where small business owners can gather to network, have discussions and keep up with the trends and issues affecting their industries, or visit our Small Business Adviser group on Facebook.

Brooke Yayi is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Maryland.

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