Here’s how to keep staff with the help of automation software and a healthy focus

It is not often that software technology and health are mentioned in the same breath, yet both have a major role to play in fostering workplace satisfaction.

In a tight labour market, employees have limited tolerance for clunky, inconvenient systems that waste time and hamper their sense of productivity.

In parallel, remote and hybrid working models have improved lifestyles in many ways, but the implications for performance can be mixed if health is not prioritised.

The confluence of these two ideas produced an engaging and unorthodox webinar last month here at Business News Australia, sponsored by spend management platform SAP Concur with participation as well from trailblazing business founders Tomas Steenackers of National Veterinary Care and National Optical Care, and Jon Gregory of Vitruvian.

Tomas Steenackers explained how SAP Concur fast-tracked his accounting team’s ability to complete profit and loss (P&L) statements in a rapidly growing, acquisitive business environment. Rather than ending the month burnt out, they were able to wrap up their tasks earlier and feel better with more time and energy for adding value.

“If all your technology you use is deficient, you're going to create a lot of mental health stress,” he explained.

“If you want to do business at all these days you need to be 100 per cent using all the technology on offer just to stay in the game and just to stay relevant,” added Jon Gregory, who was putting his company’s resistance trainer technology to use during the webinar itself.

The Vitruvian technology served as an enlightening segue into the ways businesses have responded to issues of fitness and health in the workplace.

SAP Concur regional sales director for Australia and New Zealand, Andrew Rae, discussed how his company had encouraged one-on-one walking meetings and offered incentives around step counts. This added to several creative examples offered by the group during a discussion into the unsung part health plays in lifting productivity.

“The first thing that people do when they're busy is they strip their own time out and prioritise the work time, but the by-product of that is that you don't necessarily guarantee that the quality of work is there when you’re stretched to your capacity,” Andrew Rae said.

“You might be doing eight Zoom meetings a day, but are those eight Zoom meetings as quality as those four meetings that you're doing face-to-face?”

These questions and more were explored in great depth in this unmissable webinar, which could well contain that gem of advice that will positively transform your business and its culture.

Click here to watch.