How to introduce health and wellbeing benefits to your business
But what does health and wellbeing in the workplace really mean?
We define good workplace health and wellbeing as having employees who are fit, healthy and happy, enabling each individual – and business – to get the most out of their working day, every day.
It makes sense. As people we know that if we feel good about ourselves we’re likely to perform better. And the same goes for your workforce.
As part of our Health and Wellbeing Benefits Guide 2017, we have found that just over 80% of businesses have a strategy in place to support their employees’ health and wellbeing.
Yet more than half of those businesses struggled to say what they believe their employees’ health and wellbeing priorities are. Surely, without knowing this, you can’t have a successful strategy?
Communication is key
There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ answer to health and wellbeing. Each business has its own unique workforce, with employees all wanting and needing different things to support their health and wellbeing at the different stages of their life.
To understand exactly what this might add up to in your business, you need to increase the appropriate channels of communication and truly engage with your staff.
Understanding the wants and needs of your workforce means you can tailor your strategy to suit your specific business objectives and as a result, be more successful.
Run workshops with a selection of employees from across the business to establish what they know about the current benefits which are on offer. Ask them what benefits they would value or would help them perform better in their role.
Introducing benefits
The rising popularity of health and wellbeing benefits means employers now have a large selection of benefit types to choose from.
You can tailor your benefits package to focus on different outcomes based on the needs of your workforce. For example supporting your employees to be physically fit with a gym membership subsidy, to be healthy by providing access to a 24/7 GP service, or with a benefit, like a health plan, which combines all aspects of health and wellbeing.
Our research discovered that health plans have soared in popularity over the past year, being offered by just 23% of employers in 2016, and 41% in 2017. This is in contrast to those offering Private Medical Insurance (PMI), whose popularity has plummeted from being offered by 43% of employers in 2016, to just 29% this year.
This switch in prevalence represents how employers have prevention rather than cure in mind and are seeking a value for money healthcare approach which can be used regularly by their employees. It also reflects how PMI has been steeply increasing in price, whereas health plans have remained stable in their cost.
Further reading
To download your free copy of Simplyhealth's Health and Wellbeing Benefits Guide 2017, which aims to shed some light on the health and wellbeing benefits landscape and help you shape and implement your own successful health and wellbeing workplace strategy, click here.
Pam Whelan is director of corporate at Simplyhealth.
This article was provided by Simplyhealth.
In partnership with Simplyhealth
Our health plans make it easy for people to maintain their health&wellbeing.
