Video: Employee Wellness Conference: Why embracing digital can help improve EAP take-up

Businesses must have proactive rather than reactive wellness strategies and EAPs if they are to overcome the huge impact of unwellness on their bottom line, according to Mark Watson, CFMO at LifeWorks.

Watch the 'How to create digital EAP that actually engages your employees' presentation in full.

Presenting at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016 Watson ran through the impact of unwellness on businesses. He pointed out that 10-15% of global GDP is lost every year, according to the Global Wellness Institute, with a $2.2 billion cost per year in the USA alone of workplace stress, illness and disengagement.

In the UK he said ONS figures showed that 15.2 million workdays were lost a year due to stress, anxiety and depression and that an unwell person costs 57 days of lost productivity a year.

“If we could start to fix that wouldn’t it make a big difference to every organisation we work in,” he said.

He said that the needs of the modern day employee have changed and that whilst many businesses have an EAP in place may employees simply don’t know what they provide or how to use them. “Most businesses will have around 3 to 4% of people accessing their EAP programme. A number of organisations in the past have chosen EAP as a tickbox exercise,” he said.

Watson said using digital technology could better increase EAP engagement which, in itself, could begin to tackle some of the huge numbers he cited earlier in the video.

This video was filmed at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016