Why you should put wellbeing at the heart of your business

Employers worldwide are trying to improve the well-being and productivity of their workforce, and they are becoming increasingly aware that creating a culture of health and wellbeing in the workplace is an effective way of boosting employee productivity and reducing absence and presenteeism.

A survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) estimates that employee absence costs the British economy over £14b annually, with a cost of £975 to business for each absent employee. The main reasons for short term absence according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), are minor illness, musculoskeletal injuries, back pain and stress; whereas long term absence is mostly linked to acute medical conditions, stress, musculoskeletal injuries, mental health and back pain.

It is no surprise then that employers are increasingly focused on the link between health and productivity. In fact, according to the latest Willis Towers Watson Staying@Work survey, 82% of UK employers report that they expect their commitment to health and productivity to increase over the next three years with a particular focus on building a culture of health and well-being in the workplace.

The effect on productivity

We know that in many cases employees’ health concerns, financial worries and engagement issues tend to cluster and that in turn creates a an even larger drag on productivity. For example, 35% of UK employees in the 2015/2016 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey (GBAS) who were struggling financially said they also suffered from poor health, while that proportion fell to just 11% of those who have no money worries.

Additionally those who are struggling financially are more than twice as likely to report higher levels of personal stress as those who are unworried. This results in significantly more days lost to absence and presenteeism for those that are financially struggling, in poor health or stressed than those who are not.

Finding the right approach

Employers are typically responding by offering a broad suite of health and wellbeing programmes that seek to address specific health issues their employees may face. This focus on offering individual disconnected programmes is not the best approach as it may not tackle the more holistic needs of employees that in many cases span a number of dimensions including health, stress as well as financial issues.

Instead, we find the success of health and productivity strategies has less to do with the collection of programmes and activities available to employees than with the way in which these programmes are conceived, managed, communicated, delivered and supported within the organisation. For programmes to be successful they need to reflect employee needs and work alongside the culture of the organisation.

Most employees are open to employer involvement in their health. The latest Global Benefits Attitudes Survey results show that 56% of UK employees think that their employer should take an active role in encouraging its employees to live a healthy lifestyle.

Yet this does not always translate into participation by the employee. In the UK, less than two-fifth (38%) of eligible employees take part in any health or well-being activity offered by their employer, which may signal that programme offerings do not meet employees’ needs nor encourage them to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Disorganisation could mean failure

In fact the uncoordinated delivery of individual programmes and the lack of a formal organisation strategy act as obstacles to the success of employer efforts. The Staying@Work report tells us that almost two-fifth of UK employers (43%) say that the fragmented delivery of programmes and the lack of actionable data to support targeted outreach (36%) are hampering their attempts to change employee behaviours, which is not surprising when seen in the light that almost two-thirds (64%) of UK employers do not have a formally articulated health and productivity strategy, and most employees do not think that their manager would support their participation in the offered programmes, or that the offerings meet their needs.

In response to low participation rates in health and well-being programmes UK employers are looking at financial incentives in an attempt to boost engagement in programme offerings (58%). In the UK, there remains a reluctance to move to the cash incentive model.

The focus is rather on rewards like raffles, prize draws and discounts on health-related gadgets. While 18% of organisations use gifts and 21% use raffles and draws for a gadget such as an iPad, or a Fitbit challenge which can be effective as it encourages exercise; only 4% offer cash incentives. Another area of interest by employees is charitable giving with many employees keen to raise money for their favourite charities in return for reaching certain health goals.

Incentivisation may not be effective

Experience from the US suggests that incentives may not be a panacea. Our research tells us that employees are not optimising the financial rewards available to them which questions how effective they are. It is important to recognise that while incentives can drive short term changes in behaviour there is little evidence to suggest they lead to sustained behavioural change.

In fact, many employees (38%) would participate in health and wellbeing initiatives absent of any incentive and these individuals tend to be most engaged in their health. Hence, companies are providing and paying for incentives for those individuals who would participate in activities anyway.

A smaller group (29%) state they would only participate with an incentive. But when we examine the data we see this group participate less often and are less healthy. Hence, the incentive does have some impact on a more resistant group, but fundamentally fails to address the motivations and barriers to address in health activities.

Our stance has always been to challenge the application of incentives in well-being programmes and when incentives are used, to focus on outcomes as opposed to participation rewards. We generally find that employees can be encouraged to buy into a lifestyle change by an effective and smart education program. There is a place for incentives, but not the high cost rewards prevalent in the US market, a which are driven by high healthcare expenditure.

A lack of trust

Another obstacle to employer involvement seems to be linked to a lack of trust. We find a great deal of resistance to employers playing a broader role especially when it comes to employees’ privacy and employers’ access to medical data. Our Global Benefits Attitudes Survey tells us that nearly half of employees do not want employers to have access to their health data, and over a third do not trust their employers to be involved in their health and well-being.

This simply indicates that, in many cases employees are keen for their employer to take a role, but for them to truly engage in programmes, trust needs to be built first and employers need to convince employees they have their health and well-being interest at heart. Simply providing a programme is unlikely to succeed.

If telling people what they needed to do was enough, we would all be healthy. What is clear is that health engagement needs to be encouraged and employers hold the key to achieving this by creating a culture of health and well-being in the workplace; building employee permission to be involved in such an intimate area of their lives; building trust and addressing concerns around privacy of personal information; recognising the different employee profiles and targeting them appropriately to increase impact; applying behavioural economics techniques to establish employee values and motivational drivers; using technology such as social media and gaming to help raise awareness in an ever-changing world.

Rebekah Haymes is director - health and benefits and Zaki Zahran is senior economist at Willis Towers Watson.

This article was provided by Willis Towers Watson.