18 Apr 2018

5 benefits that can improve employee health and wellbeing

Employee health and wellbeing is crucial to maintaining good employee motivation and engagement. By looking after your employees’ health and wellbeing, you can promote success in the workplace, reduce distraction and boost motivation, helping your employees to feel looked after and valued.

Focusing on benefits to improve your employees’ health and wellbeing means you are likely to find it easier to attract and retain top talent, reducing the likelihood of early retirements and giving employees an incentive to stay with your company.

What employee benefits can you implement to help promote employee health and wellbeing?

1) Employee assistance programme (EAP)

Stress can have a devastating effect on employees’ health and wellbeing. An Employee Assistance Programme offers a solution to help employees deal with everyday problems, inside and outside of the workplace. The Employee Assistance Programme will help employees get their work-life balance on track, enabling them to be more productive at work and happier at home.

The programme provides a telephone counselling service, an online help system and, in some cases, face to face counselling sessions to assist with a wide range of issues in areas such as stress, relationship difficulties, bereavement, anxiety, family worries, and more.

2) Private medical insurance

Most of the time, it’s impossible to predict when something will go wrong. Unexpected disease, illness or injury can cause a huge shift in an employee’s life and impact on their ability to get back to work, meaning they may spend a lot of time on lengthy NHS waiting lists.

Private Medical Insurance can help your employees to get back to doing what they love, by enabling them to access better and faster treatment. This will help you them avoid NHS waiting lists and boost recovery time, helping your employees to return to work fit and well.

3) Giving employees access to health and wellbeing resources

Employees will also benefit from being given access to health and wellbeing resources, such as those aiming to help them quit smoking, sleep better and manage their nutrition.

Information and resources, as provided through employee benefits, can help employees to manage their own health and wellbeing, supported by your workplace. This can help employees to take steps to enjoy their life to the fullest and kick habits that may be hindering their health and wellbeing.

4) Gym membership schemes

Employers can also offer their employees discounts on gym memberships. Not only do these schemes help keep your employees fit and active, it also helps them to save money as a salary sacrifice initiative. Employees can save a percentage of the cost of their gym membership, which is often available for both themselves and their partner.

5) Apps to promote health and wellbeing

With employee benefits technology evolving to encompass smartphone apps, many employee benefits programmes can offer access to specialised apps that promote health and wellbeing. These apps often offer reward programmes to help employees achieve health goals, as well as improve access to gym equipment, health assessments and programmes through discounts promoted through the app.

In summary

Health and wellbeing benefits are a cost-effective and valuable method of helping your employees to get the most out of their time at work. The workplace is uniquely positioned to do this, as many of the decisions your employees make regarding health and wellbeing can often impact their work productivity.

With many of these benefits being free to set up as part of a package, there’s so much you can do to help boost health and wellbeing, and in turn, your employees’ motivation and engagement.

This article was provided by Busy Bees Benefits.