How to combine data and anecdotal evidence to your optimise health and wellbeing strategy
Data, in any form, allows for better decision making. When you know what employees most often use, empirically, you can turn a one-size-fits-all health approach into a tailored strategy that targets proven areas of need, allowing for better stewardship of your investment and better opportunity for employee satisfaction.
Cost control and employee satisfaction
As the labour market continues to tighten, employers must use every tool they have to attract and retain quality employees. Paired with the cost of living crisis and resulting rising health costs, most companies are scrambling to ensure that every pound spent on benefits is both necessary and optimised.
In the UK, a growth in population, an ageing population, and the rise in the price of drugs and treatments has resulted in a steady upward trend of health costs across the board. For employers, this highlights the urgency to optimise benefits for best return on investment.
When benefits are flexible, an employee is able to design support to meet their needs, while employers don’t waste funds on a one-size-fits-all benefits package.
1. Use data on current impact to educate employees
The worst case scenario for a company’s benefits is when services go unused by employees due to lack of awareness. Data can help inform all employees about what benefits are available to them. Showing key stats about use and results, and sharing those updates across your company can help grow visibility and enable employees to become better educated about available benefits.
If only a few employees are taking advantage of a wellness benefit, highlighting the experience of those employees is a great way to alert others about the positive impact the benefit is having on their peers.
For example, if your company subsidises a subscription to a meditation app, highlight how helpful it’s been for those who use it. Share the statistics. For example, “3% of our employees are using this app, and 100% report a positive change. Why not give it a try?” You’re paying for a company-wide benefit. If only 3% of your company are using it, you either need to evaluate its inclusion in your package or radically alter how it’s being presented.
2. Engage employees to gather data in different ways
It’s easy to find empirical data on how many employees are using a benefit, but it’s also worth speaking with employees to gather anecdotal evidence about what they enjoy. Using the above example, a company could ask how often an employee with a meditation app subscription uses it. Does that use extend to their partner or children? What would cause them to use it more? For employees who don’t use it, what would it take for them to start?
How you gather data about the use of benefits is important. An email survey can reach the whole company, but more in-depth data can come from a ten minute focus group. While discussing the usefulness and appeal of a meditation app, an employee might suggest a scheme for access to yoga studios, or express a desire for a subscription workout app. Anecdotal feedback, when added to data, allows for informed decisions that ensure your investment in certain benefits is optimised to reach the greatest number of employees.
3. Use claims data to see if your strategy is geographically optimised
With the boom of remote work, many companies have employees over a wide geographical area. Benefits should be designed with this in mind.
For example, many EU countries offer comprehensive healthcare. However, the same benefits are not offered in every country. Our latest report explains this in detail. Knowing which benefits are not covered by which governments can better inform how your offerings need to differ between countries.
Standard health benefits usually include visits to a general practitioner. But what about dental care? Physical therapy? Yoga and massage? Countries like Germany consider yoga a part of physical therapy that can be prescribed and covered by health insurance, but in the United States, it’s considered preventative and often elective. Knowing this can help your company offer benefits for employees based in the US that employees based in Germany may not need, allowing you to save money and perhaps offer a different benefit to those in Munich and Berlin.
If a non-standard benefit will impact a certain geographical region, you will only know it if you ask. Committing to a dialogue about benefits with employees allows for flexibility and targeted benefits. In turn, this ups satisfaction and lowers costs.
4. What do employees want? What do employees use?
Multinational companies must constantly keep abreast of the shifting needs of employees in different countries and regions. Engaged employees are more productive, and more likely to stick around. Employee needs are often a shifting target, as the world grapples with remote work, inflation and multiple generations in one office.
In our 2023 report, The Benefits Factor, we offer data points from more than 8,000 employees across eight countries that speak to these specific needs. With feedback from across the UK and Europe, this report offers a rare snapshot of what employees are asking for right now, and what they consider necessary for the future workplace. It is an essential tool for any HR professional looking to build an informed benefits programme rooted in data.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Benify
Benify offers the market's leading global benefits and total reward platform.
