How to leverage your benefit strategy to improve wellbeing and sustainability
When employees embrace a mentally, physically and financially healthier lifestyle, they become less stressed, less absent, more productive and more engaged with your business.
As for sustainability, its importance is growing inside and outside the workplace. Helping employees live more sustainably can enhance their financial resilience, which has a positive effect on their mental wellbeing.
Here are nine ways to build an employee benefits strategy that improves wellbeing and encourages sustainable living:
1. Holistic wellbeing solutions
Ensure your employee benefits offering provides a holistic, end-to-end wellbeing solution, covering physical, mental and financial wellbeing.
Pluxee UK walks you through the steps you can take in these three areas in its blog, Workplace Wellbeing Made Simple.
2. Make greener living more affordable
Eco-friendly employee benefits help employees live more sustainably.
Employers can help their workforce embrace greener commuting options through cycle-to-work and green car – EV car – salary sacrifice schemes.
Reduce the cost of the commute and enjoy tax and national insurance contributions savings.
Refurbished tech schemes are another impactful employee benefit, but sustainability goes beyond tangible benefits.
Changing how employees can work and embracing hybrid and remote working reduces commuting time, saving employees money and cutting carbon emissions.
3. Flexible work arrangements
Build flexible working practices into your benefits strategy to help employees achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Annual leave purchase schemes can also improve wellbeing by giving employees more time for what matters most.
4. Wellbeing and sustainability challenges
Challenges are an impactful way to drive behavioural changes and raise awareness of wellbeing and sustainability issues.
Pluxee UK’s recent 21-Day Money Marathon challenge focused on changing employee spending behaviour and encouraging better money management.
The challenge helped Pluxee UK’s employees discover the difference that embedding its employee discounts platform and prepaid cashback card into their daily lives can make to their financial wellbeing.
5. Values rewards
Aligning your reward and recognition strategy to your values helps encourage behavioural changes, including adopting healthier and sustainable lifestyles.
6. Social values
Partner with a local school, champion a local charity and allow employees to volunteer while still getting paid to embed sustainability and all it entails into your organisation’s values.
Practise what you preach and embed sustainable values from top to bottom, considering who you partner with and holding suppliers accountable.
7. Regular feedback and adaptation
Once you’ve embedded employee benefits into your business that enhance financial, mental, and physical wellbeing, regularly review their effectiveness.
There’s no one-fits-all solution, and situations change, so ensuring your benefit strategy can adapt and evolve is vital.
8. Leadership involvement and culture building
Buy-in from the top is essential for behaviours to feed into and become part of a company’s culture.
Employees are more likely to adopt behaviours they see demonstrated by leadership.
9. Long-term support and commitment
Keep the bigger picture in mind. The healthy changes employees make to their lives today will lead to a brighter tomorrow.
Ensure that wellbeing and sustainability programmes are not one-time efforts and that you can sustain them long-term.
Think about your employees’ future beyond employment. Offer retirement plans that invest in socially responsible and sustainable funds, aligning long-term financial security with environmental consciousness.
In conclusion
By strategically aligning your benefit offerings with wellbeing and sustainability goals, you empower employees to lead healthier and more sustainable lives and foster a positive and engaged workplace culture.
This holistic approach can increase job satisfaction, higher productivity, and a more robust organisational commitment to social and environmental responsibility.
In partnership with Pluxee UK
Pluxee UK, is a leading employee benefits and engagement partner that opens up a world of opportunities to help people enjoy more of what really matters in their lives.
