What is the pay-off for businesses investing in preventative healthcare?
Every £1 spent on preventative healthcare unlocks £8 in socio-economic returns within the UK, according to a Deloitte study. Yet many organisations still treat workforce health programmes as optional.
The reasons are understandable; links between healthcare and business outcomes can seem unquantifiable, and a recent Health Foundation survey saw 30% of respondents cite difficulty demonstrating return on investment (ROI) as a key barrier to workforce health initiatives.
However, as the Deloitte data shows, there’s real value to be had in good workforce health. Think more productivity, improved staff retention and reduced absenteeism.
The problem is that businesses are in a never-ending cycle. Health prevention is deprioritised. Staff get ill. Employees go off work, and the long-term cost of ill health compounds.
Health strategy or just a response?
There’s a strong and growing business case for preventative healthcare, yet many organisations still treat workforce health programmes as a response strategy.
Effective workplace health supports productivity, improves retention and helps protect businesses against the operational and financial impact of both absenteeism and presenteeism. For employers, the commercial value is significant.
Yet despite growing investment in workforce health - as 57% of UK businesses have a wellbeing programme in place - many organisations still lack meaningful visibility into emerging health risks across their workforce. As a result, issues are often only identified once they begin to affect performance, absence levels or employee wellbeing limiting the opportunity for earlier intervention.
“Workforce health strategies are often ineffective as companies rely on outdated metrics such as absence data, engagement surveys and insurance claims,” said Rachel Wall, director of propositions at Vista Health.
“These measures are widely used, easy to track, and offer a sense of control. But by the time a health issue appears in workforce data, it has already begun to impact the individual, and the organisation.”
Where else in a business would such critical risk be acceptable? No CFO would accept financial reporting that only identifies loss after it has occurred. No risk function would tolerate a cyber framework that activates only after a breach. Yet workforce health, one of the most significant performance drivers, continues to rely on lagging data.
Prevention is deprioritised
If businesses can’t see emerging health risks, how can they provide the right support?
Visibility poses another problem. Many of the most common and impactful health conditions are either underreported or entirely invisible in traditional datasets. This creates a cycle where prevention is deprioritised and the long-term cost of ill health continues to damage employees and businesses.
When early signs of ill-health are missed, diagnosis is delayed. Employees can experience prolonged discomfort, reduced concentration and declining performance long before taking time off. A study by the University of Portsmouth found that one in three women aged 15-45 experienced menstrual symptoms severe enough to interfere with daily activities, often causing presenteeism at work.
Whatever the issue, prolonged health problems are a difficult-to-measure but very real productivity cost for UK businesses. The good news is there are ways to uncover health issues early. Tailored, clinician-led preventative healthcare programmes can identify risk before it escalates, reduce health inequalities and deliver measurable gains in retention, reputation, performance and long-term resilience.
This is why workplace health can no longer be treated as a standalone wellbeing initiative. To drive meaningful investment in healthcare packages, businesses need to rethink how workforce health is positioned. Too often, health plans are positioned as employee perks rather than a clinical and commercial necessity that helps identify risks to employees and the business. Crucially, these strategies must match the reality of national healthcare systems.
“Wellbeing benefits don’t fail because they are low quality, they fail often because they are disconnected from the wider health system,” said Wall.
"This means providing workplace healthcare programmes that complement, rather than compete with the NHS through a joined-up experience, where early detection- such as through cardiovascular, metabolic or cancer screening, and in some cases more advanced diagnostics such as full-body MRI- can help identify conditions at an earlier, often asymptomatic stage.”
Making preventative healthcare a must
By the time health-related absences show up in HR data, the business cost has already occurred – and it’s probably more than you think. The question isn’t whether to invest, but whether businesses are investing early enough to prevent risk from escalating.
If your workforce health strategy relies on absence data, it’s reactive by design. If you use employee feedback, engagement rates, programme satisfaction, preventative insights and screening measures, your strategy is proactive by design – and there’s a greater chance of intervention before issues affect performance, productivity and retention.
To deliver meaningful outcomes, HR and business leaders need data-led, clinician-supported programmes that combine prevention, early detection and reactive support – rather than focusing on a single stage in isolation.
As wellness continues to decline across the UK, now is the time for HR and business leaders to evaluate their current health provisions through the lens of individuals. Without action, risk will remain invisible – and how confident are you in protecting your people and business under your current approach?
Vista Health’s report, The Prevention Gap: Why workforce health investment isn’t delivering – and what needs to change, is available here.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Vista Health
Clinically designed, clinician-supported health assessments for a healthier, more resilient workforce
