Corporate health and wellbeing began to be addressed decades ago. At that time, the focus was exclusively on the physical health and workplace safety of employees. Today, the concept of corporate wellbeing has broadened considerably to include programs and initiatives aimed at actively boosting employee performance and social, emotional, mental and even financial and digital wellbeing.
Today’s corporate health programs offer a variety of innovative topics that touch on:
- Financial wellbeing
- Social connection
- Emotional agility and emotional contagion
- Mental health
- Resilience
- FLOW
- Digital well-being
- Non-sedentary lifestyle with physical activity programs
These same programs also provide relaxation tools such as mindfulness, cardiac coherence, meditation, yoga, etc. They also offer other initiatives, such as better manage your sleep and allow for a more appropriate recovery, reduce chronic stress and psychosocial risks. And the icing on the cake, they are supported by changes in the culture and behaviours of leaders. Sounds ideal doesn’t it?
Driven by all these innovations, the corporate health and wellbeing market is worth nearly $8 billion in the United States alone and will reach $11.3 billion by 2021. As this market has grown, so has the awareness by leaders of the critical role that these health programs play in defining a healthy and high-performing organisation. For example, 2 out of 3 organisations say their wellbeing programs are a critical part of their brand and culture (Deloitte Insight, 2018, Global Human Capital Trends). Each organisation has its own way of addressing the topic, whether informally or formally. Despite all that, only a minority has developed a structured approach.
Institute for Health & Productivity Management (IHPM) Health Goals for 2020-2021
Take the example of the Institute for Health & Productivity Management (IHPM), an institute chosen in 2013 by the World Economic Forum to take over the Workplace Wellness Alliance globally. This Institute has identified 6 main corporate health goals for the period 2020-2021:
- Loss of Productivity Due to Inability, Presenteeism and 3M: Musculoskeletal Pain, Mental Health, Metabolic Health
- Sleep – a subject too often forgotten within organisations
- Innovative nutrition and food as medicine
- Resilience, the key to psychological agility
- Suicide prevention, a new priority in terms of health
- Self-care, to improve productivity
The most surprising of these objectives – well, the one that surprises me, while perhaps for you it seems quite normal – is the one focused on suicide prevention. It is true that the 2020 pandemic has shed new light on mental health and therefore on the risks related to suicide, but it is questionable to make it a priority for corporate health, to the detriment of digital or financial health, for instance. At the same time, workplace environment provides an opportunity to raise awareness, guide and encourage individuals to adopt healthier behaviours. So including suicide prevention in health programs is an attractive and smart idea.
Working Well survey results
However, other work shows… other priorities, such as the Buck Consultant Working Well Survey, conducted 12 times since 2007. This is a survey of 250 organisations, based in 56 countries around the world, on workplace health promotion and wellness strategies. This survey completed by over 5.22 million employees examines emerging trends in corporate health promotion programs.
Initially focused primarily on physical wellness and health promotion as it relates to physical health, the survey expanded to include emotional and social wellbeing, before including financial health in 2016. The latest survey asked employers to:
- Rate the extent to which they supported the key pillars of individual health: physical, mental, emotional, financial, occupational, social, and community
- Report current and future trends they saw.
It also included self-evaluations to measure the effectiveness of several programs. Finally, it quantitatively demonstrated the return on investment (ROI) associated with health strategies in organisations. However, this ROI continues to be ignored by many employers. The results confirm the need for a “culture of wellbeing” and summarise the most ambitious and effective health program goals, strategies and tactics.
This Working Well survey shows how health and wellbeing program goals have evolved over the years. Globally, the two most important objectives 10 years ago were performance/productivity and reduce costs of absenteeism. By 2018-2020, the primary objective of corporate health programs had become improving employee morale and engagement. And absence-related costs were relegated to 9th place in the ranking. Also of interest is the arrival of a new objective in 6th place: improving the “Total Rewards” offering, which includes benefits, time off in general, work flexibility, etc. – in short, all the non-quantified benefits.
This ranking shows the tendency to look at employee wellbeing as a whole, to ensure that the employee is able to work to the best of his/her ability in an environment that gives him/her as much freedom and benefits as possible. It also shows that safety at work is less and less considered a priority, with priority being given to other issues.
| 2012 | 2018-2020 | |
| 1 | Improve performance and productivity | Improve employee morale & engagement |
| 2 | Reduce employee absences | Improve performance and productivity |
| 3 | Improve employee morale | Attract and retain employees |
| 4 | Reduce health or insurance costs | Reduce health or insurance costs |
| 5 | Improve safety at work | Promote the values/mission of the organisation |
| 6 | Promote the values/mission of the organisation | Improve the Total Rewards offer |
| 7 | Maintain work capacity | Maintain work capacity |
| 8 | Attract and retain employees | Improve workplace safety |
| 9 | Promote the image or brand of the company | Reduce employee absences |
| 10 | Assume social / community responsibility | Promote the image or brand of the company |
Evolving priorities of health and wellbeing program goals – Working Well survey (2018 vs. 2012)
These findings from the 2018 Working Well survey are confirmed by those of the CIPD’s 2020 Health and Wellbeing at Work report. According to the latter, year after year, employee wellbeing is slowly but steadily moving up the agenda of organisations. More and more employers are addressing health-related issues. However – and this is no surprise – ambitions and proactivity vary considerably between organisations; attention is still often limited to the identification and management of a few risks to people’s health, if not just one, stress.
Key to success: the strategic link between business and health objectives
Therefore, it is necessary to build:
- A more effective organisational framework, defined by and supported by a better trained leadership, more sensitive to these issues in order to generate more commitment
- Human resources management that is more attentive to employees
- And above all, a much closer strategic link between business objectives and health objectives.
For me, this 3rd point is essential. In the same way that for years, the safety objectives of organisations were rarely linked to business objectives, health and business objectives are still too often totally disconnected from each other. In fact, ask yourself the question for your organisation: are your health objectives linked in any way to your business objectives?
Indeed, despite the importance and the emergence of the subject of health within organisations, it is still difficult to ensure that work, continuous working hours, lack of resources, excessive performance, objectives that are not revised downwards during COVID, and even the lack of respect for the individual do not affect employees and their performance. Moreover, until now, most efforts have been focused on improving certain components of the health and wellbeing of each individual, to the almost systematic detriment of a holistic vision. For example, offering me a hotline with psychologists to talk about my unhappiness is fine, but perhaps it would have been better to first ensure that my harassing manager was not hired, let alone promoted to a management role. And as long as the strategic reasons behind workplace wellbeing are not extremely well understood, any discussion about resources poses a threat to health programs.
To develop health and wellbeing in your organisation, without needing to revolutionise what already exists, there are 4 essential steps to take.
The 4 essential Steps to developing Health and Wellbeing
- Ensure the right level of buy-in for health and wellbeing from those who have the greatest ability to influence your organisation, most often (but not only) leaders
- Take the time to understand the wellbeing needs of your teams
- Put processes in place to involve employees in discussions about the organisation of work – recognising that the more people are involved in change processes from the outset, the more positive and lasting impact the changes will have
- Build a strong strategic link between your business objectives and the health objectives of your employees
April 7th is World Health Day. For a bit of history, the date of 7 April marks the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948. This year 2021, the WHO proposes the theme: For a Fairer and Healthier World. It is up to us, to you to work towards this in your organisations as the opportunity to have a healthier world also depends on us and on you.
