Welcome to the fifth of our six-part Sanofi Insights – a series of articles created to provide you with insights into highlights of the 2020 Sanofi Healthcare Survey results.
Wellness benefits are more popular than ever before: employees are demanding them, and employers are providing them. As an employer who always goes above and beyond to take care of your people, you’re acutely aware of the fact that employee health benefits should go beyond the standard medical, dental and vision insurance. Wellness – from mental health to exercise – is also critical to your team members’ overall wellbeing.
Fully healthy employees are more productive, and it’s no secret that they’re happier, too. Investing in the holistic wellbeing of your employees through the creation of a culture of wellness at work isn’t just the right thing to do by your team members; it’s also what’s best for your organization in general. Promoting a positive culture at work—one that promotes work life balance, rest and renewal, and mental health—can help your company attract and retain the best talent in your industry.
The next generation demands wellness benefits…
Young people entering the workforce are much more in tune to the significance of holistic wellness than earlier generations ever were. Generation Z and young millennials don’t just want wellness benefits, they demand them. Chief among young employees’ priorities are work life balance, a positive culture at work, mental health benefits that are covered as a standard part of their medical benefits. Offering wellness benefits and an attractive workplace culture will help your company stand out in the grab for the next generation of talent.
…And so does everyone else!
The draw of wellness benefits doesn’t just appeal to young people. In fact, a recent Cigna study uncovered that nearly half of employees polled across the globe reported an “expectation” for their employers to ensure they had mental health support in some form.
If you’d like to revisit your wellness benefits, a tangible place to start is in reconsidering your current medical plan. Do you offer reimbursement for psychologist and psychiatrist visits? If so, great – but if that isn’t possible for your organization, there are other routes to take to show employees that their mental health is a priority to your company, too. The provision of gym or fitness studio discounts may be an option to explore, as are extra days of paid time off designated as “mental health days.”
You can even consider created employee resource groups to help nurture a culture of wellness and community within your workplace. Employee resource groups are funded and sponsored by the company, but they’re actually run by the employees. They’re a way to support a positive culture and make employees feel at home at work, like they truly “belong.” Common employee resource groups at small to mid-sized firms include groups for parents, LGBTQA+ employees, female employees, BIPOC employees, veterans, employees nearing retirement, or young people. Many smaller companies will just have a single employee resource group that is open to everyone. The key takeaway: there are many options to explore beyond the provision of further medical benefits. When devising a plan to amp up your wellness benefits, a little can go a long way to show how much you care.
Happy, healthy employees stay put: wellness boosts retention rates.
Wellness is integrated into the very fibre of a company’s culture. If your organization is prioritizing it, your employees will know. Logic tells us that employees will want to stay when their wellness is prioritized. This will save your company money in terms reduced costs spent on the recruitment of new hires, as well as their onboarding and training.
Data supports this logic: Forbes reports that 67 percent of survey respondents whose employers sponsor wellness programs “like their jobs more.” The same percentage of respondents were “extremely or very likely” to actually recommend their employer to others. What’s more, 45 percent of employees from the same survey who reported working at small to mid-sized firms said that they would “stay at their jobs longer because of their employers’ wellness programs.”
Wellness benefits your company’s bottom line, too.
If your employees are happy, healthy, and wholly well, they’ll be less likely to be absent from work, and they’ll also have fewer (and less expensive) claims made against your health care coverage on average. Overall, they’ll have a greater ability to focus on doing their best when they’re at work, and the results of their work product will be better overall. This seems intuitive, but the leadership at your organization might still be asking for data on the ROI of wellness benefits. If this is the situation you find yourself in, you have data on your side.
According to a recent Deloitte study of the impact of poor mental health on Canadian businesses, 30 out of every 1,000 Canadian employees miss work each week due to mental health concerns. The total impact cost for Canadian businesses caused by lack of productivity due to mental illness absenteeism was estimated at $6.3 billion a year across the country. And what’s more, the cost of mental health is “exacerbated,” according to the study, by the impact of poor mental health on employee’s medical conditions, such as heart disease, asthma, and chronic illnesses. And here's another set of numbers that may shock you: the total cost of poor mental health in the workplace in Canada, all things considered, was $50 billion CAD per year, with 500,000 workers missing work each week due to poor mental health.
While the importance of wellness programs in reducing absenteeism due to physical and mental health problems should be proven by this statistic alone, there is even more support available. Cigna found that most employer-sponsored wellness programs showed a positive ROI in three crucial fields: 1) productivity; 2) cost of employer-paid medical care; and 3) absenteeism.
Data is also favorable to the proposition of employee-sponsored mental health programs. ROI was found to be strong for workplace mental health initiatives according to Deloitte's research. And even if you don’t see immediate return on your initial wellness investment, don’t fret: Deloitte reports that “achieving positive ROI [on mental health program investments] can take three or more years,” but that programs are “more likely to see greater returns as they mature.” So, as with anything, making an investment into your employees’ mental health now may not seem to be producing desired results at first, but rest assured that research shows that the decision will certainly pay dividends in the future.
Need help getting started implementing wellness benefits? Meet People Corporation.
If you’re interested in introducing wellness and mental health benefits within your corporation, but are unsure of where to start, you’re not alone. The health and wellness experts at People Corporation are on your side. People Corporation provides professional health and wellness consulting to help organizations develop their health and wellness brand and strategy.
People Corporation’s Suite of Wellness Support Tools:
We offer our client organizations a variety of data analytics tools to help utilize and leverage benefit plan data to align their wellness programs with their unique organization objectives. We also provide virtual health platforms: proprietary digital programs and services that deliver employee support in all areas of wellbeing. Our “My Wellness Connection” monthly communication program is designed to provide additional support for employee health, as are our customizable wellness focused training and education seminars.
Interested in learning more about providing wellness benefits to your employees? Contact us today to start a conversation, and experience the benefits of People.
Originally written by Brendan Hickey, Director, Health Solutions at People Corporation, with insight provided by Shannon Darvill, Consultant at Silverberg Group, a People Corporation Company, and a Sanofi Canada Healthcare Survey Advisory Board Member.