Improve employee well-being with a new focus: Return on Health

Any savvy business owner will tell you to analyze the return on investment (ROI) before making a purchasing decision. While it’s in every company’s best interest to evaluate ROI, many products and services, particularly in the employee benefits arena, do not deliver a direct dollar savings. They provide a different kind of value to the organization, best described as a Return on Health (ROH).

The perception of health has become more holistic, with a person’s well-being encompassing their financial, mental, and physical health. When employers consider the whole well-being in their benefit offerings, they’ll experience something more than ROI – a return on health. ROH shows the bigger picture of what happens when benefits improve the overall health and well-being of employees, capturing soft returns like productivity, loyalty and morale.

Related: Is your company culture undermining employee productivity?

Employers need to be aware of how an employee’s well-being impacts the workplace, and what they can do to achieve a high ROH.

The problem: Poor well-being means poor performance

When an employee is struggling with any part of their well-being, it impacts their ability to perform well at work. The numbers and facts reflect the weight of these health issues on the workplace.

Financial: More than 62 percent of Americans report money-related stresses like being in debt or not having enough savings for retirement. Financial stress can cause a variety of mental and physical issues, like migraines, heart disease, and anxiety, and 16 percent of employees are likely to miss work to handle financial matters.

Mental health: One in six Americans is facing a mental health issue like anxiety, depression, or chronic stress at any given time. Untreated mental illness can cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and gastrointestinal issues (ulcers or acid reflux), and employees with chronic stress take twice as many sick days per year and have 50 percent higher levels of presenteeism.

Physical health: Half of all U.S. adults have at least one chronic disease, an ongoing illness like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, or arthritis. Treatment for chronic diseases make up 86 percent of all health care spending. Presenteeism resulting from sick employees coming to work costs employers $150 billion per year.

The solution: Address the issues head-on

Employers experience the best return when they start with what their employees need, then determine which benefits can most effectively address those issues.

To improve financial health, employers could provide identity theft protection, helping employees avoid the associated loss of finances and time, or access to financial advisers who can assist with retirement planning or paying off debt.

Simply discussing mental health in the workplace can help remove the stigma and encourage employees to seek necessary treatment. Employers can offer access to treatment through Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) or telemedicine behavioral health counselors.

Some of the greatest problems associated with physical health are difficult access: time lost, and high costs. With telemedicine, employees have easy, on-demand access to medical care at a lower cost than urgent care or emergency room visits.

The impact: Happier employees and a high ROH

When employers offer the right benefits for their workforce, they might not be able to pinpoint the exact dollar amount saved, but they will experience a high ROH:

• Removing stresses frees up an employee’s mental capacity to focus more on work, increasing productivity
• Employees are more likely to take care of their health when they can easily access cost-effective healthcare solutions, lowering overall healthcare costs and reducing presenteeism and absenteeism
• The general support felt when employers provide beneficial resources increases office morale and loyalty
• Having a great benefit package attracts top recruits

All of these items eventually impact an employer’s bottom line and lead to a healthy ROI. Focusing on the employee’s needs and providing real value to their health and lives is what impacts the bottom line, not looking for the dollar amount. By achieving ROH, both the employer and their employees get the best from their benefits.

 Jake Cleer is vice president of sales at New Benefits, where he tailors non-traditional benefit programs to a number of the top 50 brokerage and consulting firms around the country. New Benefits is a leading wholesaler of non-traditional benefits, including telemedicine, identity theft protection, and caregiver support.