3 ways tech can help companies realize wellbeing ROI
Today, leaders should be leaning on technology to position modern wellbeing strategies for success.
Employee wellbeing is now widely recognized as an overall business risk and burgeoning priority for employers due to predicted increases in health care costs and potential decreases in employee health and productivity. The good news is companies are reacting by expanding available resources for workers. The challenge will be in implementing new, more holistic benefits strategies in effective ways.
Related: Employers revising well-being strategies to address impact of pandemic
According to a recent report by Randstad, 41% of workers surveyed said their companies began offering new health- and wellness-focused benefits over the last year. Some of the most prevalent benefits provided were:
- Flexible work hours (20%)
- General health and wellness (14%)
- Mental health assistance (12%)
The response to address heightened employee needs — such as increased levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms — came at an urgent time. Businesses are hoping to capture new levels of workforce productivity, but the growing health care risks present challenges. In fact, employers expect 2021 health care costs to rise 4.2% above last year’s budgets, according to a 2021 survey. For a company with 10,000 employees, that comes out to an almost $9 million increase.
While expanding benefits offerings is a needed change, sustaining new levels of employee support will require companies to generate results. Failure, in the form of a lack of employee utilization, could harm the longevity of newly adopted solutions, putting company costs and employee health at risk. Fortunately, there’s now technology built from the ground up to help employers better connect people to the care they need and realize wellbeing ROI.
Obstacles to overcome
The effort to improve employee benefits participation will be confronted with two major engagement hurdles:
1. The hybrid workforce — Employers expect nearly two in five employees will still be working remotely at the end of 2021, compared with the 57% who work remotely now. Considering the majority of CEOs (78%) agree that remote collaboration is here to stay for the long term, the way companies keep employees informed on available benefits — and encourage participation — will need to be equipped for hybrid conditions.
2. Vendor fragmentation — Benefits programs composed of multiple vendors create a bad employee experience and discourage engagement. A Health Advocate survey reported more than 40% of employees said dealing with multiple vendors to access their benefits is confusing. That same survey found that 54% of employers offer benefits on different platforms, requiring separate logins. That number is likely to increase with the growing number of voluntary benefits and wellbeing offerings available.
The potential for wellbeing engagement
As employers begin adding additional resources to support broader wellbeing programs to address a more flexible set of employee needs, engagement will be key. Getting it right can produce amazing results.
For example, a case study from Deloitte on Bell’s ROI for workplace mental health programs — for its over 52,000 team members — saw more than a $4 return on every $1 spent. Additional positive results included a 190% increase in EFAP utilization and a 50% decrease in mental health-related short-term disability relapses and recurrences. The study draws attention to the fact that, if executed well, indirect engagement benefits from wellbeing programs, such as improved attitudes, attentiveness, and intensity of effort related to employees’ work and workplace, can be achieved.
In sharp contrast, companies like Amazon have recently come under fire for providing workers with access to new wellness programs without providing workers with sufficient opportunity to make use of them. Don’t be like Amazon.
Today, leaders should be leaning on technology to position modern wellbeing strategies for success. Here’s how tech can help companies get wellbeing engagement right and realize ROI:
1. Reducing the benefits management tax — Digital health platforms should be used to simplify employee access by connecting the slew of resources, information, and programs within a typical benefits plan to a single source, making utilization easy. Unlike old link farms or portals, modern platforms can personalize the experience for employees, presenting them with only the most important health information — based on their personal data — instead of overwhelming them with too many options.
2. Communicating with purpose — Informing employees and influencing behaviors in hybrid working environments requires better ways to communicate. Modern digital platforms can leverage AI to communicate in a truly personalized manner, based on an individual’s benefit elections. Technology can encourage participation in more channels by helping employees take recommended actions and manage ongoing care with critical alerts and nudges on any device.
3. Optimizing in real time — Every organization has different needs. Real-time, aggregated dashboards and reports are key to understanding what is working, and what isn’t. A sophisticated digital health platform can help employers understand individual and broad employee needs, and better make decisions that drive useful outcomes.
The pressure is on for companies to produce results. Benefits leaders need smarter ways to roll out and drive utilization for updated wellbeing programs. And with that increased investment in organizational health, employers deserve technology that helps enable their unique strategies instead of having to adjust their approach to meet their vendors’ rigidity or limitations. Leveraging technology to better communicate, manage, and optimize for wellbeing success can help unlock unseen levels of workforce potential at a critical time.
Read more: