Employees' physical, emotional, social and financial health directly affects their productivity and engagement making employee wellbeing a business imperative. We help organizations build a resilient workforce connecting wellbeing to work and rewards, health and safety, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), climate, and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) imperatives. We support you to establish the right strategy and solutions to suit both employee and employer wellbeing needs, ultimately building a resilient workforce for today and the future.
What is employee wellbeing?
Employee wellbeing is more than programs or one-time initiatives. In the workplace, wellbeing is a shared mindset with aligned behaviors, enabled through leaders and managers. Employee wellbeing becomes part of the culture when it is:
- Embedded in the employee experience
- Reflects organizational values
A successful approach to employee wellbeing makes connections to your:
- Total rewards
- Careers
- Employee benefits
- Work and safety practices
What are the 4 key dimensions of wellbeing?
A holistic approach to wellbeing incorporates four dimensions:
Physical wellbeing
To thrive physically employees should be able to understand and manage their health, take appropriate preventive measures to improve it and effectively deal with chronic conditions. Ultimately, employees should be able to navigate and recover from acute illness or unexpected injury and successfully return to optimal functionality at home and at work.
Emotional wellbeing
For employees to be emotionally balanced, they must be self-aware and able to develop positive mental health skills – including resilience, stress management and the ability to cope with emotional triggers. Emotional wellbeing also encompasses employees’ capacity to deal with life crises and address substance use and addiction issues as well as other mental health disorders.
Financial wellbeing
Achieving the state of being financially secure requires the ability to manage budgetary commitments, meet financial goals, protect against risks, and save for contingencies and future needs such as college, home ownership or retirement. Financial resilience skills are a key aspect of financial wellbeing, enabling employees to cope with financial shocks.
Social wellbeing
Social wellbeing is about being connected to your work, your family and community and your purpose. Understanding how to support and collaborate with others, accepting and fostering diversity, and being inclusive are key elements of social wellbeing. Social wellbeing includes cultivating your sense of belonging and your personal value.
Each dimension, although unique, is inextricably linked with the others. A holistic approach to fostering employee wellbeing extends beyond employees to include families, organizations and communities. As a result, the ideal approach to wellbeing keeps the employee at the center and is truly integrated with all aspects of organizational culture.
Companies that are highly effective in their wellbeing programmes report higher overall financial performance
Recent events and disruptors – geopolitical tension, social unrest, climate change and economic uncertainty – have accelerated the need for companies to actively engage in wellbeing of employees. Our research reveals that companies that have a high effectiveness in their wellbeing programs are twice as likely to report better human capital and financial outcomes than companies with low effectiveness scores.
Impact of Wellbeing Programmes on Financial Performance
| Effectiveness group | Overall financial performance |
|---|---|
| High | 61% |
| Low | 35% |
How do you unlock the business value of employee wellbeing?
Addressing wellbeing requires a comprehensive strategy and a robust governance process, enabling execution through the right tools and programs for leaders, managers and employees.
We start by understanding your current approach and future vision for wellbeing, setting clear objectives and developing a strategy to achieve your vision and the right roadmap to get you there.
We work with clients to:
Discover
We help you understand your current state and set your vision of employee wellbeing by seeking insights from key stakeholders, including leaders, managers and employees.
Design
We help you develop and design an employee wellbeing strategy that is “fit for purpose” for your organization through analysis of gaps, priorities and opportunities.
Execute
We help you create differentiated strategies and tactics to better engage and equip employees to bring their best selves to work.
Track
We help you measure the success of your employee wellbeing approach by developing a broad set of wellbeing metrics that are connected to your business performance and incorporated in your ESG reporting.
We work with clients around all aspects of wellbeing, including:
Strategy design and implementation
From facilitating workshops to allow HR teams time and space to really think about wellbeing means to them as an organisation, to supporting with bringing a vision and strategy to life, we can support you through every stage of your wellbeing journey as an organisation:
- Development of frameworks and roadmaps to support your vision
- Inventory mapping of existing services and benefits to identify challenges or focal points
- Employer and employee wellbeing diagnostics
- Specific condition management pathways to maximise the value of existing benefit spend and to ensure optimal outcomes for employees
- Fast access to health and wellbeing vendor information via the WTW profiling tool, for assessment and selection of suitable health and wellbeing vendors to meet an organisation’s needs.
- Employee listening and feedback
Inclusive health
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion remain a priority for organisations across the world. Organisations are realising that social determinants of health and benefit equity and accessibility have a considerable impact on both organisational health risks and individual health outcomes.
Our DE&I experts can help you understand your current health and wellbeing programmes in the context of your organisational demographic and ensure you are focused on the areas which will have the biggest impact for your business. From reviewing policies and existing benefits/programmes, to developing an inclusive health strategy and reviewing specialist vendors, our teams can support you to create a leading-edge inclusive health programme.
We cover every aspect of inclusive health, including menopause, fertility, pregnancy and loss, neurodiversity, gender-specific health conditions and gender transition support.
Employee wellbeing communications
Employees expect their HR experiences to keep pace with their experiences as a consumer – mobile, social and on-demand. Delivering wellbeing experiences that are personalised to individual need is becoming a necessity rather than a nicety, with machine learning and AI accelerating organisational ability to deliver wellbeing for an audience of one.
Embark, our employee experience platform, helps you communicate effectively with your workforce across all the touch points and moments that matter. Embark easily addresses focused, HR topics with a scalable, employee experience platform that grows with your organisation. Find out more about Embark.
Health data analytics and wellbeing reporting
From health data dashboards to deep dive analysis of specific condition pathways, we can help you ensure you have the right insights to support and drive your strategy and inform your decision making. Our dedicated data analytics team can help your organisation really get under the skin of your employee health and wellbeing, identifying condition hot spots, areas of potential high spend and key demographics.
Contact us if you’d like to learn how to design and deliver a successful approach to employee wellbeing at your company.
Our advisory services include:
- Wellbeing inventory review and benchmarking
- Vendor assessment and selection
- Vendor landscape review and competitive analysis
- Wellbeing calendar design and execution
- Wellbeing strategy development
- Wellbeing data review and analysis
- Employee listening strategy
- Any other custom requirements!
