Employee Care: Wellness and Wellbeing

Employee care means more than just providing benefits. It should be the basis of company culture, steadfastly consistent – no one slips through the cracks – and universally practiced by all who work in the organization. Company leaders should facilitate, nurture, and reward a caring culture.

Caring about workers goes beyond health insurance and a retirement plan. It should cover all aspects of each employee’s life – essentially 360° holistic health – including:

1. Physical health
2. Mental health
3. Financial health
4. Social health

Social Health

While the first three factors are well-known, social health is a relatively new concept. It refers to relationships. Interestingly, you may find that some of your highest-performing employees –those not distracted by family obligations and an active social life – are the ones most likely to experience poor social health. Often it is the “workaholic” who eschews close relationships in order to focus on work, even if work gives them a lot of satisfaction.

However, we all need a social support system, whether provided by family, friends, or work colleagues. Social health is a sense of wellbeing that emanates from personal connection and community. Longitudinal studies have shown that closely bonded relationships typically have a greater impact on how well we live and how long we live – even more so than physical health. One study even found that loneliness is a greater contributor to death than obesity.

In other words, a person who eats healthy, exercises regularly, and maintains a positive mindset but neglects personal relationships may be compromising his overall well-being. Some of the ways employers can help nurture and strengthen workers’ social health is by offering:

• Opportunities for social interaction and bonding, such as happy hours, office picnics, a game room
• Volunteer opportunities to help workers get involved with community organizations
• Encourage friendships at work – allow people time to indulge them

Even one or two close friends can yield positive social health – and work friends may be the only friends they have.

Wellness vs. Wellbeing

Wellness programs and benefits have been around for a while; the concept of Wellbeing is fairly new. Traditionally, employers have deployed wellness programs as a means to improve worker health, complement their health insurance, and lower costs – either now or sometime down the road.

A Wellbeing program, on the other hand, is designed to address more than just physical health. It includes benefits and resources to enhance emotional resilience, stress management, and even financial fitness.

The following table offers examples of wellness and wellbeing benefits:

The Trouble With Studies

Some recent studies on workplace wellness programs have demonstrated increased worker satisfaction, but a lack of improvement in employee health or a reduction in medical costs. In many cases, gym memberships, fitness apps, and other wellness benefits have yielded no significant impact on measured outcomes such as weight, blood pressure, cholesterol or blood glucose, nor reduced rates of medical diagnoses or healthcare service utilization.

While controlled studies often reveal substantial health improvements via benefits and resources offered in Wellness and Wellbeing programs, employer programs are not always able to replicate these results through voluntary and inconsistent usage.

Proactive vs Reactive

For many workers, Wellness and Wellbeing benefits are reactive efforts. Some research indicates that employers could be more proactive at reducing work factors that tend to cause stress and anxiety in order to eliminate these precursors of poor physical and mental health. For example, work stress factors include frequent layoffs and restructurings, poor hiring, firing and promoting practices, and lack of compassionate management training.

When adopting a universal employee care perspective, structural and operational changes should take into consideration whether they could potentially cause worker stress. In turn, management deliberations should think through how to reduce or eliminate that potential.

The return on this investment would come over time, as there may be less call for an expansion of wellness and wellbeing benefits. Well-run, well-structured employers that adopt an employee care vision may then place more focus on their product or service delivery.

 A Band-Aid on Burnout

For employers seriously engaged in employee care, benefits that promote flexibility and opportunity are more likely to have long-term success. In other words, a gym membership is a great way to work off stress caused by not earning enough income to cover household bills. However, the ability to work from home when children are sick can be more empowering than a massage at the end of a stressful day.

Prolonged stress, caused by a combination of professional and personal obligations, is a recipe for burn out. Employee care should perhaps be focused on removing daily stress factors rather than mitigating them with meditation and yoga classes.

The Bottom Line

The cost of workforce healthcare grows with each passing year. However, the investment is vital because the alternative is higher absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and lost productivity. Research in this area is rather conclusive: A healthy workforce yields lower costs and higher operational performance.

While the wellness industry has grown exponentially in recent years, an employer would do well to understand its workforce, its true needs and wants. Employee care starts with a mission statement; all other benefits, practices, and policies offered should directly support that mission.

Remember, the goal is to support employees with what they need, when they need it. To accomplish this, benefits should support and reflect a caring culture.

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