The corporate healthcare market is looking a bit peaky, but with a bit of goodwill it is sustainable, writes Elliott Hurst.
A number of drivers are currently affecting the sustainability of the UK corporate healthcare market. Arguably, foremost is the recent economic downturn notwithstanding recent indicators that growth may be gradually returning.
Businesses continue to need do more with less and an under-pressure workforce remains a big challenge, resources to support the workforce through investment in employee health and wellbeing typically remain scarce.
The pressure on employees is compounded by lifestyle-related health problems caused by physical inactivity, poor diet and the psychological demands of modern living. This takes its toll and, while most workers may not be clinically ill, many are not firing on all cylinders.
Moreover, when illness strikes, we are seeing employees having a number of physical conditions, often complicated by an overlay of ill mental health. It is a trend that looks set to continue as, with abolition of the default retirement age, employees unable to retire remain in the workforce.
This growing ill health burden is likely to put further pressure on an already stretched NHS, leading in turn to increasing pressure on employers to potentially take greater responsibility for management of their workforce's health and wellbeing.
An example of the state encouraging employers to invest more in the health needs of their people is exemplified in the government's proposal to provide tax relief on employer funded private interventions to support the return to work of absent employees.
In addition, the cost of private healthcare benefits remains a significant issue, with medical inflation outstripping consumer price inflation and wage inflation.
To survive this storm, funders, advisers, providers and employers must work together to find imaginative, effective strategies to not only boost the appeal of staff health and wellbeing but to also ensure such programmes deliver meaningful and identifiable benefits to UK employers.
Historic attempts to manage corporate healthcare costs through the likes of reduced benefits, excesses and payment shortfalls have had some effect.
However, a downside to these approaches is their potential to undermine the perceived value of corporate healthcare cover to both employers and employees alike as well as, on occasion, to disincentivise an employee's need to use such support programmes when most required.
