What do employers worry about when it comes to their staff? Staff absence? Staff productivity? Attracting and retaining key staff? All of the above?
Governments are increasingly intervening to improve the wellbeing of the population.
Ministers in the UK have used legislation in the form of information (such as warnings on cigarette packets), disincentives (such as taxes on cigarettes and alcohol), and prohibition (such as banning smoking in public places).
The government has also used information provision, including awareness campaigns, leaflets and letters.
These can both be extremely effective, as was seen by the changing profile of prevalence of smoking in the UK.
In 1950, 60% of men in the UK were smokers – this has dropped to 22% by 2009.
However, government intervention is not the whole answer, and individuals and employers are increasingly being encouraged to take responsibility for themselves and their employees.
According to the UK Public Health White Paper:
“Individuals should feel that they are in the driving seat for all aspects of their and their family’s health, wellbeing and care. Employers from all sectors should look to support the health and wellbeing of their staff.”
But behavioural change to address chronic disease issues, whether you are a government minister, an employer or an individual, is challenging.
Chronic diseases are physiologically complex, and their drivers are multiple and interconnected.
On top of this, individual behavioural change is complex, as shown below:
■ Individuals often struggle to put information into practice. For example, recent research found that more than 50% of people were aware of guidelines on calorie intake and exercise, but less than 20% actually adhere to such guidelines
■ Individuals tend to be over-optimistic and over-estimate their health status. Research found that 52% of people stated that overweight and obesity are one of the biggest health issues facing the nation, but only 9% felt that it was a personal concern
■ Individuals tend to discount future rewards (such as good health later in life) compared to current cost (of undertaking healthy activities). Research has shown that for 79% of people it would take a diagnosis with a health condition to motivate them to change their lifestyle.
Therefore, employers taking on a role in tackling chronic disease issues in their employee population have a significant challenge ahead of them.
It has been shown that best practice organisations have 1.44 times higher participation rates in their wellness programmes, and 2.35 times greater risk reduction rates, than common practice organisations.
There are six key steps to an effective wellness programme:
■ Provide employees with the tools to understand their own health and how they can improve it
■ Reduce the barriers to healthy living, including financial and accessibility barriers
■ Provide comprehensive communications and an environment around employees that encourages employee engagement in the programme and makes the healthy choice the easy choice
■ Reward healthy behaviours
■ Continuously monitor and evaluate the programme and modify it as appropriate
■ Ensure dedicated staff and resource, and strong management support.
CHASING THE OPPORTUNITY
While an effective wellness programme can improve the overall health of an employee population by only considering wellness programmes in terms of health outcomes employers are missing a huge opportunity.
We all know that a key success factor for an organisation is employee engagement, which impacts all of the key issues that employers worry about (staff absence, productivity and retention).
Looking at business units with top quartile and bottom quartile employee engagement scores, and comparing them to their financial performance, shows that those with engagement scores in the top quartile have higher customer advocacy, higher productivity and higher profitability.
By contrast, those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile have higher employee turnover, higher inventory shrinkage, and higher accidents.
But what is less obvious is what can be done about it. While 70% of business leaders agree that employee engagement is critical to achieving their business objectives, only 20% believe that engagement initiatives are currently driving business outcomes.
Employee wellbeing can be an effective driver of employee engagement, as well as improving the health of the employee population.
Research has shown that the top driver of employee engagement is senior management demonstrating a sincere interest in employee wellbeing.
As a result, though wellbeing initiatives within organisations often focus on improving the health of employees, there is a large untapped benefit of a focus on employee wellbeing, namely to improve employee engagement in the organisation.
Thus, employee wellbeing programmes are critical to address two key interrelated issues that organisations face: improving the health of the employee population, and improving employee engagement.
If an effective programme is implemented appropriately, it can be used to address both of these.
Dr Katherine Tryon is head of clinical vitality at PruHealth
