THE CASE for investing in employee wellness is far from obvious to most business leaders. Beyond shifting the needle on your ‘employee engagement’ score and making progress on your quest to become ‘an employer of choice’ what’s the business driver for diverting real money into employee wellness?
Their health, your problem
Well here’s a start. According to Healthier Workplace WA the unhealthiest workers take nine times more sick days and are three times less productive than their healthy counterparts. Around 2.2 million Australian workers have a chronic disease, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The more chronic conditions a worker has, the more time off work they will need, yet many employers would have no idea who these ticking time bombs are. The lost productivity as a result of obesity is estimated to cost $6.4 billion a year in Australia. Organisations which have health and wellbeing programs have 50% less injury rates and claims by workers, than those who don’t.
Unsurprisingly, when employees believe they are being treated as people rather than just resources it has a direct link to morale and culture. A survey by Virgin Health Miles Inc, reported that 77% of employees consider “health and wellness programs impact the culture at work positively”.
Harvard studies have shown that absenteeism, presentism, workers’ compensation, lost time injuries, staff turnover, productivity, and OHS expenditure are often actually ‘wellness indicators’ showing up in the bottom line.
Where is the return?
Having said this, where’s the evidence that corporate wellness activities make a measurable difference to the health of our clients’ employees beyond the ‘feel good’?
It’s exactly that question that has driven HBF’s development of the Corporate Wellness Index.
Based on data collected over the fifteen years we have worked with WA organisations, the index offers businesses a way to measure the impact of wellness programs over time, benchmark themselves against others, and set measurable goals for improving the health of their employees. It means that we can start answering questions like ‘How healthy is my workforce?’, ‘How does the health of my workforce compare to others?’, and crucially, ‘What should I target with my future wellness investment?’
A healthy ‘leaderboard’
The Index has enabled us to create a ‘wellness leaderboard’, identifying the top ten healthiest companies amongst our clients. They are an interesting mix, with government departments, major corporates, educational institutes and high profile sporting organisations all featured. The Fremantle Dockers may
have missed out on their first Premiership flag but the club heads the inaugural HBF Corporate Wellness Leaderboard in 2013. Perhaps not surprising for an elite sporting organisation (although the score doesn’t include the players squad), but in second and third place are energy services supplier Wood Group and super provider GESB. What all three organisations have in common is they understand that they share responsibility for the health of their workforce with the employees themselves. They’ve all been strategic in their approach to workplace wellness, with strong senior management support and passionate people running their programs. In each of these workplaces there is an expectation that employees will participate in the program rather than regard it as an optional extra.
The Leaderboard may well catch the attention of some of our more competitive corporate leaders in a way that simple health statistics never will.
More importantly, the Index allows companies to engage employees in a meaningful conversation about health issues they know are relevant to their people, and develop tailored wellness activities that target those issues.
Finally, and crucially, business leaders are now able to evaluate the impact of their wellness activities and determine what to change to get the maximum return on their wellness investment.
“If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it” applies to the health of your workforce just as in every other part of your business. And yes we can measure it.
