Employee Health and Wellbeing
Would you say that you invest in your people? When you consider employee needs, the tight job market, new digital skills required for many positions, rising healthcare costs, and concerns about a global recession, developing programs that support employee health and wellbeing can improve employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction.
To look at what may be in store for the coming year, Virgin Pulse released their annual Workplace Wellbeing predictions. Each prediction has links to articles that provide more depth into the issue. We encourage you to read the full article for all of the details. Below is a brief look at each of the predictions.
- Health and Wellbeing initiatives have reached the level where point solutions will be bought and consolidated into broader solutions.
- Millennial values will further drive companies to make business decisions that align with the values the employees have, resulting in a continuing positive trend for employee health and wellbeing.
- The pace of technology is forcing health and wellbeing from HR specific programs to corporate strategic initiatives.
- Technology will also shift employees and healthcare providers to adopt preventive measures considered “lifestyle as medicine”. From wearables to genome sequencing.
- Health and wellbeing will be used to help change and define corporate culture within organizations.
- Digital therapeutics will be embraced by companies to control their health care costs associated with chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, anxiety, and depression.
- The quality of our diets will be measured and analyzed to improve our health and wellbeing, reduce chronic diseases, and lower the premature death rate.
- Technologies will also help us measure bioregulation and homeostasis including sleep, meditation, and biological rhythms among other factors to improve quality of life.
- Soft skills and emotional agility will take a larger role in hiring and promotions as they underpin key business drivers in today’s workplace including strategy, culture, engagement, leadership, innovation, and collaboration.
- For true personalization efforts with employees, AI and ML efforts need to be well thought out, pervasive (for data sake), and diligent to build stronger data models that reflect the actual needs of individual employees.
- Diversity in parenthood will be addressed for LGBTQIA+ employees. From surrogacy to adoption and beyond, new end-to-end support will include end-to-end holistic, emotional, physical, and behavioral care.
- Companies will start to take a proactive approach to helping companies build healthy habits. For example, health coaching can play an increasingly important role in providing social support and motivating people to make healthy choices by default.
If you would like to learn more about these or other employee health and wellbeing initiatives, please send us a note.