If you hope to recruit and retain talent in a tight labor market, while producing a more resilient workforce, it’s important that you show care and concern for your people. An effective way to do that is by reinventing health and benefits for value, while contributing to favorable outcomes.
And how best to do that? By integrating technology that promotes employee health and wellbeing. Keep reading for what you need to know about connecting health and technology in the workplace.
The Issue
There’s simply no getting around the fact that you can draw a straight line between organizational performance and the health and wellbeing of your people. Between a lingering pandemic and record high prices for everyday good and services, many people are suffering from chronic health conditions including depression and anxiety. These are conditions employers are increasingly expected to cover in benefits offerings, by the way, all while healthcare costs continue to rise.
The positive news is that technology can have a positive effect on employee health and wellbeing.
What Benefits are Desirable Today?
You must pose this question prior to any conversations about technology integration. In fact, a Mercer survey of 14,000 employees globally provided insight into how employers can help improve the health of their workforce. The study’s results support the relatively recent shift to digital self-care and wellbeing.
Here are trends regarding what benefits employees these days want:
- Benefits produce resilience. Employers that provided benefits saw a workplace in which a quarter of their people regarded their pandemic experience as positive. Among those who had no benefits, however, just 11 reported the same.
- People like variety. Of employees who were provided with a host of wellbeing resources, 35 percent were less likely to relocate. Further, they felt 27 percent more assured they could access necessary healthcare and were 11 percent more energized. This is where benefits communication really comes in handy, in terms of explaining what’s available.
- Digital healthcare. This is at the core of workplace technology integration: the survey revealed that eight of every 10 employees prioritize digital health solutions like telehealth in addition to wellbeing apps that help them find healthcare support and manage their conditions.
- Additional mental health care. Some 50 percent of respondents reported mental health in employee benefit programs as being extremely or very important. That’s due to the fact that almost a quarter of employees said they were worse off than before the pandemic started. Further, 20 percent said they felt more isolated.
- Healthcare parity. Less than 25 percent of respondents said they were sure they could afford necessary healthcare. Addressing that will go a long way toward making benefits more equitable.
The Workplace and Technology
Even if they don’t consciously think about it, people nowadays regularly utilize various forms of technology. That’s just a fact in today’s hyper-connected world. Further, such employees anticipate that such technology, which also takes up a lot of their personal lives, will play a heightened and more integrated role at work. Ultimately, such integration will improve employee health and wellbeing, which will improve the employee experience, on-the-job satisfaction, and productivity.
Whether it’s tele-health, hardware, wearables, or mobile applications, connecting health and technology at work is more important than ever, especially during a pandemic and its attendant remote or hybrid workplaces.
Mercer has the experience and breadth of expertise to help you establish and integrate the technology you need to help keep your people well. After all, well-planned wellbeing strategies not only benefit employees, but they help the organization in terms of production as well as recruitment and retention ability.