Helping employees get healthier

As lifestyle choices are increasingly recognised as the key factor in good health and wellbeing, employers are being presented with new challenges and solutions to support their employees:

Modern life throws challenges at all of us and the search for a well balanced existence in today’s hectic environment is high on the agenda. There’s more to health than just how long it’s been since you last saw your GP – it’s about feeling good about life and being able to function fully. A general state of well-being incorporates health, happiness and a feeling of prospering. In the employee context, this is often associated with the physiological contract that exists between an employer and an employee. Many factors contribute to the success or failure of this relationship but research shows that delivering an employment environment that promotes good health can deliver real business benefits.

Employees are often offered a range of support products and services which include health insurances, access to counselling and a variety of other “add ons”, which may or may not be particularly valued by employees. Often these have been implemented in a piecemeal way with little ability to measure the impact each has on the health or performance of the individual or the business.

The problem with these services is that they are of little value to employees until they need to use them. Certainly this will apply to the insurances because that’s what insurance is: protection against a risk. Herein lies the problem – most health related employee benefits are really about protection against being unwell. They are there to help when things go wrong. For example, something like a stress counselling helpline will only be used by employees with stress related issues.

If employee health is one of the leading factors defined by well-being then what are employers doing to support this aspect? A few will be employers are embracing positive agendas for improving employee health and, of course, the legislators are also becoming involved in workplace health - the recent smoking ban being a great example .

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