Decoding the business value of wellbeing

Physical wellbeing

• Improving employee health outcomes remains a primary focus for employers in India.
• While employers have transitioned from onsite to offsite work environment during and post pandemic, the support provided to keep employees fit has only increased.
• Employers are now offering programmes targeted towards lifestyle risks (i.e., sleep disorder, poor nutrition, smoking etc.) and high-cost cases due to cardiovascular disease, cancer care, diabetes etc.
• There is growing emphasis on preventative care where OPD benefits are playing a key role. The goal is to identify potential high-risk cases for which customised programmes are made available to employees.

Emotional wellbeing

• Employee Assistance Plans (EAP) and resilience and stress management programmes are a hygiene factor as majority of India companies are offering this.
• Employers are using wellness programmes to target mental health conditions. The pandemic brought to fore the impact of mental health status on future sustainability. Thereby, driving employers to take an inward – out approach which starts with looking deeper into the correlation between employee behaviour and preferences and utilisation / effectiveness of benefits.
• Emotional wellbeing is no longer limited to “employees only”. The programmes have become more inclusive by ensuring that dependent spouse have access to similar support. However, there is still a need to expand to other dependents such as parents and children.

Financial wellbeing

• Organisations need to start supporting the female employees and dependent spouse on their wealth creation journey and retirement adequacy.
• Moreover, programmes should focus on educating and guiding new generation workforce on financial planning, investment management & tax savings.
• Though companies are not getting into the space of investment advisory, the focus is to increase financial literacy, enable access to financial advisors, assistance in getting loans and savings schemes at preferential rates etc.