Just as individuals can take the new year as an opportunity to reset their individual wellbeing, the beginning of the year is also a good time for employers to review their employee wellbeing plans and create or change plans to make sure that they meet employee needs and align with the business’ priorities.
Another reason to take action now: Our 2021 Best Practices in Healthcare Employer Survey found that roughly half of employers say they have no formal employee wellbeing strategy. And our survey shows that many of you are already planning to address employee wellbeing. Over the next three years 75% plan to differentiate and customize their wellbeing programs to attract talent. So why not start now?
Continued pressure to compete for talent has solidified employee wellbeing as a key part of organizations’ total rewards strategies. While all employee wellbeing plans should be customized to fit the needs of the organization and population, employers should consider the following questions when deciding on their own new year’s resolutions.
Do employees value your wellbeing offerings?
The first step in answering this question is asking, “How are you going to define value?” Options to measure value may include:
As with any new year’s resolution, establishing what success looks like and measuring against those goals are key. Measurement driven by organizational goals will take a hands-on approach. Using comprehensive dashboards (that include internal and vendor/carrier data), ongoing reviews with key stakeholders and continuing to include employee insights should provide you direction on delivering value.
Are you ready to impact organizational culture?
Just as with personal new year’s resolutions, aspirations for large meaningful changes need to be broken down into small, yet effective, steps. Even while offering best-in-class benefits and a robust employee experience, employers often find it difficult to improve organizational culture to help positively influence employee wellbeing. To meet the challenge, you need to keep your organization’s goal or vision in mind while focusing resources on defined steps to move in the right direction.
Understanding the current state of your organization’s culture from employee, manager and leader perspectives is a foundational first step. You should prioritize listening through channels such as virtual focus groups or surveys in addition to leadership interviews to identify key themes around strengths and challenges unique to your organization.
Once there is a clear picture of your organization’s current state, you should focus efforts on educating and preparing managers and leaders to understand and support their teams and connect business priorities to organizational culture through the lens of employee wellbeing.
Are you responsive to employees’ evolving needs?
Staying up to date on evolving employee needs, external factors and the market landscape can help you understand how to prioritize both short-term changes and the possibility of shifting longer-term goals.
Many employers that have already built cultures of wellbeing recognize employee wellbeing as multi-pillar across physical, emotional, financial, and social dimensions. Some have even expanded to make employee wellbeing the overarching human capital strategy. However, we believe the traditional areas of wellbeing are ripe for updating:
While increased flexibility compared to pre-pandemic appears to be here to stay, opportunities to enhance social wellbeing and build a positive organizational culture can be explored both virtually and in-person for employees.
After considering the answers to the questions posed above, the right resolutions will vary from revisiting an organizational wellbeing strategy to making enhancements to programs.
Whatever your new year’s resolutions for your employee wellbeing program ultimately is, when you look back at the end of the year, you should be able to understand the progress made and recognize and celebrate the impact that your changes had on employee wellbeing.
