It’s a consistent conundrum that, while Health and Wellbeing benefits are among the most valued amongst employees, actual take up is often low.
Over half of HR leaders attest to this paradoxical situation in the Harnessing Health – Measuring the Impact of Employee Health and Wellbeing Benefits study, by Cigna Healthcare. This shows that while 93% offer these benefits, 58% say they are underused.
Why is this, and what can employers do?
We asked a handful of experts.
Deal with the disconnect between what employers want and what employees want
Gethin Nadin, Chief Innovation Officer, Benifex, puts this disconnect down to the reason why global satisfaction with benefit schemes is at its lowest in 10 years.
“Employers are often not offering the benefits that people really want. Often they are making decisions on benefits based on what benefits them, not the individual,” he says.
Nadin cites the example of the employer interest recently in ‘green’ benefits; employers gain a tax saving if their employees drive electric cars without really understanding whether this is something that is particularly valued by their specific workforce.
This, he says, is a hangover from the paternalistic days when employers thought “I’m going to offer you benefits that help me”, which isn’t generally effective today. (Although, as pointed out our previous feature, employers clearly need to consider the return on their investment and why they are offering a benefit).
Ask your employees what they want!
Sounds obvious, right? But, according to many providers, employers often miss this vital step and make assumptions instead. As Nadin says, in his experience: “most businesses decide on a benefit scheme and then impress that upon their people, without getting their people involved.”
Of the ones that do involve their employees in the planning process, we hear a common way of asking is that employers will create a long list of benefits and then put that in front of certain employees – like champions or small groups – to get their feedback.
Nadin feels this process could be much more sophisticated and yield much more insightful results if done differently.
“We should be asking what employees want benefits to do for them, rather than just looking at benefits,” he says. “For example, employees could say they want to spend more time with their kids. In that case the benefit is offering holiday trading and enabling them to buy more holiday. Employers can miss these insights because they are looking at the benefits first, not the outcome they want to achieve from the benefits.”
He actually encourages employers to go one step further and ask a broader question that doesn’t even mention benefits or what an employer could do.
“Try and find out the issues that you could solve, or buffer against,” he says. “You could ask questions like: what do you struggle with most? What would make your life better?”
But bear in mind that if you ask what employees want, then you have to take some action as, like he says, “nothing will kill uptake of benefits more than not doing what employees say, or ignoring them”.
Beware the bandwagon
One reason why employers fail to ask employees what they actually want is that they get lured by the industry bandwagon or buzzword – of which there are many, ever-changing ones in Health and Wellbeing.
In fact, an international benefits and wellbeing manager of a technology company goes as far as to say that it’s “becoming an industry norm to be kind of peer pressured into a decision where you are throwing money at a programme which you might not actually need”.
Rachel Pearce, UKI Wellbeing Engagement and Communication Specialist at Unilever, cites menopause as one of those “key buzzwords right now”. She says that she often mentions menopause support and “watches for an eyeball because everyone is talking about it now”.
As professionals in this space, it’s necessary to be objective and assess whether getting behind a current trend is not just good for a press release, but will genuinely benefit their particular employee base.
“The thing is, we at Unilever have been talking and acting on it for years. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done and continue to do in this space to be a menopause friendly workplace, so there’s no bandwagon,”she says. “But regardless, it’s important work to embed an inclusive culture, have life-stage support recognising the challenges colleagues have and the support they need.”
To avoid jumping on bandwagons, follow the employee data, rather than the trends.
Show them it’s a tangible benefit not a tick box
A reason that uptake can be low is that when push comes to shove and the employee is distressed and really needs support, there are overwhelming (or, seemingly to them in their state) barriers in the way.
Nadin calls this lacking “substance”:
“Employers can put all the posters up and celebrate the right things. But, when an employee gets a diagnosis, for example, what happens then? What actually kicks in? What tangible support is there immediately? That’s substance.”
As an example of substance he gives an employee who is struggling with their financial wellbeing:
“This person has been told they can go to HR. So they do. They ask for a hardship loan. They get it, no questions asked. It kicks in. It helps them. It doesn’t matter how often an employer says that employee Financial Wellbeing is important to them, it won’t resonate unless there’s action.”
Deborah Wilson, Country Manager, UK and Ireland, Lyra Health, agrees: “You’re actually supporting your employee. You’re not just ticking a box. It’s about creating a culture where employees know you’re putting something in place that is going to have a tangible benefit. And you have somebody there who is going to listen to your needs, understand what you need to move forward and personalise your care.”
Shout about the success stories
One way to show employees there’s tangible benefits associated with your programmes and policies is to get people to tell their stories when they’ve had a good experience.
This is often a much better, more engaging way to convey the facts than a dry, wordy document from an insurance company.
“We’ve found case studies to be really beneficial in engaging line managers to bring it to life for them because a lot of them won’t necessarily always realise what the depth of the EAP can support with, or what situations they can call on the EAP for,” says Wilson.
Unilever ran a series last year called ‘My Story’ focused on health, with different employees talking about different themes.
“I had some incredible interviews with employees all around the country talking about mental health which we pulled into a series of films,” says Pearce. “It created powerful word of mouth because people were saying things like ‘oh, I know that person talking about their mental health, maybe I can too!’ it was relatable and helped to start the conversation.”
Include friends and family in benefits too
Especially with the shift to companies reporting on their social impact, as part of ESG, employers are increasingly including friends and family in Health and Wellbeing benefit programmes. This is a major selling point in terms of attracting and retaining employees, not to mention reducing their stressors.
Lyra Health, for example, has many employees who are parents contacting them about their children’s Health and Wellbeing. It has a specific Children and Young People’s Pathway and anecdotal feedback reflects that alleviating worries about children helps employees focus better while at work.
With the NHS so stretched, especially regarding mental health services for young people, employers can make a tangible improvement to employees’ lives through benefits like these.
Communicate much, much better
This issue comes up time and time again and really deserves its own feature (to come!).
As the international benefits and wellbeing manager we spoke to says “I always joke that 95% of my job is actually communications, and the Wellbeing part is much smaller! We know our challenge is to capture attention in as few words as possible!”
The way benefits are described, particularly in the blurb from insurance companies, is often deeply uninspiring. As Nadin says, the copy that providers often give employers to share is “about 2,000 words and 25 minutes worth of reading, who’s got the time to do that?”
For legal reasons these companies have to point out all the details of the policies but the employer’s main communication job is engagement; this is a very different challenge.
Experts suggest, as well as being succinct, to communicate clearly and frequently and in a way that will land with your target audience. “If it sounds really corporate when you are speaking to a specific audience, particularly around wellbeing which is such an individual, emotive subject, it’s not going to resonate,” says Pearce.
They also advise using different channels from online to hard copy to webinars to allow for the fact people process information in different ways, as well as segmenting your employee base by lifestage to tailor messages.
Beware that globalising benefits might lose some personalisation
Often different markets have different levels of sophistication and development when it comes to where they are on their journey with benefits. That typically means that, for consistency, the global programme has to be pitched at a level all markets can relate to.
“It’s really hard to find global suppliers that do local really well,” says the same international benefits and wellbeing manager of a tech company. “We’ve found that when we make benefits globally applied sometimes you have to take a little step back from personalisation. That said, we’ve got one provider – which provides fertility and menopause support – which is excellent on this front with experts from different regions and areas of expertise which operate in the local language.”
Get your culture right
Debra Clark, Head of Wellbeing, Towergate Health & Protection, goes as far as to say that “if you’ve not got the culture right, and you’ve not got C-suite support, then you’re on a hiding to nothing”.
