Employers are offering enhanced wellbeing programs to their employees post covid-19 pandemic. The wellbeing programs that are being revised include programs that support mental health, work/life balance and financial health. Employers are trying to address the issues that have been created due to the pandemic in the past year. They are doing everything they can to help employees deal with various personal and family related challenges caused by the pandemic. Here are a few of the things that organizations are doing to support employee well-being:
- Extend their support for programs addressing issues such as stress management and sleep improvement.
- Add new leave options or expand their leave benefits during the pandemic. Also, many employers are examining their parental leave policies.
- Improve child care support, provide paid time off to take care of children or other family members, and provide back-up child care support.
- Offer resources to support financial decisions like mortgages and wills
- Offer support for emergency savings and budgeting.
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Advantages of enhancing employee wellbeing benefits
- Improved health behaviors: Wellbeing programs are good at helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors. This is especially important as many people have had a struggle with their health during covid-19. Anybody can have healthy behaviors for a few days or weeks, but it is important to have healthy behaviors for years. Once you quit having healthy behaviors you stop receiving the benefits. Healthy behaviors lead to lower health risks, which leads to lower chronic disease which in turn leads to lower health care costs.
- Increased productivity: Low employee productivity is when an employee is present at work but not working. There can be many reasons for low employee productivity like the employee may not know how to use the equipment, they may be tired, they may not know what they are doing and they may be distracted by other employees. But one of the main reasons for low productivity is poor health. Wellbeing programs can Improve employee health and hence increase productivity.
- Less absenteeism: There are various reasons that can lead to lower absenteeism like employees with good health behaviors have low absenteeism, employees who can control their stress better have low absenteeism and employees who are not overweight have less absenteeism. All of these things can be achieved by a worksite wellbeing program. Wellbeing programs have the ability to improve employee health which can have an impact on whether or not an employee is absent from work.
- High employee morale: Employee morale is a huge factor in the success of a company and a good wellbeing program helps employees to be healthy and happy. Remote working has had a hit on employee morale. Employers have been looking for ways to boost employee morale since the pandemic. Well being programs can have a positive effect on employee morale.
Lack of awareness among employees is the reason for not using the offered benefits. HR teams should explain to employees why the benefit is important and how to access more information about the benefit.
References:
- Employers Enhance Well-Being Benefits for a Post-Pandemic Workforce | SHRM | Stephen Miller, CEBS | June 16, 2021
- 7 MOST IMPORTANT REASONS TO OFFER EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING AT WORK |Well Steps | Dr. Steve Aldana | April 22, 2021
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