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The Five Forces Shaping Health, Wellbeing, and Benefits 

Benefits
Culture & employee experience
Wellbeing
Happy men and women sitting in chairs

Revolutionize your approach to employee engagement by recognizing and responding to trends as you prepare for 2023. 

When we think about wellbeing, it is important to think about the whole human being and not just the individual components that wellbeing fits into. Employees expect their employer to deliver work-life management benefits and programs that support them in their personal health and wellbeing journey. As we look at 2022 and ahead, forces are shaping how you deliver benefits and improve health outcomes for you, your business, and your people.  

Five forces shaping health, wellbeing, and benefits  

  1. Employees expect, need, and value health and wellbeing programs more than ever 
    • Employees value employers that promote effective health, wellbeing, and benefits that help them build their energy outside and within the workplace so that when they begin their day, they are ready to go and have the tools and support they need to boost energy throughout the day. 
  2. Attention is paramount in an overwhelmed workforce 
    • Employers should focus on delivering value in the context of attention span by simplifying and orchestrating what their employees care most about in small, digestible, and individualized interactions. This allows employees to take charge of their benefits experience and make positive changes in their health journey.  
  3. Personalization is critical; solutions must respond in the moments that matter most 
    • Personalization is about understanding each person as an individual, their likes and dislikes, their goals, communication preferences, and their habits. In a health, wellbeing, and benefits solution built on a core of behavior change, personalization is critical to enable those changes to result in outcomes. 
  4. Mental health, DEI, and psychological safety must be a part of your company culture 
    • Employees who are facing continued stress at home and work can greatly impact their overall wellbeing. Employers should look to focus on creating a culture of psychological safety to destigmatize mental health and share daily concerns, with a third goal to build benefit awareness. 
  5. Results matter – an effective program must demonstrate clear outcomes 
    • Understanding the analytics and results of the wellbeing programs you’ve established for your employees helps you defend the investments you’ve made and helps you grow the strategic partnerships you have with your benefits providers.  

“So, the real takeaway is employees value employers that promote effective health, well-being, and benefits that help them build their energy outside and within the workplace so that when they begin their day they are ready to go and have the tools and support they need to boost energy throughout the day,” Laura Walmley, EVP & GM Employers at Personify Health, explains.  

So, how can your organization break through the noise and deliver on expectations and needs to deliver value to your employees?  

By precisely targeting personalized benefit programs and harnessing data from your employees, you can create a wellbeing program that meets them where they are in their health journey and allows them to control their benefits.  

Strategize and deploy timely touchpoints. 

One global employer group developed a wellness program that was relevant to their multi-generational employees by combining multi-channel outreach with consistent and timely messaging. Personify Health partnered with the company’s champion networks to create demos and challenges to incentivize employees to participate in programs with their peers or someone they related to. This approach increased enrollment and utilization across their wellness programs.  

Results: 

Break through and provide support. 

A large health system used behavior and interest data from Personify Health and identified increasing anxiety, stress, and depression among their employees as COVID continued. Working with Personify Health, they created a multi-pronged wellbeing program approach and focused on creating a culture of psychological safety to destigmatize mental health, share daily concerns, and build benefit awareness.  

Results: 

Build psychological safety. 

A technology company with a hybrid work model wanted to build psychological safety and deliver mental health benefits to their employees. The organization decided they needed to establish a more robust wellbeing program, so they began working with Personify Health. They brought in coaches to lead manager trainings, launched custom healthy habits programs, and created mental health challenges with Rethink Health to encourage their workforce to engage and achieve their goals.  

Results: 

“We want to help organizations understand the impacts that are going on in their workforce and what they are dealing with today. Then, we want to guide and future-proof those organizations by helping them understand the future health of their employees and how they can help them succeed,” Kristen Larson, SVP, Account Management at Personify Health, elaborated. 

Changing More Lives for Good Requires Changing the Status Quo 

Increased demand for talent, coupled with a wellbeing emergency is leading to huge attraction and retention challenges. In this uncertain market, an up-to-date and attractive employee value prop centered on whole-person wellbeing and belonging is a valuable tool to retain top talent, reduce turnover, and attract new candidates. 

HR professionals must recognize and respond to trends in a way that is human-centric, supportive, and create employee energy within and outside of the workplace. Motivation, belonging, and wellbeing programs to encourage and recognize employees are now vital. 

For more details on the five wellbeing trends and how organizations like yours are taking initiative, watch our on-demand replay: Pulsing Trends in Health, Wellbeing, and Benefits. 

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