As a broker or consultant, you are on the front lines of employee benefits. You are a valued resource for your clients, and they are looking to you for recommendations on how to best manage their benefits packages, including deciding which new offerings and initiatives to provide.
Encouraging your clients to invest in a well-rounded, comprehensive benefits program that allows employees to improve all areas of their life (and health) can lead to significant benefits for everyone. Keep reading to learn why your clients can’t afford to ignore health and wellness this upcoming plan year.
The Rising Cost of Health and Wellness
We all know the cost of healthcare is rising, and employers are feeling the pinch. It is projected that healthcare costs will continue to increase by 8% in 2025 due to inflation, chronic or long term conditions, prescription medicines, and unhealthy lifestyles. This trend is unsustainable and ignoring health and wellness will only continue to make these numbers surge even higher.
Financial strains are expected to stem from specific areas – commercial healthcare, hospital costs, health plan contracts, costs of emerging healthcare drugs, and growing needs for behavioral healthcare.
As for costs that are nonmonetary, studies reveal, “engagement levels rise by 20 percent and the likelihood of turnover reduces by a staggering 87 percent when workers trust their organizations’ commitments to improving well-being.”
By contrast, investing in wellness programs can help mitigate these costs by promoting healthier lifestyles, help prevent chronic diseases, increase productivity, and reduce absenteeism in the workplace.
The Link Between Employee Wellness and Productivity
Believe it or not, as a broker or consultant, you play a pivotal role in helping clients improve their health – both as individuals and as a well-structured organization – all while keeping healthcare costs down. There is a strong correlation between overall employee health and wellness and productivity, one that should not be overlooked.
Looking past just physical health, employee wellness programs support mental, emotional, and even financial health. Even with escalated costs, your clients should take notice that employees are more satisfied (54%) and productive (44%) when they feel a greater sense of financial wellness. Healthy workforces are more engaged, motivated, and focused with statistics showing 11% lower turnover at employers who create cultures of health. Heightened job performance, increased retention rates, stronger communication, enhanced morale, a genuine interest in the company, and camaraderie all contribute to building a healthy culture.
An added case can even be made for lower absenteeism and greater engagement. It should be noted that “health-related work losses are estimated to cost US employers more than $260 billion each year.” Equally alarming and astounding, health conditions and risks should not be overlooked and instead should be a central focus to monetize quality work and productivity. Physical health and emotional detriments – anything from chronic migraines to depression – contribute to limitations on the job and an inability to efficiently perform tasks. More reports indicate that “across all health conditions and risk categories, participants reported an annual average of 1.99 days of work missed due to illness and 9.04 days at work but limited in performing tasks because of health.”
Broad wellness programs that holistically focus on the physical, mental, and emotional health of employees can help employers determine how to best address the needs of their workforce.
How to Implement Effective Wellness Programs
Now that we know why clients shouldn’t ignore health and wellness, it is time to consider how they can implement an effective program. As your clients’ broker of choice, you play a crucial role in evaluating current offerings and making personalized recommendations.
Some key steps to consider:
- Assess Needs and Interests: Studies conclude four factors critical to success in any job are information, intelligence, skill, and attitude, with attitude accounting for 93 percent of a person’s success. With this knowledge, clients should create and launch a needs assessment based on current employee attitudes around a culture of wellness. Surveys, focus groups, or anonymous feedback can provide detailed insights.
- Set Clear Goals: Using SMART goals, you can help your clients establish clear, measurable goals for the wellness program offerings and refer to the needs assessment for what is most important. Collectively, it could include boosting employee morale and engagement, decreasing healthcare costs, or establishing better work-life balance. Having specific goals will help in tracking the program’s success while continuously monitoring and adjusting if necessary.
- Offer a Variety of Programs: When employees are given a chance to choose what wellness activities they participate in (what matters most to them) it improves engagement. Employee participation could be dependent on how relatable, accessible, and inclusive the programming is. This could include health and wellness challenges based around fitness or lifestyle, hands on workshops such as those on nutrition, or mental health and stress management resources. Even consider offering rewards to incentivize participation.
- Be Mindful of Budgets: It’s important your clients understand that wellness doesn’t have to be elaborate. Planning, programming, and budgeting for wellness programs can be as simple as framing the question (i.e.: how much money can be allocated to this,) fact finding (employee assessment,) making a final decision, and following up or adjusting as needed.
On the most basic scale, your clients can start small and grow programs gradually scaffolding from already existing programs or strategies that have proven success. Currently, healthcare spending in the United States adds up to $3 trillion a year (yes, you read that right) culminating mainly from prescription drugs, chronic diseases, and lifestyle. This is why, regardless of company size, health and wellness programs can have a significant impact on long-term healthcare costs. - Measure: To measure the success of wellness programs, clients should analyze and track metrics such as healthcare costs, absenteeism rates, and employee engagement scores. Studies conclude that nearly three-quarters of employees strongly (30%) or somewhat agree (42%) that their employer helps them maintain or develop a healthy lifestyle. Odds are, the more employees not only feel supported but also utilize programs, the healthier they will be.
The Future of Workplace Wellness
Health and wellness programs are not just a hot topic or the latest trend. They are critical to evolving organizational cultures and creating much needed shifts. By staying well informed and keeping open dialogue with your clients, you can provide invaluable insights. Consider what the future may look like to effectively work with clients:
- Digital Health: From online platforms and hubs to mobile apps and wearable devices and even how healthcare is delivered like telemedicine, technology will continue to take center stage. This is especially true for tracking health metrics and providing personalized wellness recommendations. The personalized, digital transformation allows for employees to access their health data while more easily being able to share it with healthcare professionals or on platforms designed to keep employees on track.
- Holistic Wellness: When it comes to health and wellness, employees are always wanting more. There is increasing interest in the importance of holistic wellness, which encompasses physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being. In every corner, there seems to be a new product or service capitalizing on this industry, and we can only expect growth to continue in this arena.
- Mental Health Focus: As mental health awareness grows, more employers are prioritizing the need to provide this type of support. To accomplish this, clients should share resources for stress management, and proactively provide support for employee mental health. Their wellness partner should provide all of these resources and more to support their efforts.
The importance of health and wellness programming is not just on the rise, it is here to stay. Health and wellness are critical components of a successful and sustainable workplace. As a broker or consultant, you are in a unique position to help clients understand the importance of investing in employee well-being and guide them in implementing effective wellness programs. Doing so can result in reduced healthcare costs, improved productivity, employing top talent, and creating a positive and engaged workforce. A healthy workforce is a happy workforce.
Interested in working with a wellness partner that can provide all of the above and more? Contact us today to see how we can help.