By Jonathan Schoonhoven
“Employees are eight times more likely to be engaged when wellness is a priority in the workplace. In organizations perceived as actively promoting health and well-being, 55% of employees reported being engaged. In organizations not so perceived, by contrast, only 7% of employees reported being engaged. Employee engagement is, of course, widely recognized as a critical driver of productivity.”
A study by the World Economic Forum reveals an impressive correlation between how strongly wellness is promoted in a workplace and those employees’ engagement. As the chart below shows, where wellness is not a priority,
only seven percent of employees are engaged, compared to fifty five percent of those where there is a priority on wellness. Employee engagement is indeed a driver of productivity—Gallup
provides statistics showing that companies ranked top and bottom-quartile in employee engagement have
an eighteen percent difference in productivity, a
sixty percent difference in quality, and a
sixteen percent difference in overall profitability. It is worth noting that the survey drew its data from fifteen countries across the world, including the United States, Japan, India, China and New Zealand.
While the report makes no claim on whether wellness-priority causes higher engagement, given that employees at these companies are eight times more likely to be engaged—and that “Top decile companies (in engagement) have 3.9 times the Earnings Per Share (EPS) growth rate” (Gallup), it seems self-evident that companies should prioritize wellness.
Prioritizing wellness is a vague term though and does not immediately suggest a course of action. A more useful alternative might be incentivizing healthful behaviour. Your health incentives program must do three things. First, it must send a clear message that employees are valued over the long-term and are worth investing in. On-site health screenings and incentives to quit smoking would be good examples. Second, it must improve their actual health and, by extension, their value as employees. Because healthier employees tend to be happier and more productive, incentives like subsidizing half of your employees’ gym membership fees could have a net positive effect on your bottom line.
BetterWorks has pre-negotiated corporate rates with fitness, yoga, Pilates studios and more.
Finally, the incentives you give must be good for the employees themselves. It doesn’t have to be all cold, hard economics—try a little altruism. Provide healthy snacks at the office, and organize fun group workouts before lunch.
You can read some more ideas about engagement and wellness in Maslow’s Hierarchy, Lord of the Flies and Employee Benefits.
BetterWorks is a platform that builds employee engagement, promotes health and saves you money in the process. See some more things we do here.