Feature insight - workplace healthcare
The future of workplace healthcare
Julie Lock, innovation director for Mitrefinch Ltd, discusses employees’ health and financial wellbeing developments
T raditionally workplace healthcare optometry vouchers, private medical cover for individuals in senior roles, opt in private medical plans through to critical illness cover. The rise of social media has enabled us to talk about things which we may not have understood too well or may have been taboo subjects in the past. Thanks to social media humans now have a greater awareness of mental health issues and its impact; we now understand that financial wellbeing is also a major stress factor for people and the impact of this knowledge is that employers are seeking new ways to support their employees’ health and financial wellbeing. About 300,000 people with a long- term mental health problem lose their jobs each year putting the annual cost to the UK economy of poor mental health at up to £99bn, of which about £42bn is borne by employers. The number of people forced to stop work because of mental health problems is fifty per cent higher than for those with physical health conditions ( Thriving at Work: The Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers, https://bit.ly/2qvjrov). This is due to a combination of a lack of support, lack of understanding within some workplaces and a lack of speedy access to mental health services. Sometimes in organisations people feel themselves excluded because of their mental health issues and sometimes people don’t offers a range of health benefits to employees ranging from dental plans,
to generate a return to business of between £1.50 and £9 for every £1 invested. ...employers are seeking new ways to support their employees’ health and financial wellbeing
issues and how to support employees and approach conversations. This started out as training for human resources professionals, then line managers – and now some employers are rolling this training out across their workforce. More recently we are seeing an increase in the adoption of critical illness training for staff, to help people understand how they can assist a work colleague both during and following critical illness treatment. Financial wellbeing can be a major stress factor affecting one in five adults at some point in their life, and can lead to unhealthy coping behaviours, less money for self-care, lack of sleep and unhealthy emotions; all of which have a negative impact on a person’s productivity at work. Some employers are now recognising that employee wellbeing also includes their financial wellbeing. This initially started with stress management support but with the advancement of technology is moving into financial education support. Fintech organisations are developing tools to assist people to manage their way out of debt and reach savings goals. So, whilst employers continue to offer the more traditional workplace healthcare benefits there is a growing trend of organisations incorporating mental health and financial wellbeing support into their workplace healthcare benefits for employees. The future of workplace healthcare will cater for the physical, financial and mental wellbeing of employees. n Watch Julie Lock and Vickie Graham discuss the future of payroll on CIPP On Demand: youtu.be/08mc-11r8-U
Many employers now recognise the benefit of investing in mental health support for their employees, realising the positive
effect this support has on employee wellbeing, culture, engagement, staff
retention and productivity. As a result, many organisations are trending towards providing mental health support services for their workforce. Today these services are provided by medical professionals, but the limitation here is that these services cannot operate all year round and a human’s emotional needs do not adhere to a work pattern. There is a surge of medical tech companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) mental health chatbots to be on call 24/7 enabling people to receive mental health support as they need it. These bots are highly sophisticated and are seeing a quick uptake of users – the future of mental health support in the workplace will undoubtedly see more use of AI. Alongside mental health support, over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the number of organisations investing in educating employees to spot signs of mental health
necessarily spot that somebody is struggling. An analysis by Deloitte examining existing workplace interventions identified potential
43
Issue 42 | July - August 2018
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker