Absence or Wellbeing?
Do you focus on the absence or wellbeing of staff – the 10% absent or 90% well?
Employee health budgets are primarily spent on “fixing” the problem and usually focus on supporting those whose health is influencing their performance.
We have reviewed many organisation’s data and found that:
- 90% of absence is caused by 10-20% of people
- Most budgets are spent on Insurance (PMI, etc.), occupational health referrals, employee assistance/counselling, physiotherapy, etc.
- Wellbeing is so “woolly” and poorly defined that it receives a token gesture.
Changing the approach takes creativity, knowledge and strategic thinking. It also needs backing from key stakeholders. With wellbeing becoming more popular, people are trying to change their approach.
We advise getting the strategy and backing before you spend money and time. For example, ESB Ireland spent months following our audit, ensuring every key stakeholder was supportive and had input to future strategies… well worth the time and effort.
Look at your demographics – if your population is over 45 male, shift workers, or manual labour, don’t provide the basic advice, tailor it to their issues, sleep on shift, eat on shift, keep fit for work, work outdoors in summer etc.
Engage people through effective channels – posters in the loos are good but not the be-all and end-all. Design a comms plan to surround your strategy, inform, ad obtain feedback.
Measure and gather data on utilisation and outcomes. Is your effort worthwhile?
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