Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, said: “The goal should be to mitigate the number of sick days by prioritising preventative measures, but with rehabilitation readily available too.”

However, although the driving priority may not be prevention, many employers do offer health and wellbeing benefits that do offer preventative support. Prevention can include support for all areas of health and wellbeing, including physical, mental, social and financial.

Mental health support is given precedence by employers

Support for mental health, such as initiatives to help staff manage stress and mental health, including access to EAPs and counselling is given precedence over other types of support, and are offered by 57% of employers as part of preventative care.

Preventative support for physical health, such as helping staff increase physical activity and improve diet is offered by 56% of employers. Support for social health, such as organising social events, or supporting voluntary work is offered by 53% of employers, and support for financial health, such as financial planning and debt consolidation is offered by just under half (49%) of employers.

Mental health support most helpful to staff

GRiD’s research found that employers believe preventative support for mental health to be most helpful to staff (50%), closely followed by support for physical health (49%), support for social health (46%) and financial health at 42%.

In GRiD’s experience, it was not long ago that support for physical health was the holy grail and considered the most critical but it’s encouraging to see that support for all aspects of an employee’s welfare is almost on an equal footing.

Where to find support

There is a myriad of support available for employees within health and wellbeing benefits including PMI, EAPs and group risk benefits (employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness). This can include regular health checks, monitoring apps, telephone helplines, discounted gym memberships, rewards for achieving goals such as cinema vouchers and shopping discounts, as well as incentives to join mindfulness, healthy-eating, and at-home workout programmes. Insurers are getting increasingly creative in the way that they encourage employees to take responsibility for making healthy lifestyle choices, and GRiD recommends that employers encourage their workforce to make full use of everything that is available to them and their employees.

Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, said: “Our research shows that preventative care can be overlooked by employers and therefore undersold to staff, but make no mistake, these seemingly straightforward measures can make a dramatic difference in absence rates and in staff performing to their best ability.”

Research from GRiD