UK businesses are realising that workplace wellness programmes can alleviate the negative impact that stress, depression and anxiety among workers has on business results, according to a recent survey conducted by Buck Consultants at Xerox. 

‘Working Well: A global survey of health promotion, workplace wellness and productivity strategies’ examined strategies across the globe, comparing practices in the UK to those elsewhere in the world. The report collected information from 1,041 organisations based in 37 countries.

“The study found only 20 percent of UK companies have a fully implemented wellbeing strategy, but among those we’re seeing a shift in the conversation from proving the business case for investment to ‘we have a problem,” said Martyn Anwyl, head of Health & Productivity at Buck Consultants at Xerox.  

The survey also found the reasons companies decide to establish wellness strategies vary by country. Stress is the main health risk that drives wellness strategies across Europe and Canada, whereas in Africa/Middle East, Asia and Latin America, the main driver is workplace safety.

In the United States, Australia and New Zealand, companies often initiate the programmes to promotephysical activity and exercise. Nutrition and healthy eating also showed up as one of the top three drivers across Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia and New Zealand.

Objectives for wellness programmes also differed. Improving workforce morale and engagement are the main objectives of programmes in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Latin America. But for employers in the United States, a primary concern was reducing healthcare or insurance premium costs. In Asia, the focus is on improving workplace safety.

“It is interesting to note that a mental health issue, such as depression, factor more in the UK’s wellbeing programmes than other countries globally,” said Anwyl. “For most other countries globally, depression does not hit the top five, suggesting a growing awareness in the UK of the impact to businesses and the need to address through targeted campaigns, support services and manager training.”

Wellbeing is a huge area and can be overwhelming to organisations,  said Anwyl. Companies can understand what the key focus areas are and target those by tapping into data from an Employee Assistance Programme, medical insurance claims, absence records, and surveys.

“In many cases, businesses will have services in place that can be utilised better thereby not incurring cost,” he said. Other findings, include:

Only one in five (20 per cent) UK companies actually have a fully implemented wellbeing strategy, compared to 29 percent of global businesses. Only 25 percent of UK respondents have had a wellness programme in place five years or over, which rise to 38 percent of companies in the rest of the world. There is a large difference between the UK and the United States in the attitude towards using incentives as a driver of behavioural change, with only 34 percent of UK respondents offering incentives, compared to 90 percent in the United States. There is less emphasis on measuring the success of wellbeing programmes in the UK with only 38 percent of respondents doing so, compared to 52 percent globally, with a lack of resource cited as the main reason behind this.

An emerging concept in health promotion and wellness is that of a “culture of health”, defined as an organisational climate that promotes healthy lifestyle choices.  Thirty percent of UK correspondents claim to have a strong culture of health today, but at least 73 percent intend to pursue this in the future. “The use of incentives compared to the US is something that we expect will grow in the future.  Awareness campaigns on their own are not having an impact on changing behaviours for employees who need it most,” said Anwyl. “Incentives or penalties through higher contributions to a medical scheme are options to help with this. The key to targeted wellness programmes is the data to help direct a business,” said Anwyl. “Implementing monitoring systems that will provide this will help but there are also companies that can provide health checks of organisations’ employees to give a clear picture of the key focus areas and the support needed thereafter.”