Eight in ten employers say having a good wellbeing strategy in place can bring about key business benefits – such as recruitment, retention and productivity – yet a quarter (24%) only have an ‘informal’ plan in place and just over one in ten (13%) don’t have anything in place at all.1
The insights to inform a robust plan of action are often disparate and elusive; a problem that a newly launched analytics dashboard is setting out to fix.
A lack of appropriate information and advice represents the most common barrier to employers investing in the health and wellbeing of their employees, as identified some time ago by Dame Carol Black in her seminal Working for a healthier tomorrow review of the UK’s working age population. The review highlighted the need for further research and analysis on how to measure the impact of impaired health and wellbeing on business and the economy, with a view to building a framework that would better inform the boardroom and company accounts.2
According to Mike Tyler, Chairman of newly launched Fruitful Insights – who has also completed an MSc in Workplace Health at University of Nottingham and is continuing doctoral research – many wellbeing analytical have been developed over the years “but they’re arguably very siloed”. He adds: “They don’t look at all aspects of wellbeing, from the physical and psychological, to the workplace environment, leadership practices and culture.”
Fruitful Insights is a new data and analytics platform, designed to provide an indication of the costs associated with impaired wellbeing and productivity and the factors that underpin those losses. Based on this intelligence, employers will be able to identify priorities, action plans and follow-up assessments to help improve wellbeing and performance, says Mike.
Legal & General Group Protection – a provider of life assurance, income protection and critical illness cover to employers – has announced an exclusive partnership with Fruitful Insights. The platform will be provided on a complimentary basis to the insurer’s group income protection clients covering a minimum of 100 employees.
Legal & General says that as well as equipping employees to take steps to improve their own wellbeing via personalised reports and signposting to wellbeing benefits and services, the platform will help employers:
Quantify performance – Unprecedented levels of data to help quantify the impact of impaired wellbeing on organisational effectiveness.
Prioritise next steps – Actionable insight to help employers prioritise areas to target to enhance their wellbeing strategy.
Enhance effectiveness – Comprehensive analysis highlighting the strategic wellbeing priorities for the business and providing the insights that help elevate health and wellbeing on to the boardroom agenda.
The insurer adds that employers will receive access to a full programme of support, which is being developed over the coming months in line with feedback.
Employer thoughts
The UK arm of global automation corporation KUKA took part in a pilot with Legal & General and Fruitful Insights. Rachel Nimmo, HR Manager at KUKA UK, commented:
“We decided to participate in the Legal & General Fruitful Insights pilot because wellbeing has always been a focus for us at KUKA. It’s a key topic on our agenda and we really wanted to take wellbeing to the next level. We recognise that supporting our employees with their health and wellbeing really does have an impact on the bottom line and productivity.
“The outputs of the assessment gave us a starting point in terms of data and insights for us to build our wellbeing strategy. We met with the senior management team to go through the results. We’ve also met with our employees’ forum, to talk through the results, and that led to us creating a wellbeing plan for the year. We’re definitely glad that we participated in the pilot and are now focussed on rolling out the plan for the rest of the year.”
1 Legal & General Wellbeing at Work Barometer 2021 – this research was conducted by Opinium amongst 1,011 senior managers in businesses with 10-249 employees (13-20 May) and 1,003 businesses with over 250 employees (13-26 August)
2 Working for a healthier tomorrow, produced by the cross-government Health, Work and Wellbeing Programme, March 2008 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209782/hwwb-working-for-a-healthier-tomorrow.pdf
