Investing in employee wellbeing is good for people and business (…tell us something we don’t know, right?). But investment alone isn’t enough. Marketing your wellbeing offering to your employees is critical to engaging, empowering and enabling them to participate and reap the benefits, while delivering ROI to your organisation.
Putting a price on employee wellbeing
The Global Wellness Institute estimates workplace unwellness costs the global economy 10-15% of economic output every year. Based on the IMF’s valuation of Global GDP, that put the cost of workplace unwellness at an eye-watering $10-15m Trillion in 2022.
But it’s important to look beyond the dollars. The impact of a healthy (or unhealthy) working environment and culture transcends business – it flows through to every aspect of our lives and touches everyone we interact with – our families, friends, communities and colleagues.
No longer a nice-to-have
The case for investing in employee wellbeing is irrefutable. Gallup research shows employees who strongly believe their employer cares about their overall wellbeing are three times more likely to be engaged at work, 69% less likely to look for a new job and 71% less likely to experience burnout, than those who don’t.
Additionally, 2023 research from employee wellbeing company Gympass shows 96% of workers will only consider companies that place a clear emphasis on employee wellbeing when looking for their next job – up from 73% the previous year.
Unsurprisingly, businesses are increasingly wise to the strategic importance of a focus on employee wellbeing. From $50.6b in 2022, the global workplace wellness market is projected to grow to $58.4b by 2027.
If you build it, they will (not necessarily) come
The surge in businesses investing in employee wellbeing doesn’t necessarily mean all workers are benefiting.
Recent Gartner research revealed that while 80% of employees had access to physical wellbeing offerings, only 32% actually engage with them. When it comes to emotional and mental wellbeing offerings the gulf was even greater, with 87% of employers offering something but only 23% of employees engaging.
These numbers suggest organisations need to get better at promoting, empowering and enabling their people to participate in the wellbeing offerings they have in place.
Bridging the gap
Every workplace is different and there’s no silver bullet to success. However, there are a few fundamentals that can help get more of your workforce engaging with and benefiting from your employee wellbeing initiatives:
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Many initiatives, one banner.
All too often we see organisations running disparate employee wellbeing initiatives that don’t feel connected. As with any marketing, packaging these under a single wellbeing programme ‘brand’ can increase visibility, awareness and engagement among employees. Many initiatives, all working together to uplift the wellbeing of your people.
Brand-led. Culturally aligned.
Creating a wellbeing programme that is imbued with the culture and personality of your brand helps create emotional connection and drive engagement. Leveraging the brand attributes that attracted people to work for your organisation in the first place and (hopefully) inspires them each day, can elevate your wellbeing offering to something distinctly relevant and meaningful for your people.
Take it to the people.
People. Are. Busy. And making time for your wellbeing can feel like an impossible luxury. Organisations need to take the lead here – not just telling staff it’s ok to prioritise their wellbeing, but showing they mean it. Get leaders to role-model and champion involvement. Embed your wellbeing programme into your employee’s experience – as part of their onboarding, training, day-to-day routine, environment – wherever and whenever it fits. Sure, it takes work. But the benefits to your business, your people, and those you serve, are much more than worth the effort.
Putting it to work, the easier way.
Skipper & Skipper recently had the privilege of helping one of Europe’s best-known airlines develop a wellbeing programme for their diverse workforce. Harnessing easyJet’s brand purpose of making low-cost travel easy for their customers, we set out to make the journey to better wellbeing as easy and rewarding as possible for their employees.
Creating a wellbeing proposition that embodied the brand’s unique ‘Orange Spirit’, we helped deliver a programme to equip and empower every easyJet employee with the knowledge, skills and energy to thrive everyday – at work and in life. We called it ‘wellbeing, the easier way’.
