When organizations are trying to find a wellness program, they mostly consider the cost, features, and people’s favourites. However, irrespective of the employee wellness platform you choose, knowing why they are necessary for an organization is important.
Before employee wellness platforms became popular, the typical workplace focused on basic health perks like health insurance, overlooking other programs like fitness support, mental health aid, etc.
Employees lacked sufficient resources to address their holistic health, and many organizations didn’t concentrate on preventative measures.
The emerging Employee Wellness trend is in response to identifying the essence of employees’ physical and mental health, enhancing performance and productivity, and facilitating a positive work environment.
What is an Employee Wellness Platform?
An employee wellness platform is a digital solution created to improve the overall well-being of employees in a company. This platform often has a wide range of tools, features and resources that cater to diverse aspects of health like nutrition, stress management, mental and physical health.
When organizations introduce employee wellness platforms into their workplace, the primary goal is to ensure that employees are healthier, thereby fostering increased productivity and employee satisfaction.
Why is employee wellness important for organizational success?
Employee wellness within an organization is vital for several reasons. Here are why organizations should introduce employee wellness platforms and programs for their employees.
1. Improved Productivity
Healthy employees are more likely to do better at their work, because they are more energetic and focused, improving organizational efficiency. Employee wellness greatly impacts mental and physical well-being, equipping employees with the wherewithal to efficiently handle tasks with increased concentration. Employees will also be able to work better under pressure, leading to stability in work performance.
2. Reduced Absenteeism
One of the proactive measures to reduce absenteeism is to implement employee wellness programs. By advocating for healthy lifestyles and providing employees with preventive care resources, employees will have fewer sick days.
These wellness programs should offer perks like vaccinations, health check-ups, stress management tools, etc. Workplaces with employee wellness systems will have a workforce more resilient to illness and stress, thereby positively contributing to organizational growth.
3. Enhanced Job Satisfaction
The implementation of employee wellness facilitates a positive work environment where employees are satisfied with their jobs and the workplace. Employees will believe that the organization cares for and supports them.
When they are certain that the company prioritizes their well-being, they become motivated to become more efficient and loyal.
4. Talent Attraction and Retention
Organizations with employee wellness programs are more attractive in the job market than others that do not. Top talents look for employers that prioritize their health and wellbeing, so they will prefer opting for companies that care about them. An organization with employee wellness programs will create a positive reputation in the ever-competitive job market, making recruitment and retention efforts easier.
Top Features of Modern Employee Wellness Platforms
Employee wellness platforms provide employees with opportunities to stay active, build connections, stress management, and enhance general health. Here are some top features of modern employee wellness platforms that you should know
1. Educate Employees
Employee wellness platforms offer an effective way for employees to get educated about various aspects of their health.
Such platforms will contain content for employees to understand the essence of fostering and nurturing a healthy lifestyle. Some of the content may include webinars, video content, ebooks, audiobooks, etc.
2. Health Assessments and Screenings
Employee wellness programs often constitute a health evaluation to show the aspects of employee’s health that need to be improved. Employees can access wellness platforms on their preferred devices to report their health risk, and undergo a screening exercise.
The results from the screening help employees create a system that leads to a healthy lifestyle. Employees will be able to review reports of their personal health screening with a wellness platform.
3. Fitness Tracking
Fitness tracking on employee wellness platforms is mostly achieved with wearable devices that employees can use to actively monitor their physical activity. This feature enables users to remain informed about their movements all day.
Since the main goal of fitness tracking is to encourage frequent exercise, these wellness platforms encourage employees to engage in physical activities. This is done by measuring distance, tracking workout periods, counting daily steps, etc.
Some wellness platforms come with gamification elements like leaderboards, rewards, and challenges to facilitate collaboration and friendly competition.
4. Setting Goals
Creating goals on employee wellness platforms enables users to take charge of their health and well-being. Irrespective of the employee’s goals, they can define their objectives, giving them a sense of ownership and dedication to their health and wellness journey.
Most employee wellness platforms offer customization, ensuring that users receive resources and guidance in line with their specific health objectives. Employees can also monitor their progress, facilitating a positive feedback loop that improves dedication and motivation to their well-being goals.
5. Nutrition Support
Many employee wellness platforms understand the essence of nutrition to an individual’s well-being. Therefore, they integrate nutrition support features to empower individuals to make healthier and better-informed choices.
Employees can get insights into meal planning and healthier food choices as the platform considers their dietary restrictions, preferences, and health goals.
Some of these platforms provide webinars, articles, and informative content that equips them with knowledge about the essence of dietary choices, balanced nutrition, etc.
Challenges of Implementing Employee Wellness Platforms
While employee wellness platforms can be beneficial, their implementation come with some challenges. Here are some issues that organizations may likely face when incorporating employee wellness platforms.
1. Data Privacy
Solution: Data privacy is a notable challenge when integrating employee wellness platforms because of the sensitivity of health-related information.
It is important to mention that these platforms collect and keep sensitive health data like lifestyle choices, and fitness levels. Therefore, managing this information needs a high confidentiality level to safeguard employees’ privacy.
Additionally, organizations need to ensure compliance with the data protection regulations applicable to their locations. This maintains the trust of their employees and evades legal consequences.
Employers should collect vital health data instead of amassing unnecessary information. This can be implemented by creating data minimization strategies to reduce the volume of information collected and establish that it is relevant to the project’s objectives.
2. Employee Participation
Solution: Not all employees may be open to sharing their personal health data on any platform because of perceived intrusiveness. Their uneasiness about security can cause reluctance when using wellness platforms, especially if they need to reveal sensitive data.
Employees with busy work routine and personal engagements might be unable to pay more attention to wellness platforms, especially if the activities require a considerable time investment.
Some employees may focus more on their core job responsibilities over spending time on wellness programs. To solve this problem, organizations need to clearly communicate and emphasize the provided confidentiality measures, assuring employees of their data security.
Also, more time should be allotted for wellness activities, ensuring that they can be done on-the-go making it manageable.
3. Customization for different workforces
Due to differences in employee health conditions, needs, and preferences, it is often difficult to customize wellness programs for the workforce. The employees may have different health needs depending on factors like medical history, lifestyle and age.
Hence, designing a general wellness platform may not be effective in catering to these individual variations.
Also, the differences in languages and communication may pose a challenge when implementing employee wellness platforms. This can be solved with customizing instructions and communication materials, ensuring they are clear and inclusive of diverse language preferences.
Organizations need to regularly conduct surveys to understand the specific challenges, preferences and health needs of employees.Then this information can be used to introduce tailor-made features on wellness platforms to suit the broad workforce.
Conclusion
Employee wellness platforms enable organizations to manage and enhance their employee’s health and wellness.
Rather than using manual methods to gather and analyze employee’s health and wellness information, these platforms can be used to track health habits and provide seamless access to health education.
With the right tools, organizations can improve engagement and productivity across teams while lowering healthcare expenses for their business.
It might be correct to predict that the future of employee wellness platforms features a data-driven, holistic, and user-centric approach, which may become core components of the workplace.
