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ekincare has started the HR leadership series with a vision to foster knowledge from the veterans in the HR industry and focus on the best practices. This roundtable session conducted in Mumbai was focused on the topic 'Using benefits to create a culture of well-being'. Here is a gist of the top debated points at the session.
An interesting insight shared by one was the panelist, Mr. Anand Vakaria from Wadia group was, a lot of companies have started offering pre-employment health checks, annual health checks, etc., but what happens to that data and what happens to those reports? How is that enormous data put to use?
You would have observed an employee complaining about sleeplessness, headache or stomach pain, but the important question that we need to ask is, are we doing the root-cause analysis for this?
Health checks report data when properly structured gives immense insights into employees’ health, and this is where the corporates and HR function can add a lot of value by strategizing their well-being programs around the health concerns of the employees.
A lot of employee health benefits programs are often limited by lack of data to guide their design and measure outcomes. As a result, organisations end up offering health benefits that lack utilization. So before finalizing on the health benefits, a detailed analysis of the existing and potential health risks of the population has to be determined. This can be done via H.R.A (Health Risk Assessment).
The below mentioned steps are a key to the success of Health Benefits programs.
Evaluation of current and potential health risks of the employees
Determine a plan of action with the help of a Healthcare Consultant
Measure the effectiveness of your healthcare initiatives
An intriguing point raised by one was the panelist was, should employee well-being initiatives be a part of the K.R.A? This point came up when the discussion was going around on how to improve the utilization of health initiatives and get the millennials to think more about their health. There are a few organisations that have started implementing employee well-being initiatives as part of the K.R.A.
Organizations can start with a very small percentage attributed to employee well-being initiatives to the K.R.A which would give the boost and momentum for the health initiatives at an organizational level.
Utilization of health benefits will definitely get a boost when it is a top leadership-driven initiative.
Almost all the HR leaders who were a part of this discussion concurred with this and shared many stories of the success they had seen with health initiatives adoption when driven by that top management.
When driven with the right incentives, there is tremendous scope for the adoption of health initiatives at organizations. One such story is of the company AbInbev, where Ms. Shalini mentioned regarding a stepathon contest that was launched for the employees with a motive to make the employees-
Physically more active
Co-ordinate better by forming teams
Employees had to sync their steps via their wearables or Google fit/Health kit and walk normally. A leader board was displayed for the organization which served as a regular motivation for employees to walk more and instill a sense of competition in them. The incentive for the winning team was a trip sponsored by the company to Everest base camp which indeed is a dream for a lot of people and the organization witnessed a tremendous response for the event.
Also, a dashboard was provided to the HR team where they could regularly track participation, usage, etc., and hence, there would be transparency in determining the winner as well. Incentives to drive utilization for health benefits need not be of high budgets. One such tried and tested incentive like arranging a simple lunch with the CEO or department head as an incentive for a healthy lifestyle initiative can drive great utilization rates.
This point was raised by one of the panelists Mr. Sridhar Sarathy from Tata Capital, where he highlighted the issue of reaching out to every employee and not to the ones who are in cities with greater access to healthcare initiatives. One of the popular health initiatives at corporates is Zumba session as employees love it and there is high participation in such events. But how can we arrange a Zumba session for a branch located in tier 2 city with 5 employees? How can we provide a healthy cafeteria for them?
One way to solve this problem is to change the approach that we follow for health initiatives. Organizations need to focus on the risk areas of the entire population and create a customized well-being strategy specific to each location, department etc. Then each and every employee should be given access to the health services irrespective of his/her location.
ekincare’s platform allows employees to access healthcare services such as doctor consultations, Gyms, Health checks, health coach programs, EAP programs across 2000+ locations and 50+ cities in India. This solves the inclusion of a multi-location workforce in the health benefits strategy.
