Why employers must approach wellbeing as a whole to ensure employees buy-in to benefits
At Mercer Marsh Benefits, we have just completed some research as a follow up to the ‘Thinking Beyond Reward’ Report from 12 months ago. Our initial findings from this new research show a clear link in the importance of considering all wellbeing pillars as part of your strategy and that people’s personal needs are not embedded in one specific pillar. This demonstrates the need to be joined up when building your wellbeing strategy.
As a sneak peak, below are some headlines that we will be presenting at the REBA Wellbeing Congress in June and which will be explored in detail with the release of a new report in September:
- People do not see all aspects of personal wellbeing as equal
- Wellbeing behaviours are very complex and personal to the individual
- Culture and communications really matter
- Personality and identity have a key role to play in all things wellbeing
Other key findings include that people are twice as likely to cite physical wellbeing over mental wellbeing as the key to their happiness and that past experiences will likely shape their future risk perception.
These findings help highlight the reasons why I said in the first paragraph of this blog that you can’t look at the pillars in isolation. It’s also why helping your employees use the right benefits at the right time is so incredibly complex and why you won’t achieve it through the traditional flex menu approach.
How can you help your people?
Most of my industry colleagues would at this point suggest that education is key. Financial education, Mental Health First Aid workshops, Nutritional classes etc. are almost universally seen as traditional first steps before offering products and solutions through the benefit scheme. This approach is absolutely fine… provided, as an organisation, you are happy to just be seen to facilitate and support through your benefit arrangements. However, if you are determined to ‘think beyond reward’ and really make a difference to your people’s health and wellbeing, helping them break bad habits and form new habits is the absolute precursor to education. To that end, your people need to be in the right mindset to absorb the significant amount of information available.
What do we mean by mindset?
Well, it’s personal. Everyone has a different personality, identity and learning style. In order to understand this, take some time to consider what has shaped your life. Do you get more pleasure from going for a run or completing the crossword on a Saturday morning? Do you have a background in sport or perhaps a preference for reading and academia? Perhaps you even feel like you have lost your identity whilst you have focused your time and attention on others, for example your partner, job or children. As far as personality is concerned, we will be talking about this next month but there are now established and clear links between levels of extroversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism and the various pillars of wellbeing.
Consider Financial Education or Financial Wellbeing. The concept of delivering educational workshops or online tools is brilliant. However, a significant proportion of your people are not in the right mindset. Your effort (time and money) is significant but may only positively impact a small number of your people who are already likely engaged in good financial behaviour. Even the ‘experimenters’ who attend a workshop with good intentions are not necessarily in a good mindset to be able to create new habits. Our research shows that over 70 per cent of people have good wellbeing intentions but less than 30 per cent of people believe they can persevere if things become difficult. In order to support a mindset shift prior to your educational or wellbeing programme, consider these three areas when it comes to your communications:
Warming up – explain why the company is supporting the programme and start to build a feeling of trust and security with your people.
Sensitising – tone and language are important. Consider varying the styles of communications to suit all individuals (see previous REBA blog by David Millar: The pros and cons of age segmentation to determine reward communication strategy.
Behaviour Change – to support a longer term strategy which supports the changes people need to adopt as habit, think about the culture you want to convey. For example, ‘Finances are serious therefore we will treat them as such’ has been the industry mantra for a long time but the most engaging programmes I have come across are playful and fun!
Your strategy
Understanding that your people have different personalities and a different identity makes wellbeing very personal. That is why you will not achieve buy-in across the board by simply focusing on one pillar of wellbeing at a time. Wellbeing needs to be inclusive and as a result, your strategy must be rounded, with all key pillars covered and a communication strategy that supports and recognises that your people are individuals; they have a diverse mindset and different personality traits. If you can do this, you have a significant opportunity to embed wellbeing in your company’s culture and create a strategy which means you are also getting a better return for your benefit spend!
The author is Nick McClelland , commercial leader at Mercer Marsh Benefits.
This article is provided by Mercer Marsh Benefits.
If you'd like to hear a lot more on the topic of employee wellbeing, and also specifically from Mercer Marsh Benefits, then sign up for Employee Wellbeing Congress on 20 June in London, where they'll be exhibiting.
