With the workforce becoming more diverse, there is a need for organizations to design a wellness strategy that engages employees of all ages. And now in this context, the organizations have now started to think about how ‘Which wellness initiatives are achieving organizational objectives?’, ‘How can they link the wellness programs to employee productivity?’

This article has been curated from the webinar ‘Designing wellness programs to build productive culture,’ which was hosted by People Matters in association with Sanofi Pasteur. The speaker for the session is Srinath Krishnan, Country Manager, Total Rewards, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Employees who are absent: Employees take frequent sick leaves. Today, the business leadership and the HR leadership demands that we are on top of data. HR needs to keep track on the sick leaves and why are they taking so many? Identify the cause and develop an intervention to bring the sick leaves down.

Employees are present but not productive: Equip managers so that they can identify health signs that could be leading to the employees not being productive at work. Example: Are there any employees which would be interested in leading a more active lifestyle.

At work and productive but not meeting the established standards: Use data to identify this particular category of employees, and then design intervention around wellness to increase the productivity levels of the employees.

Working but not performing to the potential: HR should be asking, ‘Is there any specific wellness initiative that could give a boost to employees in the category?’

Optimal performance: Study this group to understand why they are performing to the levels that they are. Are there any behavioral traits which can be mapped and applied across groups?

Here are strategic areas that organizations can focus on:

• Reduce stress: A lot of employees are under immense stressful situations. Stress does not only lead to decreasing employee productivity but also leads to deteriorating employee health. As an HR, are you providing employees with the avenues to destress themselves? Example: A lot of companies have introduced desktop yoga.
  
  
• Improve health and risk awareness: As an organization, it is important to understand ‘What are some of the top health risks that it is facing and the interventions that would help organizations to counter them?’
  
  
• Developing healthy culture: Regular employee tests will help the organization map the health metrics and if there any specific interventions which need to brought at an organizational level. Apart from improving the general health of the organization, the interventions could also help build a culture of bonding.
  
  
• Boost employee engagement/retention: Wellness initiatives in terms of the benefits which they offer the employees and the organization could greatly help in employee engagement and retention.
  
  
• Improve overall productivity: The ROI of all wellness initiatives is based on how the individual and the overall productivity of the employee is affected.

How can you measure the ROI?

• Sick leaves taken by the employees: If the number of sick leaves decreases of the identified group, then the wellness intervention is successful. Through the use of data, the benchmark for the number of sick leaves in a month can be set.
  
  
• Hospitalization: Most companies provide insurance covers for their employees. And hence all the data with regards to insurance cover is available with them. This data can be analyzed for the percentage decrease in the number of hospitalizations.
  
  
• Safety: A lot of organizations have invested in creating a physical infrastructure which provides an atmosphere which leads to lesser workplace injuries.  
  
  
• Uptake of resources: Organizations today also provide a lot of benefits in terms of gym membership and so much more. If the uptake of those benefits increase, it could another metric that organizations could use a benchmark.

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