Here is how technology is transforming workplace wellness
A study conducted by a leading consulting company revealed that 2% of the capital spent on the workforce is devoted to disability, absenteeism, and attendance arising from diseases. These indirect costs are more than the medical claim costs that the company incurs. Hence, tracking employees health and help them in adopting a healthier lifestyle can pay off.
Here are few technologies that you can leverage not only to monitor employees’ health but make the overall process engaging:
Technology Wearable:
According to a PwC report, by 2020, there will be more than 75 million wearables within the workplace. And within a year, wearing fitness tracking devices will be a requirement of employment for more than two million workers. Corporates like Adobe, BP, Netapp and more provide their staff with Fitbit’s wearable fitness bands to help them monitor their well-being and promote corporate wellness. Typically these fitness bands assist in monitoring step count, distance, heart rate, sleep patterns, etc. Currently, some companies like Fitbit, Fastrack, Lenovo, Xiomi, etc. are offering fitness bands that monitor physical activities during the day. Check out the complete list here.
Social Media:
Social media is one of the great platforms to motivate employees to participate in health-related initiatives. One of the striking features of social media is that it allows employees to collaborate and communicate about their wellness and health-related goals. An organization can host a health-related competition on social platforms that make wellness more effective and fun. Organizations can use social tools like Whatsapp, Slack, Yammer, etc. The collaborative platform is an excellent way to help people involved in a common task to achieve their aims. For example, the recent collaborative platform launched by Facebook, Workplace can act as an engaging medium that enables employees to create groups and can serve as an excellent place to discuss exercises, nutrition, organize health activities, yoga, gym, etc. Other successful collaborative tools available for businesses are Google Hangouts, Slack, Asana, etc. For the complete list, click here.
Osedea, a Montreal-based digital creative agency, used a combination of a bot and collaborative tool Slack to discover that their employees were not feeling good about their nutrition and exercise. So they devised a one-month wellness challenge to promote two primary health goals: more water consumption and daily workouts. (Source: https://medium.com/osedea/a-startups-journey-towards-2088-hours-of-health-b55992dd6deb)
Gamification:
It is no news that gamification has helped in building a significant level of engagement during different stages of employee life cycle. Gamification can be equally helpful in monitoring employees’ health. Organizations can create health challenge with competition levels and give them badges and awards that they can feature on social media.
Zoojoo.be, an Indian startup based out of Bangalore helps organization device wellness engagement in workplaces through their gamification platform. The platform set weekly health challenges to employees and its online and mobile tracking interface enables tracking the progress and habits.
EMee is another gamification service provider that offers gamification solution in Health & Wellness. Their gamification programs include learnings about drugs, medication, diet & side effects.
Mobile Apps:
Changing health habits requires regular attention and following a strict regime. Mobile apps is an easier way that can help in tracking our habits ranging from tracking calorie intake and create exercise plans. Today many apps are available for both iOS and Android platforms. Few popular apps available on the phone for free of costs are MyFitnessPal, Nike Running, Fooducate, 7 Minute Workout, Zombies Run, etc.
However, there are certain mobile apps available exclusively for organizations to track employees health. These mobile apps include numerous features like health assessments, coaching, biometric management, self-help programs and challenges and incentives. Jiff, CoreHealth, etc. are some of the apps available in Google Play store. You can access the entire link for here.
Big Data:
As reported in one of the leading American newspaper, companies like J.P Morgan, Walmart have hired external firms to track employees’ health data. These firms can track data about employees’ medical claims and drug prescriptions to monitor their health. The goal of these enterprises is to lessen companies’ healthcare costs by providing employees with healthcare data and supporting them in making informed decisions.
On health tracking and monitoring, Amit Munjal, Founder & CEO of Doctor Insta shares with People Matters, “Not just monitoring the health but also managing and benchmarking the health of employees by providing them best possible well-being solutions from preventive care to curative care is the way to a healthy workforce.”
Corporate wellness is the ongoing megatrend in a pursuit to achieve great employee engagement. However, with the involvement of technology, privacy advocates are raising concerns about data mining and confidentiality of employees’ information. The data can certainly help employees in adopting better health and habits, however; the data can be used in many discriminatory ways. A similar instance was reported in Wall Street Journal where a company hired a third-party that launched a new product that scans insurance claims to find women who have stopped filling birth-control prescriptions, as well as women who have made fertility-related searches on the health app.