It is the era of employees. This big shift is moving the world of work from a world of push to a world of pull. One of the key consequences of this great power shift has been an increased focus on employee wellness. 

Employees are prioritising their health and wellness above all. As a Microsoft report revealed, 53% of employees are more likely to prioritise health and wellbeing overwork than before the pandemic. The organisations that don’t respond to this great shift with personalised and flexible wellness plans could be at risk of losing their top talent. 

“The COVID-19 outbreak has pushed employers to focus on employee health and many organisations are enabling services that go beyond hospitalisation and insurance benefits and include solutions like telemedicine,” said Satish Kannan, Co-founder & CEO, MediBuddy. 

With a singular focus to bring a paradigm shift in the healthcare industry, Satish is helping organisations make high-quality healthcare accessible to everyone across the nation through MediBuddy.

He takes us through MediBuddy’s journey and shares how it is helping organisations address the diverse needs of their dispersed workforce with an on-demand, full-stack digital healthcare platform. 

What unseen opportunities did you see that inspired you to create Medibuddy?

MediBuddy was founded when we (Enbasekar & I) began working on the concept, we realised that almost 70 percent of health issues can be handled by remote doctor intervention, diagnosed and treated online. That realisation became the genesis of MediBuddy. 

Access to a specialist doctor is a huge challenge in the country and mobile technologies can help in making healthcare services more accessible to people. With a vision to make high-quality healthcare accessible for billions of Indians, MediBuddy began its journey. 

In the uncertain and rapidly evolving ecosystem, how is Medibuddy helping organisations put wellness into practice and reach employees where they are?

The pandemic has caused upheaval across many aspects of daily life. With health taking centre stage, companies, both large and small, are increasing their focus on employee health.  

Companies have now started looking at health from a holistic approach where they are looking at health from a wellness approach as compared to the “illness approach”. 

There has been an accelerated corporate effort to promote work-life balance, raise mental health awareness and provide emotional support.

It is essential that corporates provide an environment of productivity, empowerment, and health in the organisation. To help enable the same, MediBuddy offers multiple services for organisations and employees such as mental health webinars, employee assistance programs etc. 

During COVID-19, to fight humanity's newest foe, the team at MediBuddy curated unique solutions such as the Hospital Bed Availability Tracker, and Coronavirus Risk Assessment Tool. 

We also launched a department dedicated to COVID queries, where consultations were provided for free.  

MediBuddy has also been the trusted partner for providing vaccination to over 740 corporates, delivering over 7 lakh Covid19 vaccination doses. It also successfully set up over 10,074 vaccination camps across India to strengthen India’s vaccination mission. To provide this robust vaccination service, MediBuddy deployed 335 staff members, worked with 142 hospitals & network partners, managing on an average 66 camps a day. 

Wellness has emerged as a critical lever to drive exponential EX at work. What would be your advice to organisations regarding their employee wellness programs? What can they do differently in the post-pandemic world of work?

A very important lesson we all learned from the pandemic is that health, immunity and wellness are not dependent on a magic pill. 

It is extremely important to be fit, to be active. 

Ensuring the success of wellness programs is a continuous process, and often, the impact is only in the long term. 

Communication is a critical enabler to ensuring wellness adoption. By building a multi-pronged approach, companies can ensure that employees hear the message on wellness across multiple touchpoints. 

The stakeholders in the company (Leadership team, Managers & HR) also play a crucial role in ensuring the success of modeling the right workplace behaviors. 

How can organisations measure the impact of their wellness initiatives and programs on employee experience?

Each organisation is different. There is not a one-size-fits-all measurement strategy for all organisations. However, to get the discussion started here are few metrics that can help:

• Utilisation by employees
• Positive feedback from employees
• Reduction of overall health insurance costs
• Overall improvement in employee satisfaction
• Requests for additional programs
• Reduction in sick days and absentees
• Employee's likelihood to recommend the program

How are you constantly involving and helping organisations tackle their diverse employee Health and Wellness challenges?

We have a wide range of solutions and programmes. 

MediBuddy is an online digital healthcare platform that addresses the problems of availability, accessibility to high-quality healthcare. MediBuddy helps its users consult specialist doctors, order medicines and book lab tests from the comfort of their homes. It is also a partner to several leading corporate customers in the country and helps their employees access multiple healthcare benefits.

We believe in the use of innovative technology to allow zero-friction access to healthcare to our corporate employees, which also promises an end-to-end cashless experience to users based on their needs and coverage. 

Other solutions include MediClinic: We have 300+ MediClinics for our corporate partners across the country, where we manage the medical manpower, pharmacy needs, referrals, ambulatory services, web-based inventory management, data management and bio-medical waste management. Maternity Program, Condition Management Program, and Employee assistance program are some of the other solutions we offer. 

We also have a subscription package, named MediBuddy Gold, designed to provide access to quality healthcare for employees of an organisation and to the public at large. The Subscription not only takes care of the healthcare needs of the employee but also their family members, enabling organisations to take care of their employees’ experience beyond work. 

Get an opportunity to meet Satish Kannan, Co-founder & CEO, MediBuddy and further explore the wellness solutions offered by MediBuddy at People Matters EX India Conference on 26th April 2022. Click here to know more.