The OEM says that this is a “top priority for wellbeing programmes”.
In a press release, Xerox reported that a Xerox Services survey stated that “if a business is to thrive, the focus of its wellbeing programme should be on increasing employee productivity”, and that this is one of the main discoveries from the 2016 study ‘Working Well’. The company also said that “improving productivity moved from fourth in 2014” to the top of its objectives this year, overtaking “employee engagement and retaining employees”.
Philia Swam, Manager of Health, Wellness Group Benefits at LafargeHolcim, said” “Directly linking wellbeing to productivity has been an evolution. Early in our wellbeing initiative, we looked at ensuring improvement from a purely health perspective and watched participation in our preventive care programme steadily increase. Now we’re experiencing improvements in productivity statistics. One example is our reduction in days people are out on disability leave.”
Companies that recognise that an employee will feel the negative effects of “poor financial wellbeing” both mentally and physically, and be increasingly absent, can turn around their productivity by improving conditions.
John Gentry, President Xerox HR Services, added: “Healthy, productive employees are the lifeblood of a company. In the past, the thought that healthy workers meant productive workers was somewhat of a theory. Today with aggregate data and analytics, there is a much stronger case for return on investment.”
The survey showed that 33 percent of employees reported a strong sense of wellbeing, while 83 percent desire it, and 74 percent thought their wellbeing programme was important for value and remaining in the job. Good leaders are critical to changing the ethos, and 52 percent cited strong support from managers, and 92 percent credited their “local ambassadors efforts supporting a culture of wellbeing”.
Swam commented: “We have total leadership support, beginning at the very top, for our wellbeing programme and its preventive care focus. Health and safety is our overarching value and the pinnacle of everything LafargeHolcim does. Therefore, our wellbeing programme dovetails right into that. At the same time, getting leadership buy-in meant taking good data and positioning it in a way that impacted our workforce, showing direct relevance and not just recommending a blanket wellbeing programme.”
Helping employees to mange their finances with programmes on financial understanding and skills is growing, and nearly all the businesses that took part offered retirement financial security.
Gentry concluded: “Employers are championing a culture of wellbeing, but they also recognise that there are barriers to achieving it globally, such as differing cultures, laws, and practices, and a current lack of global oversight for health or financial strategy. That said, these issues appear to be less of a problem when it comes to global financial strategies, so employers are more likely to quickly get behind implementing global financial wellbeing programmes.”