Organisational wellness should contribute a healthy bottom line

Most South African organisations have a host of separate employee wellness initiatives, all meaning well but very seldom amounting to a coherent wellness programme supporting the business.

Dr Lerato Motshudi, Medical Advisor at Health Management Solutions, Alexander Forbes Health says “most companies have employee wellness programmes which include employee assistance programmes (EAP), HIV management programmes and wellness days - all generally administered as stand-alone initiatives on separate budgets with different reports and reporting structures.”

Since there is seldom one person who receives and co-ordinates all reports, organisations do not develop an overall view of wellness, making it impossible to develop a holistic wellness strategy. The result is that companies struggle to improve overall employee health and wellness with absenteeism remaining high.

The first step in turning this around is to conduct a survey of those areas of the business affected by poor employee health. This will provide a good picture of where wellness in the organisation is and where it needs to be. The next step is to identify goals and then design and implement a wellness programme with clear steps, precise allocation of responsibilities and measurable deliverables directly supporting business goals.

“Absenteeism costs companies a lot of money each year. Investing in a well-managed employee wellness programme has been proven to reduce absenteeism, improve staff morale and increase productivity. Employees also tend to be more positive when they have employers who respond to their needs making them more likely to stay with a company for longer” says Motshudi.

While most organisations medical aids already provide employees with support for their physical illnesses, there is also a need to address the mental and social aspects of health. For example, “structures can be put in place to support employees who are going through divorce, legal battles, drug and alcohol addiction and so forth. These same facilities can also lend support to managers needing guidance in handling subordinates or coping with change” explains Motshudi.

Key to rolling out programmes of this nature is communication – employees should know what programs are available to them as well as how they can access them while being confident of impartiality and confidentiality.

Getting all this right, however, needs to start with a single person or team collating all wellness data – and developing a holistic view of health management across the organisation.

As such Motshudi strongly recommends that “organisations develop a wellness coordinator role - to review all data from a wellness perspective, get a clear picture of what’s going on or what’s missing, and then address needs with practical programmes.”

If organisations feel they lack these expertise or would be unsure of how to hire for the role, the function can be outsourced to wellness specialists. These provide not just an organisational overview, but are able to advise on how internal wellness practices benchmark against similar organisations within the industry.