Using Data To Evaluate Employee Wellbeing

Fostering employee wellbeing benefits employees and employers alike. Businesses that promote employee wellbeing see positive benefits on their overall workforce. Reduced sick leave, improved staff retention and increased productivity are just a few.

As a standalone term, “employee wellbeing” covers a broad spectrum of areas. However the core of the issue remains the same. It’s about improving the employee experience, both in their working lives and their home lives. Wellbeing initiatives in a business could include: 

• Flexible working hours 
• Supporting physical wellbeing (such as through discounted gym membership)
• Training and growth opportunities
• Breakout areas

When implemented correctly, employee wellbeing initiatives encourage employees to maintain healthy behaviours – both at work and at home. 

The Importance of Evaluating Employee Wellbeing Programmes

For businesses, it’s important to evaluate their employee wellbeing programmes. Many businesses opt to use a form of management information to evaluate their programmes. In fact, up to 92% are using such tools, according to the Reward and Benefits Association (REBA). This is up from 74% in 2019. 

Despite this, businesses are struggling to interpret the data from their programmes. REBA reported that:

• 49% of businesses don’t have enough data to assess their wellbeing initiatives
• 43% found that poor quality data hindered their ability to assess the initiatives
• 36% do not have a suitable data collection method
• 31% do not have an appropriate analytics platform 
• 25% lacked expertise in data analytics

Debi O’Donovan, director of REBA, said: “The Covid-19 crisis has reinforced the message that to be sustainable, an organisation needs to be innovative and resilient. That can only happen with a good culture and positive employee experience. Wellbeing is at the core of achieving this.

“Given the vital role wellbeing plays in reshaping work and jobs, it is not a surprise that measuring effectiveness is receiving greater focus. However, most employers are still using proxy figures, such as employee engagement, rather than attempting to see shifts at a strategic business level.

“It’s also important to measure and re-visit risks, such as business finances or workforce planning, alongside population data such as measures of employees’ mental health.”

Using Data To Evaluate Employee Wellbeing

As more businesses are looking at employee wellbeing, understanding how to use the data is increasingly important. 

At hug, we have developed a platform to help you support your team. It offers holistic real time analysis of your employee wellbeing and smart matches products, services and benefits to employee needs.

By implementing the hug platform, you will gain access to critical insights into your workforce. Using hug data, you can measure the impact of your employee wellbeing initiatives. 

Hug works with the participation of your employees. We focus on four core modules: 

• Mind
• Money
• Health
• Engagement

Based on the employee feedback, the hug platform will generate an overall organisational survey score. But it doesn’t stop there. It also provides scores broken down into age and gender. 

Why is this level of granularity important? 

Throughout our research, we’ve found that the benefits that one employee desires may be different to the next. This feedback has been developed into our platform, providing a level of transparency that cannot be found anywhere else. 

The hug platform will smart match benefits to employee needs, and provide you with insights to give you a clear view of how those products and services have helped others. We also don’t leave you alone to trawl through the data! The platform instinctively suggests pathways for each individual, which could be NHS choices guides for better sleep, sign posts to help with debt management or even discounts on gym memberships to help employees get fitter and healthier.

As Soraya Chamberlain, director, corporate at AXA PPP Healthcare, said: “The direction of workplace wellbeing travel is good. It’s heartening that the vast majority of employers are attempting to measure the effectiveness of their initiatives. Likewise their commitment to integrating their organisations’ wellbeing and health insurance benefits.

“But, to better evidence progress, we need to address some significant issues around data availability, quality and analytics. Thankfully, they’re not insurmountable and with the right resources, insight and determination, more effective wellbeing strategies are within reach.”

Interesting in learning how hug can help you build a happier, healthier workplace? Book a demo by clicking here today.