Efficient management is always conditioned to good financial planning. Therefore, decisions relating to corporate investments must be based on analysis that confirm which actions can be more advantageous to a successful business. Bhavik Panchal – UK Marketing Manager, Gympass.
Human Resources and Finance departments should also work closely together to evaluate all initiatives with a focus on human capital. After all, it is paramount to assess the effectiveness of critical processes, such as recruiting and selection, alongside considering preventative actions and programmes promoting health and wellbeing.
Everyone deserves a chance to lead a healthy life at work.’ Now wellbeing programmes are not a particularly new concept to the workplace, however recent research by the CIPD (2016) has highlighted there to be a ‘wellbeing vacuum’ amongst companies in the UK, with fewer than 1 in 10 UK organisations (8 percent) having a standalone wellbeing strategy.
A study facilitated by Xerox, “Global Survey of Wellbeing Strategies” where connoted a similar notion. Surprisingly, it was surveyed that, 70 percent of multinational companies declare that Physical Activity is their major priority. However, oddly it still lies the bottom of the ranking of initiatives that are endorsed by employers. Out of the companies surveyed whom had a wellbeing programme active, only 36 percent had measured specific ROI from the programmes, the other 64 percent hadn’t due to the following factors; Insufficient resources to support measurement (57 percent); Have no idea about measuring (28 percent); No budget from leadership (26 percent); Do not believe there is a measurable return (11 percent); Do not believe the cost of measurement is justified (6 percent); None of the above (19 percent).
*Respondents were allowed to pick more than one answer
ROI can attest the effectiveness of such investments directed to human capital. For this reason, it should be present in the routine of human resources managers. The productivity of a professional or a team is always connected to other factors, for instance: training, motivation, satisfaction and health. Hence, some indicators must be permanently monitored, since they help to identify problems and trends. The indicators are: Absenteeism, Organisational environment, presenteeism, productivity, turnover rate and per-capita income
Companies like Unilever, PayPal, Uber, are reaching outstanding results. Unilever is a standout example. Working with us, the company had a considerable number of serious illnesses diagnosed, and it was harmful to several internal performance indicators. However, the company launched the “FeelGood” programme, as one lever to their wellness,. Since then, employees have had access, at a low cost, to hundreds of physical activities in thousands of partner gyms and fitness studio, all over Brazil. The programme was implemented in 2012 and, within three years, completely changed the employee’s quality of life along with the ROI of implementing the whole wellness programme being 1.4x the investment. The percentage of employees who exercised also went from 23 percent to 64 percent and at the same time, cases relating to smoking, obesity and high blood pressure also plunged.
These numbers granted Unilever the Global Healthy Workplace Award only given to companies committed to creating a healthy work environment and that do so by implementing management practices that impact the organisational environment in aspects such as performance, productivity and employee satisfaction.
