How Effective are Corporate Wellness Programs in India

As per the recent research, the productivity of the employees in Indian organizations have enhanced and the number of leave days has also gone down during the last 5 years by adopting corporate wellness programs.

In the past five years, employee wellness has been evolved to become more effective and a key factor of business strategy in Indian organizations. It helps in not only reduce the healthcare cost of the organizations but also improves the productivity and employee engagement in the workplace.

Let’s see below some of the key findings to understand how the corporate wellness in India has affected the culture, employee engagement and workplace productivity of the organizations.

About 50% of the organizations in India are expected to aim for employee wellness in 2019.

As per the survey conducted across a group of companies, learning and development will be the topmost priority of 65% of the participated organizations in 2019. About 55% of the organizations declared that corporate wellness programs would be their primary focus area in 2019. Companies have also put their views in terms of key challenges which are necessary to drive wellness programs in the workplace. About 40% of the organizations disclosed that a limited budget is the biggest obstacle in aggressively executing the corporate wellness programs.

By reviewing the wellness initiatives which are currently active among the organizations, it was found that Mediclaim or health insurance, on-site health camps and screenings and workplace yoga sessions are the most popular ones. As far as technology is concerned, about 19% of the organizations have been using online portals or mobile apps to manage health and wellness programs in the workplace. This number is expected to grow drastically in the near future as a large number of organizations are gearing up to go digital or use a wearable to better track the health of their employees.

Top focus areas of HR in 2019

• Learning and Development (61%)
• Employee Health and Wellness (50%)
• Recruiting (47%)
• Performance Management (40%)
• Rewards and Recognition (36%)

Measuring Existing Wellness Initiatives

In order to scale the level of contentment with existing wellness initiatives in the companies on a scale of 1-5 rating, the average rating was given 3.0.

Top Goals to achieve through corporate wellness programs

• Improve the health of the workforce
• Enhance employee engagement at work
• Increase productivity at work

Obstacles for Companies to Drive Corporate wellness programs

• Limited Budget
• Increasing Engagement of Employees in Wellness Programs
• Personalizing Wellness Programs
• Association with Right Corporate Wellness Companies
• Availability of internal insights to Choose a specific wellness program

The Preference order of Wellness Initiatives from Indian Companies

• Corporate health checks
• On-site yoga or gym
• Employee Ergonomics
• Flexible working program
• Access to Wellness through the web or mobile portals

How much Important is the employee health insurance to the Employers in India

Type of Insurance Offered to Corporate Employees

You may be interested in Pre-employment Health Checkup

Automation Technology used to Manage Health and Wellness Programs

The main hurdle of companies in utilizing technology and automation as a part of their corporate wellness strategy is the shortage of budget per employee to be invested in health and wellness. However, 60% of the organizations who participated in the research have claimed that they would start increasing the budget of employee wellness for the year 2019. Here is the insight, revealed in the survey:

Estimated Budget per Employee Invested in Health and Wellness

Forecast on Wellness Budget to be Invested in 2019

Personalized Wellness Programs Based upon the Health Insights Recorded through Wearable

Personalization

You cannot drive all employees through the same approach when it comes to their health and well-being. There has to be a personalized approach to wellness based upon the root cause of the health issues among a group of employees. For example, if the main cause of stress in your employees is the financial policy of the company and you are involved in designing other tactics of stress management, it would be totally waste of budget.

Companies that use Personalized Wellness Approach

Data-Driven Approach

Creating a wellness program based upon the current insights regarding the health and well-being of employees will obviously result in better employee engagement rate in the program. By the use of wearable technology, it is possible to track health insights and work out activities done on a daily basis. It helps you to design a wellness program which will be focused on the needs of your employees.

Summary

• Shortage of budget is the first most challenge for Indian companies to implement wellness programs.
• The budget to be invested in wellness programs is expected to be increased by the companies in 2019.
• Most of the companies in India do not utilize personalization in wellness. As a result, they have a very less wellness-engagement rate in the workplace.
• Very few companies run wellness activities based on the health data tracked through technology and automation. So there is a lot of scope of improvement for Indian companies to offer wellness programs based upon individual needs.

Source of the Information gathered in this article: https://issuu.com/visishtakarasani/docs/single_page_view