Research has found a “stark chasm” between the benefits and wellbeing programmes UK employers offer their workforces and what people want and need in their everyday lives.
Employee wellbeing platform Heka analysed the sentiments of 30,000 UK workers and compared them with data from the CIPD.
Results, published in the provider’s report ‘The Employee Benefit Gap’, show that UK companies are failing to meet the needs of their employees, which could undermine workforce productivity.
The data showed that employees given a choice of benefits will pick “a huge variety of benefits across multiple categories”. This includes nutrition, recreation, and mental health, as opposed to learning and development and finance perks.
This difference in preferences between UK employers and employees demonstrates a “workplace wellbeing crisis”, according to Alex Hind, co-founder and CEO of Heka.
“There is a stark chasm between what employers are currently dictating for their staff wellbeing policies and the reality of what people actually want and need in their everyday lives,” he said.
“We know from our research that when employees are empowered to choose the benefits that work for them, from a range of options, businesses see a significantly more engaged and productive workforce. Inevitably, a happier, healthier, more engaged workforce leads to better business outcomes, and, unfortunately, vice versa.”
Ineffective programmes
Further results show that 76 percent of employees experience moderate-to-high levels of stress, and 61 percent struggle to be productive, the report said. Heka said that data points to wellbeing programmes being ineffective, which in turn affects the health of not just employees but their employer as well.
The study found that three of the seven pillars of wellness – intellectual, environmental and social – were mostly absent from employer wellbeing initiatives. The other four pillars usually cover physical, career, financial, and mental wellbeing.
In addition to this, only 52 percent of employees are told how to access the benefits their company provides.
The data showed that 34 percent of employees choose perks, when given the option, that don’t exist within the workplace wellbeing programmes offered by their employers.
The report said that this suggests that one in three employees gain no personal value from their workplace benefits.
Heka said that this disconnect indicates that employer ambitions to promote a healthier workforce, increase headcount, and encourage a better company culture will be significantly hit.
Further findings in the report show that 86 percent of employers who let their staff choose their own wellbeing benefits have grown their headcounts in the past year.
Almost all (97 percent) HR teams reported that a flexible wellbeing programme improves company culture. And 93 percent of employees agreed that a proper wellbeing programme makes them healthier.
The report highlighted two key examples it said epitomise the employer-employee disconnect. It found that two-fifths (20 percent) of wellbeing programmes feature L&D-related benefits, despite just 2 percent of employees choosing them. And 21 percent of employees would select nutrition-based benefits if they were an option, but just 1 percent of employer wellbeing programmes offer this.
Michael Whitfield, chairman of Heka, added: “The results are crystal clear: there is a massive gap between employer perks and employee preferences. When you put employees in the driving seat of their own wellbeing, they steer it in all different directions. Real people need different kinds of support, at different times of their lives, and this is something businesses must wake up to if they want to recruit and retain talent and maintain a productive workforce.”
