Employee Wellbeing
Employee Wellbeing: The Accelerating Demand for Data
On a recent employee benefits webinar, each of the three presenters reported they are seeing an accelerating demand for benefits related data by their client companies. In many ways, this makes perfect sense.
Employers are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to the provision of employee related benefits and services arising from those benefits. And there is no question the economy took and continues to be taking a huge hit based on how governments are choosing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. When there is less revenue coming in, it only makes sense that employers would look more closely at how they spend the money they do have to spend.
It has long been documented that personnel related costs are the biggest category of costs employers face. Since controlling costs is one of the core responsibilities and roles of management, it only makes sense that employers would be demanding data related to benefit related costs.
Historically, the worksite wellness field (now quickly becoming the worksite wellbeing field) has not done a good job evaluating their efforts. The Rand study in 2013 reported less than 2% of the employers in the study actually measured the ROI (return on investment) related to healthcare spend. The last survey I recall seeing related to program evaluation reported less than 45% of the surveyed employers indicated they conducted any type of worksite wellness program evaluation.
The report regarding the most recent U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) national worksite wellness program survey reported:
· 53.3% of the responding employers reported they use data to decide what to offer
· 50.2% of the responding employers reported using data to evaluate their program.
All these figures suggest that employers and workplace practitioners may need guidance on the importance of using data to plan programming and interventions and how to evaluate what they do offer, along with how to best accomplish these tasks.
Given that employee wellbeing encompasses multiple domains, employers and practitioners face a number of challenges around employee wellbeing data. Two big challenges are: (1) A lack of consensus around the definition of wellbeing and (2) a lack of consensus as to the theoretical underpinnings surrounding wellbeing. Additional challenges facing employers and practitioners are what to measure and how to best measure employee wellbeing.
Employers need to decide whether to measure wellbeing from a global perspective or to use domain specific metrics for each of the domains contained within the employer’s employee wellbeing model. Taken together, this all means that the employer and practitioner need to be sure there is alignment between how wellbeing is defined and described within the organization and how wellbeing is defined and described in each of the wellbeing measuring tools used for assessment and evaluation in the workplace.
In 2016, Myles-Jay Linton and his colleagues published an article identifying 99 self-report measures for wellbeing in adults. These measures encompassed 196 wellbeing related dimensions clustered around 6 domain areas: mental wellbeing, social wellbeing, physical wellbeing, spiritual wellbeing, activities and functioning and personal circumstances.
Having data to help with benefits, policy and programming/intervention decisions is critical. But it is equally critical to understand and believe in the methods and measures used to assemble the data.
Reference:
Linton, Miles-Jay. Dieppi, Paul. Medina-Lara, Antonieta. 2016. Review of 99 Self-Report Measures for Addressing Well-Being in Adults: Exploring Dimensions of Well-Being and Development Over Time. BMJ Open. 2016:6. Full text of the article is available through Google Scholar.
©2021. William McPeck. All Rights Reserved.
