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What is Corporate Wellness Software?
The average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over the course of their lifetime. More and more employers are recognizing the need—and the benefits—to not only encouraging, but advancing work-life balance. Companies are implementing corporate wellness programs that promote physical, mental, and financial health and well-being. Corporate wellness software provides employees with easy-to-access company benefits that are aimed at helping employees adopt and maintain wellness goals and work-life balance. These solutions often include features such as financial fitness, mental health awareness training, team collaboration, social connectedness, incentives, and rewards.
Why Use Corporate Wellness Software?
The health and wellness of a company’s employees impact productivity and the bottom line. Everyone who works—from the CEO to the facilities maintenance team—can reap the benefits of a corporate wellness program. Companies that implement corporate wellness solutions may experience reduced health care costs, absenteeism and presenteeism, and illness and injuries; while also seeing increased productivity, relations and morale, and retention. Most companies already provide their employees with wellness benefits—such as gym or bike share memberships—but these benefits are all too often poorly advertised. What employees don’t know can hurt both themselves and the company. Simply put, they cannot realize the benefits of a corporate wellness program that they do not know exists. Corporate wellness software provides companies with the user-friendly tools necessary to promote the wellness benefits they already offer, and it helps companies expand their benefits administration solutions. Corporate wellness programs allow companies to leverage every company benefit, program, and opportunity—and put it into the hands of their employees.
Who Uses Corporate Wellness Software?
Every company, from small businesses to enterprise corporations, can benefit from implementing a corporate wellness program. Many corporate wellness solutions provide companies with assistance in designing their corporate wellness programs. This software offers a platform that reflects each company’s individual culture and brand while engaging and retaining happy and healthy employees.
Corporate Wellness Software Features
Corporate wellness solutions help the HR team, or individual HR personnel, promote company benefits to employees. Many corporate wellness vendors provide employee wellness solutions that begin with a process of health screening and assessments and continue by providing incentives and gamification to promote and increase employee engagement. Corporate wellness software may include the following features:
Promote physical activity, financial security, and emotional wellness – Corporate wellness services may include financial advising, mental health education, healthy diet and exercise tips, mindfulness guidance, and sleep and stress management solutions.
Employee engagement and recognition – Corporate wellness programs promote and build employee engagement through a variety of methods including social media integrations, gamification, and rewards and incentives.
Insights, analytics, and reporting – To develop reports and real-time ROI, corporate wellness programs often collect and analyze employee wellness engagement, performance, and absenteeism data.
User experience – The corporate wellness interface is meant to be user-friendly to easily promote contests, challenges, events, team collaboration, goals, and trackers that every employee can access regardless of technological prowess.
Trends Related to Corporate Wellness Software
Financial – More than 35 percent of working Americans are millennials, and every three out of four millennials have some form of debt. If employees are dealing with a dire financial situation, they are likely to be distracted at work, or worse, absent due to reduced health caused by constant stress. Companies are increasingly providing their employees with personalized coaching sessions with financial advisors. During these confidential sessions, they can discuss their financial concerns and develop financial wellness plans around topics such as debt management tools, profit shares, and employee savings. Some companies are even providing employee emergency funds and days off to focus on savings.
Mental – Although the stigma surrounding mental health is lifting, mental health conversations in the workplace are by no means commonplace (yet). Fortunately, a sea change is occuring in which employers are beginning to provide tangible mental health and well-being support. More and more companies are promoting mental health initiatives including mental health therapy and counseling, as well as mindfulness, stress reduction, and sleep education. Companies are also including mental health awareness for managers and employees to train them on recognizing and understanding the symptoms and behaviors associated with mental health conditions. Providing and promoting mental health days as part of a paid sick leave package will continue to destigmatize mental illness. Furthermore, the current national conversation around sexual harassment and assault in the workplace and beyond will compel companies to increase the number of support programs for employees that are working through trauma and violence.
Sleep – Many employers have started incorporating sleep rooms, nap pods, and onsite resting areas into their workplace wellness plans as part of a corporate wellness program. Sleep deprivation has been found to cost U.S. employers a lot of money in the form of reduced productivity levels. Some employers are even reversing the commonplace trend of promoting and rewarding employees that work overtime, keep late hours, and pull all-nighters. Employers are waking up to the fact that promoting a work-life balance includes encouraging employees to leave their work at the office and go home (at a reasonable hour) to lead full and nourishing lives outside of work.
Personalized – Corporate wellness solutions let employees self-direct their own wellness strategy, set their own goals, and track their own metrics. These solutions often provide an option to collaborate with coworkers or create teams to inspire healthy competition and success. These solutions often integrate with wearable wellness tech and are accessible on any device.
Workplace design – Companies are incorporating green design, natural colors and materials, and natural, light-filled spaces to promote clarity, increase productivity, and further mental wellness.
DNA testing kits – When Oprah adds DNA testing kits to her list of favorite things for the year, you know the product is trending. Companies are including DNA testing in their corporate wellness programs and are offering them to their employees at a subsidized discount.
Chatbots – Chatbots are on the rise and are often implemented in customer-facing and internal roles. Chatbots are expected to expand some employee benefit solutions functionality by providing employee support around sensitive topics such as personal physical and mental health.
Internet of things – Sensors can be implemented throughout companies to promote healthy behaviors and reduce stress. A smartwatch medical accessory, recently approved by the FDA, provides a medical-grade EKG reading in thirty seconds and allows employees to monitor their heart health; employers are expected to offer subsidized discount to employees soon. As technological development continues, businesses can expect to see a growing selection of health-related sensors on the market.
Potential Issues with Corporate Wellness Software
Privacy – Corporate wellness providers often collect information on each employee regarding their health, diet, and lifestyle choices. Some companies require employees to undergo Health Risk Appraisals (HRA) that collect complete employee medical examinations. These assessments might deter some employees from participating due to the personal and sensitive data collected, thereby affecting their health outcomes. Wellness programs and HRA vendors vary in data policy and practices and need to be assessed prior to deployment.
Discrimination – Companies run the risk of discriminating against workers who are not physically or mentally capable of participating in their corporate wellness programs. Employees who have congenital illnesses or are advanced in age might not be able to participate in corporate wellness initiatives at the same rate or frequency as their coworkers. They will then miss out on any incentives provided; companies will need to assess how to best incentivize employees.
Complicated process – Some users of corporate wellness programs might not be able to adopt and implement these solutions as a result of low comfort or straight-up confusion around technology. Companies need to provide easy-to-understand guides for best practices on how to access and get the most out of both hardware and software solutions. Any barrier in the way of an employee accessing these benefits needs to be assessed and removed.
