This is according to Willis Towers Watson’s Staying@Work research.
Despite this low take-up, a majority (85%) of European employers expect their commitment to health and productivity programmes to increase in the next three years, with 71% of those focusing mostly on strategies specifically to build a culture of health and wellbeing. However, six in 10 (60%) admitted they do not yet have an articulated health and productivity strategy, or a measurement strategy that supports multi-year evaluation (69%).
More than two out of five (41%) employers said that a lack of budget and staff is hampering their approach to health and productivity, and 37% suffered from fragmented delivery programmes. This was despite the majority (89%) saying that health improvements are important for productivity in their organisations.
The research also found that the top five health-related issues of most concern to employers in Europe were worker stress (74%), sedentary lifestyles (45%), presenteeism (33%), obesity (32%) and poor nutrition (31%). In response to these issues organisations have initiated a range of programmes, the most common of which are onsite/near-site vaccinations (62%), worksite diet or exercise activities (61%), health risk assessments (58%) and worksite biometric screening (53%).
Speaking at the Willis Towers Watson Spring Conference 2016, Rebekah Haymes, senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson, said that businesses have traditionally offered health benefits at the point of need, but now their scope is expanding.
"Now they can cover those at work and healthy – although they could be better – to at work and ill, which is a problem with presenteeism, to those off work with an illness,” she said.
“European employers have long recognised that the health and productivity of their workforce can influence business success and create a competitive advantage. The good news is employers are increasing their commitment to the health and wellbeing of their employees. However, in order to translate this into action they need to give their teams the budget, staffing levels and expertise to build programmes and deliver the business benefits.”
