How to make the health of your employees a performance factor?

The mental health of teams in the company is not a luxury, especially in the current health context marked by the covid-19 pandemic.

Investing in this approach has multiple benefits for employees and the company.

At first glance and without thinking about it, one might think that investing money to prevent employee illnesses (chronic diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, stress) is an additional burden for companies.

Already under great pressure, especially in this period of health crisis, these expenses could be considered as significant additional costs.

And yet, studies show that such an expense generates a return on investment of about 20 to 40%!

Other studies have shown that companies that have a real approach to preserving the mental and physical health of their employees, obtain a "business" impact much higher than this score.

Care and medication expenses are reduced. Thus, insurance policies would not need to be optimized.

In concrete terms, this translates into healthy, fulfilled teams. Teams that perform better, are more loyal and, ultimately, convey a positive image of their company to the customer or to their close circle of friends.

Helping to strengthen the well-being of its employees, denotes a proactive and benevolent state of mind within the company and its management team.

It is the idea that well-regarded, motivated teams are able to generate a much higher level of performance than teams that do not feel supported by their organization.

The positive impacts are numerous and often far greater than the investments made:

● Customer satisfaction is optimized. An employee who feels good about himself is more attentive to the customer.

● Team productivity is improved through reduced absenteeism,

● The ability to recruit the best people and retain them over time is increased.

Transforming the implementation of a health policy into a performance factor nevertheless requires a structured, coherent and controlled approach.

The idea is to avoid multiplying small actions. All these numerous "small expenses" that lead nowhere, except towards a discrediting of the company and the impression that what is done is expensive and useless. In short, the bitter feeling that this umpteenth program set up by the management "will give birth to a smile"...

So what solutions would be appropriate to implement?

Here are some tips:

Formalize and communicate a "health" strategy by the company's management to employees.

Objective: to inform them of the priorities defined, the actions carried out, the framework of the policy put in place, to reassure them, to raise their awareness and to motivate them to take care of themselves... with the company to help them.

This commitment must be real and credible and must be supported by the entire management team.

Having healthy employees should be a key goal of the company and be communicated and experienced as such.

Offer quality assessments, tools and support that are easy to access for employees.

Objective: to give them the desire to take their health in hand, the possibility to define their own action plan and to see the impacts;

Measure progress. It is essential to start by taking stock of the situation within the company.

How can we do this? Simply by proposing adapted individual health assessments and employee surveys from the start of the program.

Objective: to make employees actors of their own health, and to measure in an anonymous way some key indicators (% diabetics, average weight, absenteeism rate, % people with blood pressure problems, average level of well being, etc.)

These indicators must be defined upstream within the company according to the sectors and issues.

Data collection campaigns will be conducted regularly to measure progress on these indicators over time.

Each new employee must also be able to benefit from an assessment upon arrival and thus enrich the database.

Define action plans for prevention, communication, training, individualized follow-up, reorganization of certain positions, etc.

Objective: act on the indicators identified as the most relevant.

These actions could be actions....

These action plans must be concrete, associated with implementation dates, financed, and piloted by project managers who are recognized within the company and strongly involved;

Communicate regularly on the objectives set, the actions taken and the results obtained.

Objective: Ensure that the initiative is alive, vibrant and delivering results.

So, how can we promote the positive impact of a corporate health policy?