Thriving Workplaces How Employers can Improve Productivity and Change Lives 2025

Taking action: How executives can build the investment case for a healthy workforce Many organizations offer multiple employee health and well-being programmes, but the organizational value and ROI of these programmes are often overlooked. Executives regularly struggle to answer the question, “Is our investment in employee health driving sustainable improvements in performance?” This briefing provides frameworks and approaches to help organizations develop investment cases, strategies and tailored action plans for successful health and well-being programmes and highlights opportunities to use data and analytics. No single KPI can measure the impact of employee health and well-being investment Every industry or organization has its own unique characteristics, meaning there is no single KPI for measuring success. Metrics should be tailored to each organization’s specific needs. However, a tried-and-tested approach based on the principles described in Briefing 3B should work for most organizations, whatever their context:1. Understand the status of employees’ health and well-being and the value at stake Conducting comprehensive health and well-being surveys can diagnose workforce health needs. An S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment shows that only 2.2% of assessed companies conduct employee surveys with a core focus on health and well-being.86 Smaller organizations can overcome potential funding barriers through free tools and training available from not-for-profit providers. Ideally, employers measure aspects of direct health as experienced by employees (mental, physical, social and spiritual health and burn-out symptoms), their associated work experience outcomes (for example, engagement and satisfaction) and core work experiences (such as job demands and resources).87 These measurements identify both immediate outcomes and root causes. Employers can assess employee health using quick pulse checks,88 health assessments, automated text analyses of comments within annual people surveys, focus groups or anonymized voluntary health data. Calculate the investment case opportunity for the organization Good-quality, evidence-based data on employee health and well-being should be combined with an investment case to guide the development of strategic health interventions (see Briefing 3B). Organizations can build an investment case for employee health and well-being by focusing on the value drivers identified in Briefing 1. Those sources of value for the global economy have been adapted into four drivers which can be used by any organization to calculate their investment case opportunity: employee output, talent management optimization, healthcare cost savings and ability to attract investment (Figure 9). Thriving Workplaces: How Employers can Improve Productivity and Change Lives 24