Employees don't experience their physical health, mental health and financial well-being separately. So why do organisations so often support them that way?
A health problem can become a financial problem, while financial pressure can contribute to stress and anxiety. Challenges that begin at home can also affect the workplace, leading to absenteeism, reduced concentration, disengagement or declining performance.
For HR leaders, the question is therefore no longer simply what employee benefits an organisation offers. It is whether those benefits address the interconnected realities affecting employees' ability to be healthy, resilient and productive.
The pressures employees bring to work
The South African Depression and Anxiety Group's 2024 Working Life Survey found that 52 percent of the 963 employees surveyed reported having been diagnosed with a mental health condition. Depression, stress, generalised anxiety disorder, burnout and trauma were the five most commonly reported conditions.
The same survey found that 44 percent identified insufficient remuneration or pay as a workplace challenge, highlighting how closely financial and emotional well-being can intersect.
Mental health challenges are estimated to cost South Africa around R250 billion in lost productivity each year. But focusing only on mental health risks missing part of the picture.
Behind someone's anxiety may be debt. Behind their absenteeism may be an untreated health condition. Behind a drop in performance may be a family crisis or financial pressure.
These issues rarely exist in isolation.
What our own data is telling us
Kaelo provides innovative, essential healthcare solutions that enable employees' physical and psychological well-being. Kaelo Lifestyle, a division of Kaelo, provides 24/7 counselling, leadership coaching, support for families, in-office trauma response, and programmes addressing stress, relationships, financial strain and other life challenges.
At Kaelo, we have seen this connection play out in our own employee well-being data.
In one organisation, where employees initially had access to a traditional employee assistance programme, financial support accounted for just 3 percent of cases, while counselling represented 79 percent.
When Kaelo Money was introduced alongside the existing employee assistance offering, the pattern changed significantly. Financial support cases increased from 3 percent to 43 percent, while counselling reduced from 79 percent to 33 percent. Importantly, overall utilisation of the programme also increased significantly, suggesting that broadening the support available encouraged more employees to engage with the programme in the first place.
The employees hadn't suddenly developed more financial problems. The financial pressure was already there. What changed was the support available to address it.
By combining Kaelo Lifestyle and Kaelo Money, employees could access practical financial well-being solutions alongside emotional support. Rather than only addressing the emotional consequences of financial stress, there was an opportunity to address more of the underlying cause.
This is an important lesson for HR leaders: sometimes what presents as a mental well-being issue may have a financial, physical or social pressure sitting underneath it.
The same employee may need more than one solution
The employee accessing healthcare, the employee speaking to a counsellor and the employee struggling financially are not necessarily three different people. They may be the same person.
For an employee already under financial pressure, an unexpected healthcare shortfall can quickly become a debt problem, with the resulting stress potentially affecting their well-being and performance.
This is why supporting the whole employee requires more than a collection of disconnected benefits.
From crisis intervention to resilience and growth
Employee support should also go beyond responding when something has already gone wrong.
Through Kaelo Lifestyle, employees and their families have access to 24/7 counselling and support, together with qualified coaching across life, leadership, parenting and career development.
This moves employee support along a broader continuum: from crisis intervention to prevention, resilience and growth.
Supporting the whole employee means recognising that people need different forms of support at different moments in their lives.
Building an ecosystem around the employee
This thinking has shaped Kaelo's broader approach to employee well-being.
Rather than treating physical, mental and financial well-being as separate categories, Kaelo's ecosystem brings together affordable private healthcare, onsite and mobile clinics, counselling and coaching, financial well-being solutions through Kaelo Money, Gap Cover and Group Funeral Cover.
Each addresses a different need. Together, they provide a broader layer of support around employees and their families.
The value isn't simply in having more benefits. It is in connecting those benefits around the realities employees actually experience.
The employer as a shield
Employers have another important advantage: scale.
An individual employee has limited buying power. An organisation representing hundreds or thousands of employees can use its collective scale to provide access to benefits, services and corporate rates that employees may not be able to access on the same terms themselves.
In this way, the employer can act as a shield around its people, helping protect them from physical, financial and emotional shocks that can destabilise individuals and their families.
This also changes the employee value proposition.
The value of employment isn't only what appears on a payslip. It is also the value that sits around the salary: access to healthcare, financial protection, support during difficult periods and resources that help employees and their families navigate life.
Used well, employee benefits can therefore deliver tangible value to employees while strengthening an organisation's EVP and its ability to attract, engage and retain people.
Supporting the whole employee
Supporting the whole employee isn't about employers assuming responsibility for every aspect of someone's life. It is about recognising that employees bring their whole lives to work and creating the right support around them.
For HR, this means moving beyond adding standalone benefits. The opportunity is to connect those benefits, use organisational scale to unlock greater value, and use utilisation data to understand what employees actually need.
Because ultimately, businesses don't employ physical health, mental health and financial well being separately. They employ people.
When organisations use their scale to support and protect the whole person, they create healthier, more resilient employees, a stronger employee value proposition and, ultimately, a more resilient business.
