Companies are increasingly recognising that holistic employee wellbeing extends beyond traditional perks like wellness days. Bernise Games, South Africa’s Head of Marketing at YuLife, highlights this shift and its impact on productivity, retention and overall workplace happiness.
Companies are starting to realise how critical holistic employee wellness offerings are to ensuring staff happiness, productivity and retention. Wellbeing in 2024 needs to go beyond wellness days and encompass a variety of needs, says Bernise Games, South Africa’s Head of Marketing at YuLife.
YuLife, an insurtech which provides holistic wellbeing offerings in terms of critical financial protection along with physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, is seeing a huge amount of growth in this space, she says.
There has typically been a lack of wellbeing focus in workplaces: only 40 percent of employees feel their employer is helping build a happy workplace – and one of their top unmet needs at work was mental wellbeing, says Bernise, citing research.
“Fortunately, there is a transition underway. To be an employer of choice and retain the right and best talent, companies need to make sure their employee benefits offering meets all employees’ requirements and has a tangible benefits,”
This growth can be seen in companies increasingly creating positions like chief people or chief wellbeing officers, she says. While she notes that there is a massive shift to this focus, more still needs to be done.
What companies also need to understand, says Bernise, is that the wellbeing of their staff helps improve productivity and, as a result, their bottom line. As millennials slowly head towards retirement, with the top end of that age group being 42, Gen Zs are entering the workforce and moving up to management positions. This means that companies must increasingly cater to wellness aspects.
“The millennial age group’s main focus is on remuneration, while Gen Zs want a holistic offering that fulfills all aspects of their wellbeing, not just the financial side.”
Not providing a holistic EVP solution, with the inclusion of wellbeing and an employee assistance programme (EAP), can be costly, says Bernise. She points to studies by both the Queens School of Business and the Gallup Organisation, which found that disengaged workers had 37 percent higher absenteeism, 49 percent more accidents, and 60 percent more errors and defects.
“In organisations with low employee engagement scores, they experienced 18 percent lower productivity, 16 percent lower profitability, 37 percent lower job growth, and 65 percent lower share price over time. Importantly, businesses with highly engaged employees enjoyed 100 percent more job applications,” says Bernise.
Companies that offer all-round solutions that engage their people are seeing that they can attract and retain talent, Bernise says, and this offering is starting to move to the small- and medium-sized enterprise sector and is growing in South Africa, which was ranked at the bottom in terms of mental health by Mental State of the World 2023.
There are serious implications of a lack of EVP, with research showing that absenteeism, with 15 percent of staff absent on any given day, costs the economy as much as R16 billion a year. Some 128 million days are lost annually because of low productivity levels and mental health conditions that aren’t addressed, costing the economy R161 billion per year.
YuLife, which is an insurtech providing group risk benefits along with the YuLife app, encourages members to enhance their wellbeing through behavioural economics and gamification. “We conducted an independent study with Forrester Consulting which showed that companies are getting an 181 percent return on investment when they take up YuLife.”
One particular area of demand within EVP is group protection that covers staff in terms of income protection and life insurance. This allows employees to continue earning should they become ill, or their families to be covered if they die, says Bernise. She explains that South Africans are generally underinsured, and this is an affordability issue.
“Through offering group protection, companies can take wellness a step further at a cost point that isn’t prohibitive,” says Bernise.
“Traditionally, group protection products were seen as something offered by larger corporations as a perk, but this is changing. Employee benefits are becoming more of an attraction for hiring and retaining talent,” she adds. YuLife offers cover to companies with as few as five people.
Many still hold an elitist view of wellness products , explains Bernise, with a lot of them catering for the elite or middle- to higher-income earners. “These solutions are not attainable, not accessible and not affordable.
“We find that offering an intentional and meaningful solution to more than just the top 20 percent of the population has been rewarding for our clients, who are also now able to measure their investment in tangible ways,” says Bernise.
As an example, she cites a University of Oxford study, which showed that, had someone invested $1,000 in the top 100 companies in terms of wellness back in January 2021, the investment would have risen to $1,300 by March 2023. “This is 20 percent higher than an investment in the S&P 500 and 30 percent higher than the Nasdaq over the same period,” says Bernise.
And YuLife is seeing how people benefit from its offering as well, with people doubling the number of steps they take each day, and a 350 percent increase in meditation as just some examples Bernise provides. With more than 1,200 employer groups in the UK and over 800,000 members, the data also shows:
- Reduction in absenteeism of 11.5 percent
- Reduction in employee turnover of 2.75 percent
- Productivity increase of 2.5 percent
- Use of benefits up 2.7 times
“If you help employees have a more balanced lifestyle and give them the right tools to create healthier habits over time, you will have a happier and more productive workforce. This creates value for the company, the employees, their families and for the community at large. It is a win-win,” says Bernise.
