Organisations are waking up to the potential benefits of employee wellbeing (EW) programmes. The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) has reported that nearly half of the organisations participating in its absence management survey have an EW strategy in place.
The main reason for this rising interest is the established link between health and performance in the workplace. The general hypothesis is that the healthier and happier people are, the more productive they are likely to be in the workplace. We all perform at our best when we are feeling good and the academic research generally supports this notion.

Half of organisations have a well-being strategy and a third of organisations report that over the last year they have improved communications with staff about the benefits on offer and how to access them. Organisations are three times more likely to report an increase in well-being spend this year than a decrease, even in the cash-strapped public sector. Our findings imply this is a worthwhile investment.

Seventy per cent of organisations offer some sort of health promotion programme. The most common initiatives, offered by three in ten organisations, include advice on healthy eating, stop smoking support, subsidised gym membership, health screening and healthy canteen options. Across all sectors, organisations that used absence as a KPI were more likely than those who don’t to offer a range of health promotion benefits, including advice on healthy eating (42% vs 15%), health screening (35% vs 19%), access to physiotherapy (30% vs 12%), walking pedometer initiatives (21% vs 8%) and stop smoking support (39% vs 17%). Most organisations surveyed provide one or more well-being benefit to all employees, even if they don’t have a specific well-being strategy. Most benefits on offer are available to all employees, particularly in the public