Are Healthy Employees More Productive?
14 January 2025
Employers will always want to get the most from their people, exploring reward and recognition, sales incentives, and engagement-enhancing ways to boost productivity. Everything we’ve listed here plays a role in helping to motivate employees, encouraging them to meet goals and go the extra mile. Still, employee wellbeing must remain a focus in your productivity-driving ambitions, creating healthy employees who can be and give their best. Read on to discover the benefits of your employee health and wellbeing strategy.
What Does Employee Health Mean?
When we think of health, it’s usual to picture physical health - being healthy or unwell. However, when focusing on employee wellbeing, we must consider the whole person - their physical, mental and financial wellbeing. It’s all connected. Financial anxiety can worsen mental wellbeing, and poor mental health can worsen physical conditions.
As we discuss in our blog, ‘Why are EAPs beneficial to employees?’, poor mental health costs UK employers £51 billion a year. When considering how to create healthy employees, keeping all three areas of wellbeing in mind is essential.
Understanding Burnout
In our introduction, we reference motivating factors - reward, recognition, and incentives - and while these help boost morale and productivity, your motivation-based productivity strategy cannot sit in isolation from your employee health and wellbeing strategy.
When you motivate employees through monetary rewards, especially when the cost of living remains high, they’ll push themselves harder to meet targets and goals. While this looks good for productivity on the surface, if this surge in activity is at the cost of employee health, it will eventually have a negative impact.
If employees sacrifice work-life balance, self-care, and physical and mental wellbeing in pursuit of better financial health, something will eventually give. When people are tired, they’re more likely to become stressed, and once stress takes hold, it can eventually lead to burnout.
We published a personal account of occupational burnout in our blog, 'Reaching & Recovering from Burnout: Breaking the Stigma’. Did you know it can take twice as long to recover from burnout than it took to get there?
What are the Benefits of Healthy Employees?
We’ve touched on the idea that motivation and employee health strategies must coexist, with wellbeing considered alongside productivity strategies. It’s time to elaborate further because employee health and wellbeing are fundamental to productivity and business growth goals. Here’s why:
Reduced Absenteeism and Presenteeism
2024 data is yet to be released, but between 2019 and 2023, the average rate of absenteeism per employee rose from 5.8 to 7.8 days - a 34% increase in four years. While absenteeism costs UK employers billions annually, presenteeism - working while unwell - costs approximately £500 per day through reduced productivity. Healthy employees are less absent and less likely to work through lengthy illness, saving your business money.
Lower Employee Turnover
A BBC News report from March 2024 showed that more employees are leaving the workforce than ever before due to long-term sickness - mental and physical. High employee turnover is a significant business risk impacting productivity, continuity and team morale. Taking a preventative approach to employee health can help employees be more proactive, getting them on the path to recovery sooner.
Reduced Recruitment Costs
Lowering employee turnover by keeping your people healthier and in work for longer reduces time, energy and money spent on recruitment. It can cost around £30,000 each time you recruit someone new in fees, equipment and training. Investing in creating healthy employees will reduce recruitment overheads.
Improved Company Culture
We explore how to create a culture of wellbeing in our blog, ‘The Evolution and Growing Importance of Employee Wellbeing’. Employee health is a vital part of your company culture. When absenteeism is high due to poor employee wellbeing, it puts more pressure on the rest of your workforce, increasing stress, which can lead to a further rise in ill health.
How are Employee Health and Productivity Connected?
Reduced absenteeism, fewer cases of presenteeism, lower employee turnover, and improved company culture positively impact productivity. When employees are more present, energised, embedded in the business, motivated, engaged and supported, they’re more productive.
Presenteeism costs employers so much because sick employees who continue to work can’t deliver to the same standards and capacity as those feeling well.
How Can Employers Support Employee Health?
There’s much employers and businesses can do to support employee health - financial, mental and physical. The essential first step is to embrace employee wellbeing as more than a tick-box exercise. Embed wellbeing into your culture and values and enjoy the benefits of healthy employees. Here's how:
Lead by Example
Avoid being guilty of 'wellbeing washing' by leading by example. If you encourage your workforce to prioritise their health, your leaders must do the same. Nurture open conversations about health and wellbeing - mental, physical, and financial. Share missions and goals to make it fun.
Communication
Providing information and raising awareness about the perks of being healthy and tips for getting fit is vital. We take for granted that people know the health basics, but there’s much they may not know. Communicate awareness events - get involved with them - to make employees stop and think about their minds and bodies. Consider employee health when communicating business changes, as they can often cause stress levels to rise, negatively impacting their health.
Remote Workers
Ensure any employee health initiatives include remote workers. Office-based events create a sense of competition and collaboration, bringing colleagues across your business together. Ensure there’s a digital element to your event so that remote workers are able to attend. It’s also essential for managers to regularly check in with remote employees. It’s easier to mask ill health when communicating digitally, so knowing people and picking up on small cues is essential for ensuring remote employee health.
Return to Work
When employees return to work after a period of illness, it’s good practice to do a risk assessment to ensure their work environment isn’t negatively impacting their health. They may need a change to their workstation or a staggered return-to-work plan to allow for a temporary reduction in their duties while they return to full health.
On-Going Support
Some employees may have long-term health conditions, and while they’re able to work, they may need to manage them. A risk assessment is vital here, too, but so is empathetic leadership and understanding. Managers must be aware of personal needs and potential limitations to ensure they don’t put the employee at risk.
Improve Happiness and Job Satisfaction
Happiness and job satisfaction play a significant role in creating healthy employees - boosting engagement and productivity, too. When employees are happy and satisfied in their roles, they’re less stressed - or, at least, better able to manage stress. Less stress = better employee health! So, how do we create happy employees?
Career Development
Employees want to feel valued, and one way to express your commitment to your employees is by investing in their professional development. Research suggests that Millennials enjoy continually learning more at work. Upskilling employees is beneficial to your business as you can help employees grow and develop the skills needed as industries and working practices evolve.
Flexibility
We tackle the topic of flexibility in more depth in our blog, ‘Work-life balance: Supporting Working Parents’. Flexibility is a must-have in today’s competitive jobs market, with employees demanding the option of hybrid working and flexible routines. Flexible working policies improve work-life balance and reduce stress, helping to nurture a healthy workforce.
Employee Benefits
Employee Benefits play a pivotal, preventative role in creating healthy employees, getting them medical support more quickly and making healthier lifestyles more affordable.
Here’s an overview of the health and wellbeing employee benefits available:
- Employee Assistance Programme (EAP): EAP gives 24/7, 365 access to BACP-accredited counsellors and provides a host of tools across desktop and app to enhance employee wellbeing.
- Online GP: Online GP is our digital healthcare platform that can give your employees access to GP appointments within 24 hours - even the same day! On average, employees use half a working day whenever they need to see their GP and can wait weeks for an appointment. Online GP gets your employees on the path to health more quickly.
- Cycle to Work Scheme: When your employees switch their car for a bike via a Cycle to Work salary sacrifice scheme, they can get fitter while they commute to the office. Cycling is a fantastic exercise that boosts endorphins, helping your people be their best at work. Employers make NIC savings, too!
- Gym and Fitness Discounts: Exercise is a great way to reduce stress on the way to creating healthy employees. Our Discounted Gym Memberships can give employees up to 25% discounts on gym memberships, bootcamps, fitness gadgets, and digital platforms. Making a personalised approach to exercise more affordable entices employees to embark on a long-term fitness journey.
- Annual Leave Purchase Scheme: An Annual Leave Purchase Scheme enhances work-life balance, reducing stress by giving employees time to enjoy more of what matters most. It’s an employee benefit that enhances employee wellbeing and saves employers money through reduced salary payments.
These benefits solidify your commitment to creating healthy employees and building an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that significantly enhances their wellbeing. Employers see a return on investment through reduced absenteeism, less employee turnover, and the savings our salary sacrifice schemes deliver.
Create Healthy Employees and Boost Productivity with Pluxee UK
Healthy employees are more productive, reduce business overheads, and help you achieve your business goals. Investing in employee health delivers a return on investment in many proven ways. We have the resources and employee benefits you need to ensure your employee wellbeing strategy is successful.
Join us in making work not simply a place to be but a place to belong.
Sources: BBC News
