Employee health and wellness is the engine that drives a strong organization
The road through the pandemic has been a bumpy one for many organizations. For those that have made it this far, it’s probably not going to get much smoother for awhile
As organizations move along the post-pandemic highway, they should be aware of obstacles that could drive them off the road — particularly from risks employees face related to their health and wellness. Employees are experiencing mental health challenges like never before, from anxiety to depression to adjustment disorder, says Dr. Talia Varley, physician lead of advisory services at Cleveland Clinic Canada — who will be co-presenting a free webinar, “Healthy people drive healthy organizations.”
In addition to that, Dr. Varley notes that many people have fallen behind on preventative care and, in some cases, they haven’t been getting timely access for medical appointments and procedures. It all adds up to potentially serious effects on employees’ health and wellness — which creates risk for the organizations who rely on them and emphasizes the importance of health, safety and wellness in organizations’ risk management strategies.
Organizations will have to address the realities of the peri- and post-pandemic workplace in their health and wellness strategies and that should include a tailored approach that recognizes the diversity of the workforce, says Dr. Varley. She notes that not only are there blended workforce models with both in-person and work-from-home teams, but the health needs of people within each team vary, just as they do for each person’s coaching and development. That’s where health benefits can serve as a key element of an organization’s talent approach and risk management strategy.
When it comes to health benefits, there has been a shift in the mindset of organizations coming out of the pandemic. Before, the focus was on controlling the costs of benefits, but now organizations are realizing how the right benefits can have a positive impact on overall employee wellbeing, says Cleveland Clinic Canada’s director of business development, Jennifer Osborn, and director of corporate health services, Marianne Surmann. This means providing and promoting tools that employees can use to keep themselves healthy, such as virtual second opinion services and e-coaching. They add that the pandemic has pushed organizations to think more about how they can proactively protect the health of their employees.
Osborn and Surmann emphasize that it’s key for leaders to listen to the needs of their employees as well as understand their business so that they can be in the position to protect the overall health of their organizations and help themselves have an easier ride out of the pandemic. That’s something on which their colleague Dr. Varley agrees.
“Health, safety and wellness is critical to the longer-term success of organizations, from business continuity to competitive strategy to talent acquisition and more,” says Dr. Varley. “It is a consistent corporate thread that enables a host of organizational priority areas and the ‘winners’ will be those that understand and invest in health at this critical point in time.”
Cleveland Clinic Canada will be presenting the free webinar, “Healthy people drive healthy organizations,” on Nov. 9, 2021 @ 12:00 p.m. (ET). For more information on this webinar, HR professionals can register here.
