Employee Wellness – Another Untapped Potential for People Analytics

Serena H. Huang, Ph.D.

As we approach the two-year anniversary since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, the topic of employee wellness has never been more relevant. In 2021, there was no shortage of articles on the topic that went viral, such as the HBR article on burnout by Jennifer Moss and the New York Times article on languishing by Adam Grant. This year, many of us are starting to head back to the office and meeting colleagues in-person again. How will employee wellness needs evolve and what should organizations do to create a healthy work environment?

If you are experiencing an uptick in attrition and want to retain employees in the Great Resignation, research has shown mental health support is no longer a nice-to-have. I mentioned in an earlier article that almost half of employees receiving good support from their employers are less likely to leave their job as a result. There is documented ROI from investing in mental health as well.??Wellness is not traditionally an area where people analytics teams have been as involved in, and I’ll be sharing why this is a huge untapped potential for organizations. There are three ways people analytics can improve employee wellness across the enterprise.???????

1.??Continuously Listen to Understand Employee Sentiment

The Great Resignation and the global pandemic have made employee experience a business imperative for all organizations. Understanding employee sentiment to improve talent retention and employee productivity is something I have been tasked with since the beginning of the pandemic. While people analytics teams are structured and staffed differently across firms, an established function may very well include survey design expertise in-house and can design a continuously listening strategy to provide leadership team a real-time pulse on employee sentiment. This is critical in transformative times like the one we are in.

Continuous listening does not mean sending everyone a survey everyday, rather it is asking the right set of questions to the right employees at the right time for the business. On the topic of employee wellness, I have explored a spectrum of approaches, ranging from an annual global wellness survey, to weekly pulse surveys with sampling, to a daily check-in.

What should you do with the tens of thousands of comments? I’ve been fortunate enough to have dedicated people analytics data scientists who can build text analytics tools including sentiment analysis in-house. Even if you don’t, do not get discouraged. Most survey platforms now have out-of-the-box sentiment and topic analysis. Gone are the days where leaders to have to spend hours reading through employee comments to find insights in a haystack. The employee listening platform market is changing rapidly. I will continue to watch the tech closely after the big announcement last week of Glint integrating into Microsoft Viva, along with Perceptyx’s recent acquisition of Cultivate, and how Workday Peakon Employee Voice continues to evolve. ????

2.??Create Nudges to Increase Healthy Behaviors?

Several years ago, Google famously used behavioral economics to show that putting snacks farther away from beverage stations could be a simple way to reduce the consumptions of snacks. HEC Paris Professor Alberto Alemanno emphasizes that wellness programs need to be based on a ‘choice architecture'. “People respond better to 'nudging' or encouragement, as it makes them feel empowered to make the right decisions. Workers who retain their freedom of choice are much more likely to see the long-terms benefits and adhere to a health and wellness program.”

In a hybrid work environment, how can organizations nudge employees to live and work in healthier ways? One area to consider is time-off. During the first year of the pandemic, few employees were taking paid time-off because they were waiting for travel to open up. Not taking time off for a prolonged period of time, however, is not good for employees’ health while burnout was already on the rise. Many organizations started alerting managers of their team members’ PTO balance automatically, while others have gone as far as offering financial incentives to encourage time-off. Last year, PwC was in the news for offering U.S. employees $250 for every full week of vacation booked, up to $1,000 a year. ?

Another area of opportunity to consider is to have better meetings to improve collaboration, productivity, innovation, and of course, wellbeing. There are several articles on this topic, including a recent one from Ryan Wong about how "Our Meeting Obsession Is Hurting Our Work And Our Wellbeing". We can see hybrid is here to stay at least in the short run, so it will be more important to ensure inclusive behaviors along with leveraging collaboration technology such as AR and VR to improve innovation via an immersive experience.

What behaviors would you like to see changed to improve employee wellness?

3.??Wellness Program Evaluation

For those of you that have expanded employee benefits to include Calm or Headspace subscriptions, have you quantified the ROI for your leadership team? For those of you that have kept the health insurance premium the same for employees while the costs have gone up, do you know if that is paying off? For those of you that have made the leave policy more generous, do you know if it is making a quantifiable and positive impact on employee wellness? For those of you that have rolled out financial health benefits such as coaching and additional retirement savings, do employees report lower levels of stress with their finances or seen an increase in net disposable income? ?

Your people analytics team can help you with program evaluation. When I help my clients evaluate programs, I use a simple three-step process:

(1)??Clarify the goals and objectives of the program. For example, is the wellness program intended to reduce healthcare costs or improve employee retention?

(2)??Recommend and select the metrics aligned to goals and objectives;??

(3)??Quantify the impact with data and continuously monitor. ?

As a reminder, it is important to ensure Wellness Programs are inclusive. There has been a strong focus on providing working parents the flexibility and additional benefits they need since the beginning of the pandemic. There may be other group of employees in the organization who need additional support, such as those caring for elderly parents or non-caretakers who are dealing with prolonged isolation and loneliness. You can check out a focused discussion of how to leverage analytics to improve Inclusion and Belonging in this?article.?

How will you make improving Employee wellness a priority for your organization in 2022?

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Dr. Serena Huang is currently a data analytics executive at PayPal. She is a thought leader and international keynote speaker in people analytics, HR technology, future of work, AI, and employee experience with deep expertise spanning large multinationals including GE, Kraft Heinz, Koch Industries, and Deloitte. Her monthly newsletter “From Data to Action” currently has thousands of subscribers. As one of the Top HR Leaders to Watch in 2022 and 30 People Analytics Leaders to Learn from in 2022, Dr. Huang is passionate about building high-performing global teams and helping business leaders see data as an asset in large organizations. Her recent interviews appeared on?People Matters,?Data Chief podcast,?AllVoices podcast,?HR Leaders podcast,?Workforce.com?and?Rallyware.

Follow Dr. Huang on LinkedIn here:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/serenahhuangphd/ for regular content and subscribe to her monthly newsletter “From Data to Action” today!

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