How Health Tech Is Transforming Corporate Culture For The Better
The saying goes happy employees equal productive employees, and a recent study backs up this age-old adage. Economists from the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick carried out a number of experiments to test the idea that happy employees work harder. The results showed that happiness made people around 12% more productive.
What if corporate wellness programs were a main contributor to overall employee happiness? Well, recent findings have shown that corporate wellness improves a company's bottom line. How so? The importance of good employee health in a business trickles from the top down. As quoted in Forbes, Dr. Roger Sahoury, author of Gladiator's Guide to Corporate Health & Wealth, stated that 55 percent of workers identified a workplace wellness program as an instrument in improving their overall well-being; equating to $250 million in savings in lowered healthcare costs and a 50 percent reduction in high blood pressure among employees.
Healthy employees not only bring increased productivity to the workplace, but also happiness across all aspects of their lives. Research from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO), Brigham Young University and the Center for Health Research at Healthways showed that employees who eat healthy all day long were 25 percent more likely to have higher job performance.
The link between employee health and improved productivity reinforces the case for corporations to invest in top-notch wellness programs and technology that provides employees with benefits that reduce stress and fatigue. General Electric recently began offering unlimited vacation to a majority of its salaried U.S. workforce – about 43 percent, becoming the largest company to do so.
Another example is Microsoft's commitment to improving corporate wellness, offering a shuttle and bus with Wi-Fi that transports commuters to and from work, flexible work hours and a bevy of health benefits including dental, vision and even physician house calls.
Fitbit, another large corporation and manufacturer of wearable technology, not only promotes an incredible wellness culture but is also helping other companies use its wearable fitness tracking technology to create programs for employees. Wearables can be a valuable tool in encouraging workplace health by helping to monitor stress levels and heart rates. Companies are leveraging this tech in order to implement fitness plans and motivate employees to stay active as part of a rewards program.
Lowered health insurance premiums is another incentive for corporations to implement health tech in the workplace. By expanding wellness budgets and promoting preventive measures, employers can keep employees out of hospitals which keeps premiums down. Mental health coaching and fitness trackers are common tactics used to improve employee happiness and heath, which is a trigger in work productivity and an important key for a company's bottom line.
Some small startups, like ShapeUp, and WellTok are also following the lead of big name companies like Google, Zappos, General Electric and Microsoft, and expanding corporate wellness by implementing health technology as an incentive for a better corporate culture, work productivity, and as a recruitment tool. As the use of fitness mobile apps increases – up 52 percent in 2015 – and wearables are projected to grow 31 percent this year, we can expect to see this trend continue. We'll certainly see innovation in this space and it will be interesting to watch the positive impact it has on corporate wellness and on a company's overall profit.