While SAP has been a pioneer in the field of employee health and well-being, it is reassuring to see that more and more organisations are putting its people ahead of its profits. In its annual well-being Report, Virgin Pulse asked HR leaders from around the world about their approaches to health and well-being to understand best practice and its impacts.
According to the report, 72% of companies surveyed offer well-being programs to employees. It also noted that 62% of organisations said well-being programs positively impact employee engagement, 57% on workplace culture, and 39% on retention and recruitment. Furthermore, it said 94% of well-being leaders are expanding wellness programs to include holistic well-being – financial, mental, and spiritual health.
The health and well-being of employees isn’t just becoming a greater priority to more businesses; it is also becoming more comprehensive and yielding tangible results.
Understanding the employee experience
Like our intelligent ERP systems, our SAP ANZ Healthy Habits program provides a holistic health and well-being offering. Beyond the traditional offerings of physical health, we want to help our people look after their financial well-being and mental health. And being in the business of IT and analytics, we want to analyse and understand how this focus on employee well-being improves overall productivity and engagement.
Our annual Business Health Culture Index (BHCI) does just that – evaluating the well-being of our staff and analysing its impact on various business outcomes such as engagement, retention, and profitability.
We started gauging employee health and well-being in 2009, and last year approximately 72,000 employees participated in our annual survey from which the BHCI is calculated – a response rate of 73%. The feedback from people has been clear every year – health and well-being are important and valued. SAP understands this importance and is constantly enhancing the health and well-being portfolio. And the responses have been very clear as well – employees appreciate these efforts.
A culture of care
A recent Forbes case study demonstrated how employee well-being is part of SAP’s core business strategy. There is a comprehensive suite of global programs and initiatives on offer for staff to ensure their ongoing health and well-being.
Here in ANZ, our health and well-being program ‘Healthy Habits’ is designed around the four pillars of financial fitness, eating well, moving more and mental fitness. Examples of some of the programs under each pillar include:
- Financial fitness- Financial webinars on topics such as Estate Planning, Understanding the Aged Care system in Australia, Budget and Investment updates, 1:1 onsite and phone consultations with our benefit partners
- Eat Well – Quarterly nutrition seminars focused on the building blocks of nutrition, nutrition consultations, health articles, health bytes, healthy recipes
- Move More – challenges via our Fit@SAP digital wellness platform
- Mental Fitness – building resilience, mindfulness sessions, how to better manage stress
To support our health and well-being program we run health discovery employee information sessions to promote all the great global and local health and well-being programs they can take advantage of, we have an integrated well-being platform and have onsite health champions who help drive our healthy culture and support the roll out of our health initiatives in each location.
SAP values its people because it understands they are key to the success of the business. Health and well-being programs create happier, healthier, and more engaged employees. And while it’s wonderful to know that this can help improve company performance – more importantly – it transforms employees into advocates, which is vital in the experience economy and paramount to our ongoing growth as a business.
Learn more on making employee experiences that matter to your organisation.
This article was originally posted on Linkedin
