Navigating to employee relationship transformation

Going beyond "check the box" when it comes to employee well-being

No one has ever won a marathon by sprinting. Rather, through careful planning, deliberate execution, and continuous monitoring, the world’s greatest distance runners are redefining human endurance and capabilities every day.

The same analogy can be applied in the business world. That is, organizations that carefully plan, deliberately execute, and continuously monitor (and adjust) find themselves setting the trends, rather than reacting to them... or worse, sprinting to catch up.

As noted in the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report, the majority of responders (approximately 66 percent) indicated that well-being programs are critical to an organization’s brand and culture. But there are still significant gaps between what workers value and what organizations are delivering.

In addition to the goal of having a high-performing, productive workforce, organizations that are setting human capital trends and addressing the gaps recognize the following social imperatives to having a forward-thinking well-being program:

• The competitive landscape for top talent has changed and there’s more information and clarity in the market on what a job is worth. As a result, offering impactful rewards and well-being programs is a differentiator to prospective workers and reflects the level of importance that organizations place on creating employee relationships with their workforce.
• Well-being isn’t about creating a financial return on investment (ROI). And using well-being as a justification to implement (or not implement) new programs fails to consider the broader business impact and the positive employee experience these programs can offer. That is, organizations that provide these programs recognize that they’re a critical element to creating a simply irresistible experience that helps the workforce engage, perform, and flourish. In fact, according to Deloitte’s High-Impact Rewards (HIR) research, high-performing organizations are 11 times more likely to have a broad employee well-being strategy that extends beyond traditional physical wellness than their lower-performing counterparts.
• More often than not, organizations that are sprinting to catch up have addressed “the well-being trend” by providing activity trackers, hosting grass-roots step or weight-loss challenges, or supporting on-site fitness or health care facilities for workers to use. In short, they’re still focused on physical wellness, and as the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report shows, these programs are only a small part of what workers need, value, and expect from their employers.

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So how can organizations pass the employee relationship competition?

For today’s workforce, organizations can’t win hearts and minds by simply implementing well-being programs and hoping that the workforce will take advantage. Programs are facilitators of well-being—not the drivers of well-being. To drive engagement, well-being, and business results, organizations need to create a total relationship with the workforce and enable an environment where their workforce can perform and flourish.

This means providing a flexible and customized experience. One that recognizes that personal and professional needs vary based on life and career circumstances. And one that provides an engagement structure and platform that allows workers to carefully plan, deliberately execute, and continuously monitor their well-being through those circumstances.

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How Deloitte can help with your employee relationships

Organizations are no longer assessed based only on traditional metrics, such as financial performance, or even the quality of their products or services. Instead, organizations today are also judged based on the relationships with their workers, customers, and communities, as well as society at large—transforming them from business enterprises to social enterprises.

So how do organizations improve worker well-being and engagement?

Investing the right way in worker well-being is an important first step in building employee relationships. This means going beyond “check the box” activities. To accelerate meaningful workforce impact through well-being, Deloitte Consulting LLP can help:

• Validate that the strategy that underpins the well-being program aligns with broader business objectives (e.g., longer tenure, decreased absenteeism, increased productivity, higher engagement scores) and can be measured and reported on as needed.
• Understand and evaluate the efficacy of the existing well-being programs based on worker preference, utilization, and cost.
• Determine the efforts needed to either modify existing programs or implement net new well-being programs that meet worker preference needs and will drive engagement and long-term loyalty across the workforce.
• Deliver worker well-being programs through a personalized, platform-enabled experience that allows them to monitor and measure utilization, and performance against goals.

For those committed to offering high-impact rewards and well-being, Deloitte Consulting LLP understands how to take organizations from yesterday through tomorrow and is the right strategic advisor to help create a simply irresistible environment.

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