According to Peppy, a digital health app, health benefits in the workplace should include support for fitness, nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle in order to encourage more utilization and engagement. Peppy says that support for general health matters and a healthy lifestyle, such as access to discounted gym memberships for exercise or healthy food discounts and vouchers, can be beneficial to employees who may have underlying health conditions and may encourage more employees to take advantage of the benefits on offer to them and improve their lifestyle and health. New research from Peppy found that just under 40% of employers understand the importance of backing up health benefits with support for more general health matters.
What is Healthy Lifestyle Support?
Employers can offer a range of ancillary health insurance benefits and healthy lifestyle benefits to encourage employees to live a healthier lifestyle and make it easier for employees to make healthier life choices. Sometimes, access to benefits such as a discounted gym membership through their place of work, or healthy food vouchers can make all the difference when it comes to employees’ healthy living. This can benefit both employees who have a diagnosed health condition, and employees who are not unwell but are simply looking to improve their lifestyle and habits.
Fitness Benefits
Fitness benefits are worth considering for employers, especially where employees are office-based, and work seated for the majority of the day. With new information released over the past few years making it clear that sitting for hours is as bad for our health as smoking cigarettes, there are lots of ways that office-based employers can help their employees combat this. Along with offering benefits such as free or discounted gym memberships, small changes can be made such as shorter, more frequent breaks where employees are encouraged to get up and stretch their legs or walking meetings rather than seated.
Nutrition Benefits
Food is fuel and providing nutrition-related benefits to your employees will benefit both them and you as an employer. Employees can have better access to a healthy diet and support from their workplace when it comes to accessing information and education about better nutrition. Not only can this benefit employees who may have underlying conditions that are affected by their diet, but it can also make it easier for employees who are interested in improving their nutrition to start and keep it up over time.
Mental Health Benefits
Along with focusing on offering physical health benefits, lots of employers today are understanding the importance of offering benefits to help their employees with their mental health and wellbeing. Supplemental benefits such as employee support programs and access to confidential mental health therapy and support can make a huge difference to how your employees feel, which will ultimately have a knock-on effect on important aspects such as attendance and performance.
Peppy say that more employers acknowledging the importance of healthy lifestyle support in health benefits is only a positive thing, encouraging more employees to engage with benefit programs and supporting them to make healthier decisions for their lives.
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