Wellhub study finds workers prefer a hybrid approach to wellness

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When it comes to employee demand for increased flexibility in benefits options, wellness offerings are no exception. 

Wellhub's newly released annual trends report found that workers who used a combination of in-person and digital wellness options had double the engagement rate of those who did not. The corporate wellness platform looked at 500 million cumulative check-ins — a member's use of a service — from global users across a variety of areas, including fitness, mindfulness, nutrition, therapy and sleep. Those who participated in both digital and in-person offerings had an average of 18 check-ins per month, while folks going in-person only had nine and digital-only users had eight. 

"This shows that it's a virtuous cycle; that the more you take care of yourself, the more you want to take care of yourself, improve what you're doing, and complement with other types of wellness solutions," says Livia Martini, Wellhub's chief people officer. "It is our responsibility to help guide people and get them on this positive flywheel of well-being."

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But while offering a variety of wellness tools may be an enticing way to make employees happy, from an HR and cost standpoint, it can get dicey. Employers can accommodate employees, HR teams and their budgets by selecting wellness solutions that offer a broad range of options under one umbrella, according to Wellhub. 

"You need to make sure that the dollars you're investing are getting the fastest return they can have," Martini says. "This is valid if the solution is good for a large number of people and easy to manage from an HR perspective as well. So low cost from a maintenance point of view, but also that gives your employees everything that they need." 

The Wellhub platform goes a step further by encouraging employees to engage with each other by providing options for group challenges that can be set by the employer or individual employees. Who can get the most steps in, do the most meditation sessions, and other opportunities to maximize participation can bring workers together in a fun way over a common goal.  

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Partnering up with a solution that follows generational wellness trends is also important for engagement, as what appeals to the Gen Z employee population may not be desirable for older employees. 

"If you have one type of solution, you're going to get only the 22-year-olds out of college, or you're going to get the parents; you're not going to get both," she says. "If you say, here's an app, or here's a gym membership, you're not going to have as much engagement as you can, and if you don't have as much engagement with the solution, you don't get as much results."  

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A successful employee wellness program that lets them engage how they want and when they want, requires a continued commitment on the part of employers, but the payoff is substantial. When employees are in tune with their personal wellness, they are more involved at work and have fewer long-term health problems.

"Once you invest in your employees and their well-being is better, they are more productive at work, they have lower absenteeism because they get sick less, [and] on top of everything else, you see a significant savings in health insurance costs," Martini says. "It's good business."

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