The Rise of Wellness Benefits at Work

Here’s a troubling paradox: people are more health-conscious now than they’ve ever been, but the rate of lifestyle disease is rising alarmingly.

According to WHO, 17.7 million people died in 2015 from cardiovascular disease. Other conditions that are all too familiar are diabetes, high blood pressure, pneumonia, cancer, obesity, and malnutrition.

Even though the Philippines ranks 161 out of 224 countries based on life expectancy, we’re up at #11 for hypertension and we have the greatest number of breast cancer cases out of 197 countries.

While there has been an improvement in medical facilities and health awareness over the past few decades, the state of our healthcare isn’t that good. A single medical consultation comes at a steep price, and millions of people lack the financial resources to pay for medicine or even necessary hospital procedures such as life-saving operations.

Healthcare is expensive–and it gets worse when you have a chronic disease that requires regular treatment. This alone explains why the most sought after company benefit is medical insurance, which shoulders the costs up to a certain amount (e.g. P200,000).

Wellne

Health insurance has been around for a while, but employers all over the world are already venturing into more extensive wellness benefits–think exercise classes at work, healthy lunches, and gym memberships alongside your usual salary.

This is probably the result of a paradigm shift. A century ago, acute diseases such as typhoid were the main cause of death.

But now that medicine has progressed enough to combat them and extend our lifespan all the way to old age, the next challenge is chronic disease–and we can’t exactly treat them with drugs alone because they stem from complex causes and are hugely influenced by lifestyle and nutrition.

In order to ward off chronic diseases, people are becoming conscious that they should be mindful of their health.

Parallel to this is the evolution of HR and a thrust towards a more humane workplace. Companies are starting to see employees are more than cogs in a well-oiled machine.

Why Businesses Should Care

From a business perspective, they have good cause to care about their employees’ wellbeing and happiness. Healthier employees means more productivity and more KPIs obtained, leading to a win-win situation for everyone.

Because so much time is spent at work every day–nine hours, usually– there’s usually a negative impact on health: sleep deprivation, stress, the hassles of commuting, eyestrain, back pain from sitting for too long, fatigue. Mindful wellness policies or programs in the company can alleviate these, or at least make employees more aware of how they can take care of their health.

But it isn’t exactly a surprising trend. Even outside the workplace, fitness and nutrition are catching on, with shops selling organic food and fitness centers popping up everywhere.

However, rather than a sign that we’re becoming healthier, perhaps it’s only a counter-reaction to how much more hazardous the world is becoming. We’re eating more sweets and processed food than any of our ancestors ever did, and we’re much more stressed and sedentary than ever before, to name a few cases.

Final Thoughts

In recognition of this, the government has passed bills such as Department Order 178-17 (bans forcing women to wear high heels to work), the Mental Health Bill of 2017 (provides free mental health services to the public), and Department Order 184 (requires regular standing breaks for employees).

Because these have only been passed recently, the effects aren’t widespread yet, but the push towards employee health–and wellness benefits at work–is unlikely to die down soon.

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