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The pandemic created a moment of realization and momentum about the importance of wellness at work and employers’ role in this. Four years on from the the first Covid lockdowns, it has become apparent that an effective wellbeing strategy plays a vital part in talent acquisition and retention.
So, how should employers consider their employees’ wellbeing? What support can they offer, and how do the employer and employees benefit?
My guest this week is Luke Bullen, VP of Wellhub in the UK. Wellhub connects employees to the best options for fitness, mindfulness, therapy, nutrition, and sleep. Luke has some fascinating and valuable insights on the latest thinking about wellness and its strategic importance to all employers.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The continuing momentum around wellbeing and why it is a board-level issue
• The relationship between wellbeing and work
• Talent Acquisition, Productivity, and Retention
• The significant ROI of corporate wellbeing investments
• Are employers harming their employees?
• Being a catalyst that reduces barriers
• Thinking about wellbeing holistically
• What are the small steps every employer can take
• What does the future look like?
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Matt: Hi, this is Matt. Just before we start the show, I want to tell you about a free white paper that I’ve just published on AI and talent acquisition. We all know that AI is going to dramatically change recruiting, but what will that really look like? For example, imagine a future where AI can predict your company’s future talent needs, build dynamic external and internal talent pools, craft personalized candidate experiences and intelligently automate recruitment marketing.
The new white paper 10 Ways AI Will Transform Talent Acquisition doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but it does explore the most likely scenarios on how AI will impact recruiting. So, get a head start on planning and influencing the future of your talent acquisition strategy. You can download your copy of the white paper at mattalder.me/transform. That’s mattalder.me/transform.
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Matt: Hi there, welcome to Episode 633 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. The pandemic created a moment of realization and a sense of momentum about the importance of wellness at work and the role employers need to play in this. Four years on from the first COVID lockdowns, it’s become apparent that an effective wellness strategy plays a vital part in talent acquisition and retention. So how should employers think about their employees’ wellness? What support can they offer and how do both the employer and employees benefit?
My guest this week is Luke Bullen, VP of Wellhub in the UK. Wellhub connects employees to the best options for fitness, mindfulness, therapy, nutrition, and sleep. Luke has some fascinating and valuable insights on the latest thinking around wellness and its strategic importance to all employers.
Hi Luke, and welcome to the podcast.
Luke: Hi Matt, how are you doing? Thanks for having me on.
Matt: I’m very well, thank you. And it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Luke: Sure. Thank you, Matt. So, my name’s Luke Bullen. I’m the VP for Wellhub in the UK. Wellhub for those of you listeners that don’t know us, we’re a leading wellness platform that supports the employees of companies across fitness, mindfulness, nutrition, therapy, and sleep. We work with all sorts of businesses across eleven markets in the UK. Some companies you’d have heard of Tesco, TikTok, Santander, Rolls Royce, lots and lots of others. Those are big names, but right down to companies of less than 50 people. So, my role is to make sure we’re getting that out to as many companies as we can and helping companies support their employees’ wellbeing by doing so.
Matt: Fantastic stuff. So, I suppose to start by way of context, I’m sure everyone will have a sense of what’s meant by wellbeing, but just give us some kind of definitions, talk about how it might be changing, what aspects are there to the whole concept of wellbeing.
Luke: I suppose the way I would think about wellbeing is it’s anything that is aiming to make people feel as good as possible. I think as companies, we want our colleagues to be thriving. We want them to be in the best possible place. And I think if we’re to give an honest look at ourselves and to say, “Well, how many of us are really thriving?” I think that number’s a relatively small percentage. If you were to look at those people who are actually struggling, I would say it’s a much bigger percentage. And then you have a lot of people who are somewhere in the middle who are doing okay, but if they looked after certain aspects of their health and wellbeing, they could be doing that much better.
So, yeah, we categorize into those five elements I spoke about earlier, fitness, mindfulness, therapy, nutrition, and sleep. And our feeling is that if you look after all of those things, then you’re going to go a long way to making yourself feel as good as you possibly can. And of course, that’s becoming more and more important in recent years. I think we saw a big spike in COVID, and people being interested in looking after themselves a little bit more. And the great thing we’re seeing is that hasn’t slumped. Actually, we’re seeing in some of the surveys we do and some of the research we do, that actually people’s leaning into wellbeing is increasing and is becoming more and more central to the way that people think about their lives and how they look after themselves.
Matt: And tell us a bit about the relationship between wellbeing and work and employment. What are people’s attitudes to that? And why is it important for employers to think about it as well?
Luke: I think you have to think about it in two ways. So, on the one hand, work is such a massive part of our lives that it is inevitably a big factor into how well we’re feeling. Lots of the stress that we feel comes from work. Lots of the productivity we feel as well comes from work, but you have to, whatever you say, understand that your work has a huge influence on the way you’re feeling day to day.
So as a company, you have a responsibility to think about that a little bit. And I think this attitude has changed a little bit over the past few years. When we started with Wellhub in the UK eight years ago, when I was speaking to CHROs, HR directors at big companies, there was a decent percentage of them who would be saying, “We look after our employees by paying them their salary. It’s then up to them to look after their wellbeing however they want to.” And I think you find very, very few leaders of businesses who would say that now.
I think wellbeing has become a core pillar of the workplace. I think when we do some research now, we’re seeing that 88% of people that we survey consider wellbeing as important as salary, and a similar percentage say they would leave their job if wellbeing is deprioritized. And that number has risen significantly. We do that kind of survey every year, that number has risen every year since you started doing it. And I think it’s logical. If you’re not feeling well, it doesn’t really matter how much money you’re paid. And so, it’s great to see that people are putting that on par now with how much money they’re earning.
Matt: So, there’s obviously a retention for employers that you mentioned there. What else is there in terms of ROI, productivity that might persuade people to invest more in this particular area?
Luke: You can categorize it in different ways, but talent attraction is a big thing. If you can hire people more quickly because you’re known as a company that caters to people’s wellbeing and helps them to feel their best selves, that’s a huge thing. Same logic goes for retention, as you say, then thinking about things, well, if we can make people feel more healthy, they’re going to take fewer sick days. If we can help them to feel good every day, they’re going to be more productive, they’re going to stay longer, and so on and so on.
All the companies that we surveyed, a huge majority, 95% of companies that track ROI from their wellbeing benefits or wellbeing initiatives, see positive returns, and that’s up from 90% just last year. So, it’s a big thing. We also see a big proportion of people, of companies, I should say, who actually see a very significant return on investment. So over half of the companies that we speak to see a return of 2 pounds for every 1 pound spent. So, from a business perspective, there are so many different ways that you’re going to get a benefit if your employees are feeling better. And again, this is now becoming a board level issue it’s something that I think right up to CEOs, companies start to understand this.
Matt: No, absolutely, absolutely. And I suppose give us some examples of what it is that employers can actually do, because you mentioned the different types of areas. What is it that employers can offer? How can they help? What is their role in this in terms of the specifics of it?
Luke: Two sides. So, I think the primary role of a company is to make sure that they’re not harming their employees’ wellbeing. And I think this is something we speak to companies about a lot. Are there practices within your organization that are actually making people feel more stressed? Are managers aware of all the signs that might mean that someone needs a bit more support? So just kind of structural things, making sure that as a company, you’re not doing things to start with aren’t pushing their wellbeing down. And at the same time thinking about, “Well, how can I increase my employees’ wellbeing?” And for us, that’s about reducing barriers.
Look, everybody knows, I think they do. Everybody in this country knows that if they eat more healthily, if they exercise more, if they take some time to think about their mental health, it’s going to be a good thing for them. And I guess the way that we think about it is, “Well, why do so few people do it then?” If you look at in the UK, for example, fitness memberships, it’s only about 15% of people who have a membership to a gym or a studio or things like that. What are the reasons that people aren’t doing that? So, for us, it’s cost, it’s expensive. Flexibility, so if you’re thinking about an app that looks after your mindfulness or to a fitness center, normally you’re locked in for a year to get anything like the best price. Boredom, people get bored of looking after a healthy routine because it’s the same thing over and over again, there’s a few others.
And so, for us at Wellhub, we try to break down those barriers as much as we can. So, we ask for our companies to invest in Wellhub to make it much more affordable for their employees. In terms of the flexibility point, the boredom, all of our members have the ability to use multiple different partners so they can go to multiple gyms and studios and so forth, and they can also then look after their mindfulness and their sleep and all those things all within the same membership. All of that is all about just making it as easy as possible for people to do is try to follow the kind of nudge theory tactic, just remove barriers, make things a little bit easier, and you’ll find that many more people take it up, many people try it, and then hopefully people stick with it.
Matt: Question for me would be about the way that work is changing. So, companies where people go to the office all the time, the trend towards constant video meetings is not diminished since the pandemic. How does that affect people’s wellbeing? And what should employers be thinking about in that area when it comes to that sort of always on technology aspect of this?
Luke: Sure. No, that’s a really good point. I think from a practical perspective, as a company, I think a lot of companies, pre-COVID, pre-hybrid working spent a lot of money investing in wellness centers on site. So that was like the state of the art. You had a great gym, you had a physio on site, you had a therapist on site, all those kinds of things. And I’m talking about the best of the best here, like, most companies don’t have that, they’ll have something that’s maybe trying to be that, but not quite. And lots of those things really have gone out the window now because people are in the office two, three days a week.
So, yeah, we’re hearing from businesses that they’ve really had to rethink their wellbeing strategies over the past few years, and they’ve had to think about, “Well, how can we support people no matter where they are?” Other element, as you said, is people being much more focused on their screens all day, walking less. I saw a great report from Fitbit, remember last year showing how much steps had gone down during the pandemic, because there are lots of kind of incidental steps. You don’t think about when you’re going to work, when you’re just popping to get a coffee or you’re popping to loo or whatever, you’re walking from the station that you’re losing by sitting at home and working from your computer.
So, I think it probably means that both from a company’s perspective and an individual perspective, we all have to be a bit more conscious about what we’re doing, we have to think a bit hard about the way we’re looking after wellbeing and making sure that it’s still built into our day to day. But, yeah, you’re absolutely right, Matt. It’s been a very significant shift.
Matt: Is this now more about empowering people to do these things themselves than guiding them through it, if you like. The reason I say that is I remember back to the pandemic lots of companies were kind of concerned about people’s wellbeing because of what was going on, but then I saw a lot of initiatives kind of come out where it’s like “We’re going to do yoga or we’re going to do a quiz,” which is just like more Zoom time and Teams time for everyone, which just seemed kind of crazy. And it just seemed that thing where the employer is trying to almost dictate what happens. So, what’s the kind of balance there between the individual and the corporation?
Luke: Really, really good point, Matt. Yeah, I think empower is exactly the right word, I think as a company– And again, this comes back to Nudge theory. You don’t necessarily want to preach at people. You don’t want to make things mandatory. You want to just kind of nudge them in the right direction, signpost them, and as I say, try and remove the barriers that stop people doing these things.
So, yeah, for example, yoga on site, it’s a lovely idea. I think for some people that’s great, but lots of people don’t like yoga. Lots of people actually would rather not be at the office after work or during lunchtime. Most people don’t want to exercise in front of their colleagues. So, there’s all sorts of reasons why that will suit a pretty small proportion of people.
But if you say to people, “We’re going to give you the means that allows you to exercise in the way you want to or look after your mindfulness in the way you want to,” or whatever it might be, then all of a sudden people have a lot more freedom. You’re still supporting them, but you’re catering for a much, much wider audience because you’re giving them the tools to look after themselves. I think there’s something quite powerful in that as well. It’s like giving people the opportunity to make the choices that they want to make as opposed to directing them towards it. So, yeah, that’s how I think about that. It’s all about trying to nudge people in the right direction rather than to make things to enforce anything that might only cater to a much smaller population.
Matt: You mentioned that obviously wellbeing was a very big issue for employees now. Is there any kind of disparity between different groups? Do some people feel disadvantaged? Do some people feel more advantaged within that?
Luke: Very interesting. One of the things that came out of our survey was to say that the more senior you are, perhaps this is intuitive, perhaps it’s not, but the more people reported that they felt well, they scored their wellbeing more highly than more junior colleagues.
And I think we thought about that in two ways. One is to say perhaps you can have a perception as a senior executive that within your company, people are feeling well because you feel well yourself. And so, it’s being aware that people at more junior levels will have challenges, difficulties that perhaps you can’t experience, and to be mindful of that and to make sure that they have the same tools and the same resources you have.
The other thing that we saw and we talked to clients about is that when the C-suites, when those very senior people engage in wellbeing programs and publicly make clear that they’re supporting wellbeing, the average participation rate of employees is much higher. It’s almost like they’re being given permission to like “I’m going to– Whatever it might be take advantage of this benefit my company is offering, or whether it’s, I’m going to prioritize my exercise time, because I can see that this C level person does the same.” We see a very significant rise in participation rate when that happens.
So, yeah, there’s definitely a disparity between seniority levels. I think that will probably come down to salary levels. And again, that probably is back to the point I mentioned about barriers. If you’re more senior, if you have more money, if you have a bit more flexibility, then you have fewer barriers than other people. Not to say no barriers, but fewer. So, yeah, interesting to see a very significant difference between those at senior levels versus those at junior mid ranking levels.
Matt: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I think that’s really interesting also about the senior people kind of setting the example that it is okay to do this kind of thing. What other bits of advice would you give employers in terms of maybe some of the small steps that they can make on this journey.
Luke: I would say is the structural things. So, at my company, we’re very fortunate. For example, we have truly flexible working. So, we are really encouraged to work the hours that we find are most productive. And in reality, most people work within very similar parameters. But I guess the message is there that “We trust you, we know you’re going to do the work if you need to, you have your goals, and you can make your work fit around you.” And that’s great because it means that people can go for a run in the morning, or they can go for a gym at lunchtime, or they can just make sure they’re there for the school pickup, the nursery pickup, whatever it might be. That reduces stress a lot because you’re not thinking to yourself, “I have to be here at this time. I only have so many hours to fit all these things I want to in the day.” So, I would really encourage employers to have the ability to do that, to show trust in their employees by giving them that flexibility, and it doesn’t cost anything, that’s a great thing.
The other big tip I’d give to companies is to try to think holistically about these things. So don’t just think about one element of wellbeing. We often speak to companies and they’ll say, “Well, we’re prioritizing mental wellbeing this year.” And of course, mental wellbeing has so many other factors. It comes down to, “Are people moving enough? Are they looking after their nutrition? Are they sleeping well?” So, if you just go down a very narrow angle of one element of wellbeing, I think you leave yourself short.
So, yeah, I would say, again, looking at those structural things that help make your company a healthy place to live, to work I should say, and then also making sure you’re thinking about wellbeing holistically rather than bit by bit.
Matt: We’ve obviously been through huge disruption in terms of the way that work works over the last few years. What do you think the future being at work looks like? How might things develop? What would you hope to see happen?
Luke: I think I would hope to see that it is the majority of companies that have really strong wellbeing programs. I think we still speak to pretty big companies who have a bit of a tick box wellbeing program is how I describe it. So, something where on the surface it looks okay, but when you dig a bit deeper, it’s not going to drive behavior change, which is what I think you want. You want a program in place that’s going to be so compelling, reduce barriers so much that it’s actually going to really change behaviors across individuals, and that is going to build up to a significant change in culture across the company. So that’s what I hope would change.
In terms of new trends, people are always interested in hearing about this. I think obviously, AI is going to change everything we do, and it’d be really interesting to see how that impacts different things. For example, it might help to guide people a little better. We’re looking at this on our app right now, using AI to push people towards the things that are going to suit them best. So, if they tell us, “Look, I’m not sleeping well,” what are the things that we would suggest that they would do and so forth? But all of these technological changes all come back to the same things, it’s how do you make sure that people have the tools in place to make sure that, as you say, they are empowered to look after the wellbeing in the way that they want to. And if you’re able to do that that has a massive knock-on effect to the people around them, to the communities around them, to everyone they work with, and the impact of that can be very profound.
Matt: Luke, thank you very much for talking to me.
Luke: Thanks, Matt. Great to be on.
Matt: My thanks to Luke. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also subscribe to our YouTube channel by going to mattalder.tv. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
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