How to enhance employee vitality within your organization: tips and tricks for HR professionals

Oct 1, 2024

In this article, we discuss how you, as an employer, can improve vitality in the workplace with a vitality package that really impacts the health and well-being of your employees. We share insights from our own vitality research among over 1000 employees, in which we show which vitality initiatives resonate best among multiple generations. This way, you as an employer or HR professional can respond to the personal needs of your team. Discover how to create a tailored vitality program that reduces absenteeism and increases productivity. Vitality in the workplace is not just a trend or important during vitality week, but essential for a healthy and productive work environment.

Read on for tips and practical examples to get started with employee vitality, in the article we cover:

What does vitality mean in the workplace?
What is the importance of vitality?
What are the consequences of absenteeism?
What are the challenges in the area of vitality?
What are the vitality preferences of multiple generations?
Where are the opportunities for employers and HR professionals in the area of vitality?

What does vitality mean in the workplace?

When you think of vitality, is it the same for everyone? Or would each person want to work on a different aspect of their health? When we talk about vitality in this report, we mean the mental and physical health of employees. That's why we have categorized vitality into four supportive components: physical, mental, nutrition, and financial health. Because feeling vital and healthy is more than just exercising. Vitality also involves relaxation and being able to recharge (mentally). For some, that means doing a daily meditation exercise, for example through an app like Meditation Moments; for others, a massage booked through Treatwell helps to let the stress slide away. Healthy nutrition is important for both the physical and mental aspect, and having control over your finances greatly contributes to reducing stress and increasing the feeling of well-being.

Thus, vitality is a broad concept that spans various aspects of employees' lives, with each component making a unique contribution to their overall well-being.

The importance of employee vitality

Of course, employees are responsible for their own health. Nevertheless, the impact of vital employees is significant for a company and for you as an employer. Vitality is about, just like sustainable employability, the extent to which the employee can remain fit and energetic at work now and in the future. If your employees' health improves, then they also perform better. When employees are healthy, they are less likely to be absent due to illness. And that saves you time and money. Those are the resources we can always use a bit more of. Despite knowing we need to do something about the vitality of our employees, never before has so many people reported sick, according to AD. And sick employees cannot work. An additional benefit is that healthy behavior from colleagues encourages others to participate, as evidenced by research from UU. This way, vitality in the workplace can continue to grow.

Improving employee vitality

Besides the fact that a healthy employee is a productive employee, vitality also has other implications. By working on employees' vitality, you can prevent constructive stress. With 1 in 5 employees facing burnout, reducing stress is not a luxury. This can help prevent absenteeism.

What are the consequences of absenteeism?

The most direct consequence of absenteeism is that an employee can no longer perform their work. Work piles up, and that must be taken over by someone else – a colleague or a replacement. This results in additional workload for colleagues, but also extra costs. You continue to pay wages, must find a replacement, and pay for that replacement. Costs can quickly add up. Exactly how much absenteeism costs? There are different opinions about that. But you can assume around €400 per day. A study by Inuka Coaching shows that the costs for health problems related to a burnout can even amount to an average of €60,000 per year per individual burnout.

What are the challenges in the area of vitality?

A while ago, we organized a webinar on vitality. During the webinar, we asked the question: What was the biggest challenge for employers and HR personnel in offering a vitality program? The attendees could vote on the challenge they thought had the greatest impact. The results are as follows:

Lack of engagement and participation from employees (37%)
Budgetary constraints for setting up programs and activities (28%)
Insufficient knowledge and expertise in vitality management (21%)
Time pressure and priorities from other business initiatives (14%)

We believe that a personal offering, where the employee takes control, can solve these challenges. In the next section, we will look at how the data supports this.

What are our insights regarding vitality preferences?

This article is based on vitality data from our own users. We looked at the number of selections of employment benefits that fall under vitality in our app. In total, this amounts to 19,264 selections from 62 different benefits (data from 2023). To make the selections of the vitality benefits clearer, we have divided the 62 benefits into three main categories: physical, mental, and nutrition. Physical health is the foundation for everyone's health. Your mental health goes hand in hand with your physical health. At the same time, proper nutrition is essential for good physical health. Therefore, all three main categories influence how you feel and how much energy you have. If you were to eliminate one of these categories, an employee's vitality could become unbalanced.

The main categories have been divided into several subcategories:

Sports (physical): gyms and options for yoga classes
Mobility (physical): swap bikes and lease bikes;
Mental health (mental): meditation apps, coaching, and training;
Wellness (physical): massages and other beauty treatments;
Other (mental): health tests, nutritional coaching, and sleep coaching;
Food (nutrition): meal boxes and healthy juices;
Supplements (nutrition): supplements and vitamins.

During our contact with various companies, we particularly see a difference in why a company wants to offer our benefits package. There are two common scenarios:

In large companies (1000+ employees), engagement in the benefits package is often a challenge. A nice package has been set up, but it is not being utilized enough. For instance, because employees find the process too complicated. Or they do not even know what they are entitled to. Due to low adoption of existing benefits, these employers are eager to switch to a broader – but more personal – offering due to the flexibility.
In smaller companies, benefits often still need to be established. It not only takes time to figure out what employees want. Different partners need to be approached. Appointments need to be made. Let alone connecting employees one by one with a partner. This time is badly needed for other tasks.

Conclusion: where are the opportunities in the area of employee vitality?

How do you create a vitality program that meets the different needs of your employees? We have outlined 5 vitality tips for you:

1. Create a generational vitality offering

Create a benefits offering that fits different generations. Our research shows that Gen-Z and Millennials (20-29 years) account for 62% of the selections of vitality benefits. The 30-40 group is smaller, but with 33% it is still a reasonably large share. Looking at those under 20 and over 40, they only account for 1% and 4%, respectively. So also find out what employees want and look at generational differences. This way, you can better tailor the vitality benefits to the demand. When the package better fits a wide group of employees, you will succeed in increasing usage.

2. Make the vitality offering visible for more engagement

As we mentioned earlier, lack of engagement is one of the biggest challenges in offering a vitality program. By making the offering more visible, employees will appreciate their secondary benefits more. Employees will not use the benefits if they are hard to find or use. It does not matter whether these are new initiatives or benefits that have been available for years.

3. Align your vitality offering with your company's culture

Ensure that the offering reflects your values regarding vitality. For example, focus on gym memberships if employees like to work out together after work. Or organize a boot camp during work hours to make exercising accessible to all your employees.

4. A diverse vitality offering resonates

Our research shows that there is significant usage of the wide choice: even within a small category like Food (1.4%), users make selections from six different benefits. In Sports, the largest category, the number is 20. Notably, the subcategory Other, with a contribution of only 1%, still consists of ten different benefits. Every individual has different vitality needs, which is why a personal vitality offering is essential in today's benefits strategy.

5. Hand over the search

Assembling a varied benefits package costs time and money. Alleo takes care of the search for various benefits partners. We have a complete vitality benefits offering on our platform. And that is constantly being expanded. In fact, we have a good negotiating position to offer strong deals at competitive prices. Additionally, you should not forget that a diverse vitality offering contributes to lower absenteeism and higher productivity. Offering your secondary benefits via Alleo therefore results in a high ROI. The list of 62 selected benefits that contributed to the data of this research is fully available in the Alleo app.