95% of HR pros say more wellness can help firms: survey

Wellness is high on the agenda at UK firms. Amid the pandemic, employees struggle with work-life balance and many face job insecurity. In a new survey, nearly 95% of human-resource officials welcomed more wellness initiatives. Companies want to be seen as committed to employee wellness but creating effective programmes can be difficult.

London-based startup Yogapp conducted a survey of human-resources officials from nearly 60 small- and medium-sized UK companies and found that HR decision makers clearly take wellness seriously, with respondents awarding wellness 4.9 out of 5 stars in importance to the success of a company. A total 94.9% of respondents said their organisations could benefit from more wellness programmes.

But insufficient budget is the biggest inhibitor to implementation, followed by low buy-in and lack of space and time, found the study published last month. 

To secure buy-in, HR departments require evidence that spending on wellness plans actually works. Survey respondents overwhelmingly require empirical evidence of employee engagement in wellness programmes, rating this of equal importance to impact on the bottom line. A majority of firms measure impact.

Covid is raising the stakes. All survey respondents reported anxiety and mental stress as key challenges. Yogapp’s survey found that better employee mental and emotional health is the top objective in pursuing wellness initiatives, followed closely by a desire to boost team morale. Improving productivity ranks third.

Yogapp is an upcoming tech platform facilitating workplace wellness management for companies. A white paper that puts the survey findings in context can be downloaded for free here.

For further queries, please contact Yogapp at founder@yogapp.io