As international crises continue to overwhelm the world’s ability to respond and adapt to them, instability – and all its varying consequences – remains a major concern for employers in 2024. Especially when it comes to protecting the wellbeing and performance of one’s workforce, quickly addressing and preventing the fallout of mental, physical, and financial health from such uncertainty presents formidable challenges for HR managers.

However, findings from the latest International SOS Risk Prospect Report for the year show that less than half of HR managers feel their employer is up to the task. This poses a major threat to the organisation, which already incurs annual costs of nearly $16 billion due to unmet health needs. As the recent headlines state that 80 per cent of  Singaporean workers are at moderate to severe risk of adverse mental health problems such as stress, fatigue, anxiety, and depression – giving way to further risks of physical or chronic health problems – this makes correcting any unpreparedness a matter of urgency for organisations hoping to maintain order and stability in 2024.

But just as our current state of instability is largely due to the inability to deal with multiple contentious matters at the same time, what many employers may have encountered when trying to address employee health and wellness concerns over the past few years, is to address only a few pointless options: Employers need to implement holistic wellbeing support if they want to cope with the pressures that plague employees inside and outside the workplace.

But doing so, of course, is no easy task. In fact, the task becomes more difficult as employers find themselves not only facing the challenge of delivering  Proper support for concerns that correct, but also provide them through a modality correctBecause Hybrid or flexible working arrangements continues to be the standard for more than 70 percent of establishments. Therefore, although “flexibility” may have been the buzzword of recent years, “Agility” is now a goal among the best employers for years to come, as they strive to provide the best care to their employees – and maintain a healthy and resilient workplace – amid a backdrop of constant change.

How Holistic Wellbeing Solutions Can Help

While such ambitions are too high for the average SME, there is no rule book stating that they need to go it alone. Fortunately for them, there are holistic wellness solution providers that can help.

By partnering with suppliers, employers can provide staff with access to a range of essential and integrated wellness services, designed to work together around emotional practicalities, and physical health objectives. This includes anything from traditional counselling support, to financial, legal, and daily life information services and coaching; health guidance (covering topics such as weight management, nutrition, physical activity, and detection of positive habits); and mindfulness-based interventions.

But that’s not all, providers can also offer enhanced solutions for individuals and organisations, designed to optimize resilience, wellbeing, and performance inside and outside the workplace by addressing some of the key concerns common in most workplaces today; namely: fatigue, trauma, substance abuse, and work-life imbalances.

And what makes these services so effective is that they can provide support exactly when and where it is needed. The point is that wellness solution providers can meet employees where they are thanks to phone, video, chat, and computer-based contact methods. With this solution in place, hybrid employees no longer have to rely on their day in the office for help—as well as in-person staff, who for various reasons may not want to access on-site support—and remote workers can end up reaping the same benefits as their peers in the office.

But even more critically, what makes these “anytime, anywhere” support methods so effective – and so important in 2024 – is that they allow employers to respond to staff health issues quickly and strongly – before they become a major crisis in themselves. Given the fact that 85 percent of Singaporean workers are at risk of “extreme” fatigue, it’s fair to say that such benefits are very useful to employers: Instead of reactively responding to fatigue—that there is no small cost to employers, as they struggle with high rates of absenteeism, reduced productivity and performance, Higher healthcare expenses, Higher turnover, and so-employers can proactively minimize employees’ tendency to fatigue by providing them with the many resources needed to address whatever challenges they face before they become something bigger.

To record: wellness solution providers can help employers implement agile wellness strategies thanks to their extensive coverage of health and wellness topics and multi-capital support methods. But in addition, they can also increase the agility of organisations in the face of future crises, which are constantly evolving by offering them access to ways of identifying, monitoring, analysing, and correcting gaps in workplace readiness. This includes access to organisational questionnaires and well-being assessments that are constantly updated to ensure their association with the needs and concerns of employees; biometric health screening to detect signs of preventable common diseases such as heart disease or diabetes; full staff training; as well as leadership training designed to assist leaders:

• Demonstrate strong and proactive decision-making;
• Always be informed of ongoing trends, needs or concerns related to their workplace;
• Anticipating and responding to challenges;
• Pivot quickly and effectively in the face of sudden and extreme changes;
• Communicate effectively with staff;
• The approach of health topics, problematic employees with sensitivity and respect;
• Signage workers to the right resources;
• Listen to their staff and pay attention to their concerns; and, most importantly
• Leading through the crisis

As most employers now know—anything with it has been heralded for years now on almost every conceivable health topic— “there is no one-size-fits-all solution” when it comes to supporting employee health and wellbeing. This is especially true today, as a separate complex web but compound crisis creates a very different life experience for everyone.

While employers cannot—and are not expected to solve all the world’s problems, they can make a difference in reducing the impact of these challenges on the lives of their employees. By taking a proactive approach to the wellbeing of employees with the help of agile solutions, organisations can ensure that problems do not accumulate until they become too great to curb – a phenomenon that most organisations have addressed at one point or another over the past few years, and still risks facing again in the coming years.