
.png)
However, this area may become more pronounced as those hit hardest by the pandemic include women and low-paid workers, widening the social divide. The view of EDI isn’t consistent across wellbeing pillars, and REBA highlighted only 1 in 8 respondents consider diversity, equality and inclusion in their financial wellbeing strategies. This reflects the growing awareness that standardised approaches to wellbeing aren’t as effective and that meeting a diverse set of needs is increasingly what employees, clients and customers demand to feel valued and stay loyal. According to the REBA/AXA Health Employee Wellbeing Research 2021, there has been a big shift in the proportion of employers whose diversity, equality and inclusion teams tie into their wellbeing strategy, or indicate it will happen in future. Think carefully about what change you really want to make, how you will deliver it and how employees can access it.Īnother key area of ESG focus currently is equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). If your strategy is to improve mental health and wellbeing, adding the Headspace app or improving counselling on your EAP won’t do much. Vitality’s Healthiest Workplace Survey illustrates that, on average, small organisations offer 25 health interventions and medium and large organisations offer 30 health interventions, but only around one-third of employees know about the support available. This enables an organisation to be clear about the goals, what they are trying to achieve through long term, and how this links a people plan and business goals to ESG ambitions. The key is to create a defined wellbeing strategy - a long term plan of action that uses resources to achieve wellbeing goals or solutions. With a recent report from the Health & Safety Executive indicating stress, anxiety and depression as the cause of half of all work-related illness in the last year, and Glassdoor analysis highlighting that employee burnout has doubled since lockdown ended, the “it might be nice to have” attitude has changed to “it’s non-negotiable”.īefore Covid-19, organisations were on different paths with wellbeing offers – some had a set of random, disconnected benefits, while others had a clear proposition aligned to standard pillars of mental, physical and financial wellbeing. One top area of focus influencing strategy is mental health and wellbeing. On the back of the pandemic, the desire to build back better, and global movements of #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, considerable focus has been made to reframe reward and benefit strategies and accelerate responsible reward. And, let’s face it, we are all about the people. The focus when it comes to reward tends to be more social and governance than environmental, typically because environmental factors often relate to tangible environmental outputs like CO 2 and plastic waste. The correlation between ESG information, a company’s culture, values and strategy, and its performance is increasingly clear: companies that commit to equitable, fair and sustainable business models really do outperform those who merely meet their legal obligations.

The concept of environmental, social and governance (ESG) has grown in prominence in recent years, particularly as organisations look to demonstrate to internal and external stakeholders that they take responsible practices seriously.
