The trucking industry employs a diverse workforce, spanning management and office based people to those on the road, simply clocking up miles behind the wheel through to operators of heavy equipment that are associated with the goods they are moving.
With this workforce comes a diverse range of demands from a health and wellness perspective. As employers seek to line up the benefits they offer their people with the current market offerings, more often than not utility is low, costs are high and the desired outcomes of recruitment, retention and engagement are rarely met.
Trucking is not alone in this problem, with the incumbent one size fits all offerings missing the mark with the demands of a modern workforce. The solution needs to offer employees choice, flexibility and agency in their health and wellness decisions whilst also ensuring the investment the organisation delivers the guard rails, control and outcomes it intended.
We found an article by Lindsay Wood in a recent newsletter on NZ Trucking very interesting, as it highlights societal inequality had an outsized impact on health than individual incomes, the gap between wealthy and poorer people overall was a surprise conclusion from researchers Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson.
This got us thinking about how companies in the trucking industry can act to stablise the important industry, one that keeps the wheels of the economy moving every day.
This is why HealthNow was developed to give organisations that employ diverse workforces a solution that unlocks the benefits they want to provide, across the mastercard network. This means an office worker seeking mental health support can utilise their Healthnow card to access funds provided by their employer at their provider of choice, this means their counselor or GP, not some call center junior reading off a script.
It means the truck driver who has back issues from the long hours behind the wheel can call into a physio or chiropractor anywhere in the country when out on the road, paying for the treatment using their Healthnow card as they would any other transaction on their EFTPOS card. There are no receipts, out of pocket expenses or lag in reimbursement to discourage them seeking the healthcare they need when they need it. This not only improves productivity by keeping employees healthy and productive but improves engagement and retention as people feel looked after by their organisation.
As driver turnover increases and good drivers are harder to come by, it’s these benefits that can make the difference to attracting new drivers, or keeping the good ones you have. No other benefit offers the flexibility for the company, to select how wide ranging they want to enable the funds to be spent or the amount they want to contribute, or the choice to the employee being able to pay at any provider with a payment terminal that falls within the sectors enabled by the company.
There is a reason why companies like Mackleys have found success by using HealthNow, and more and more trucking companies are adopting the HealthNow platform to deliver the benefit that gets the results and the utility they want, the best part – if it isn’t used, the money stays in your company bank account, no sunk cost in expensive programs or premiums for events or treatments that may not eventuate.
