We were excited to see the publication of the Workplace Wellness Report 2023 championed by Southern Cross Health Insurance and Business NZ.
it was pleasing to see bastions of the New Zealand healthcare and business community lend their support to some of the issues in the New Zealand workplace that we are also focussed on.
The Workplace Wellness Report complements our recent report, by focussing on the prevalence and outcomes of healthcare, illness and absenteeism. They rightly highlight the impact this is having on New Zealand businesses and the negative direction it’s heading. Sick employees cost businesses 10 million working days in 2022. While we can’t eliminate sickness and injury, we can help employees and businesses reduce this significant impact on the economy.
The cost of this absence was $2.86 billion dollars in 2022, up a staggering 54% or $1.1 billion from 2020. At a macro level, the median cost per absent employee grows with the size of the organization, meaning this is a bigger problem for bigger companies.
There’s a clear difference between manual workers and non-manual workers, as well as the variance between public and private sectors. This shines a light on how every organisation is different and the benefits and wellness strategies of each need to be able to be considered, customized and delivered according to those needs and demographics.
We aren’t here to regurgitate the whole report – you can read it here – but we are massive champions of this piece of work and know what we are doing at Healthnow directly impacts these numbers.
What we appreciate about this report is that it points to the importance of the changing environment both employers and employees are navigating and that there is a healthcare element to recruiting, retaining and engaging employees. It also underpins the fact that there is a very definitive financial impact on the productivity of the workforce when health and wellness are not a priority.
Big thanks (and credit) to Southern Cross and Business NZ for again producing a valuable piece of research for New Zealand employers to refer to and help develop and iterate their health and wellness strategies in this changing environment.
