The health insurance sector needs joined-up short term and long term thinking from all government departments around improving the health and wellbeing of people in the UK.
This is according to Katie Tryon, medical doctor and director of health strategy at Vitality UK, who was speaking at an event organised by the insurer to launch its research The Habit Index.
The index maps the behaviours and habits of more than one million Vitality programme members across South Africa and the UK over a 10-year period.
Tryon explained the sector tends to talk about the life span and health span of employees when discussing the overall health and wellbeing benefits that they should offer to their employees.
“The benefits that come from health and wellbeing initiatives can feel a long way away, but in reality there are tangible benefits they can get sooner in terms of absenteeism and productivity.”
She said that entailed being “very real about the data in terms of where we’re seeing reductions in the impact and where it is a longer term play.
“I think that’s where some of the data that’s been presented can be so powerful, because I think it can show us what are the impacts of making those small changes – today, tomorrow, and in the longer term.
“So we’re continuing as an organisation to invest in the space of workplace health and what we do to encourage and help workplaces to improve the health of their employees.”
But Tryon added the insurer wants to encourage more discussions in government about what the role of the workplace is in improving the nation’s health.
“We would encourage those conversations,” she continued.
“How can we get the Department of Health talking to Work and Pensions, talking to the Treasury?
“Because what we’re actually seeing at the moment is a lot of people saying we want workplaces to invest in this, but they’re coming at it with a very separate approach in terms of how they want to do this.
“So let’s get a bit of joined-up thinking in terms of how can we really make sure it is beneficial to employers.
“We talk a lot about the sludge effect, but for employers, it’s hard to do this.
“It’s got to be worth it- not in 10 years time.
“So we’re really trying to think through how do you bring those benefits? How do you make it easy as possible?
“How do you have joined- up the thinking so that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and not saying ‘I think we should do this’ and somebody else saying, ‘I think we should do that’.”