Eldercare service may be little used, but it can have a significant impact on employees who need it and the companies that employ them, according to David Collington, partner and head of benefits consulting at Barnett Waddingham.
Collington was speaking at the Health & Protection Health Summit at Tylney Hall in Hampshire today, on the effective use of data in designing a health and wellbeing strategy.
Eldercare was effectively introduced at UK airports group AGS, with 75% of the employees being aware of it. But usage of the benefit was quite low.
“Its about 4% of the workforce that have engaged with since it launched, which was almost two years ago,” Collington told delegates.
“But the point is that it has a really big impact on a really small number of people”, he said.
By using eldercare, those employees could sort out that situation more quickly and get back to work, he said.
On the wider subject of data in general, Collington added that data was important and could also act as a way to justify the cost of change.
But data itself is not enough.
“Often when people start doing data analytics they get excited about the data that they’ve got. But if the data is not relevant, just disregard it.
“Just focus on what’s achievable . There are so many different things that you can do to improve the health and wellbeing of your workforce.
“There are literally hundreds of providers in the marketplace offering health and risk benefits, and particularly wellbeing benefits.
“The great thing about data is it can tell us which are the most effective areas with the highest propensity for change,” he said.