Employers have been urged to improve employee benefits regardless of pay grade to develop policies that are resilient to Covid or any other emerging infectious disease.
The call comes from Steve Herbert head of benefits strategy at Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing, who was commenting on a survey conducted during the Howden Employment Webinar in March.
Almost half of employers (49%) answering said they would need to improve or extend their employee benefits provision to support workers and build a policy resilient to Covid and other emerging health threats.
A third of those surveyed said they would need to add ‘many’ or a ‘few’ benefits to support a Covid/infection-secure policy, with a further 16% saying they may need to extend benefits to their whole workforce.
Herbert told Health & Protection the reality is that many employers offer certain benefits based on pay-grade alone – often leaving those below that grade without those protections.
“So the 16% in this category should be added to the first two – taking the total that need to make improvements to their employee benefits to 49%,” he said.
“And if employers are to implement a truly robust “infection-secure” structure for a resurgence of Covid-19 or indeed any other infectious disease, then this ideally needs to apply to all workers regardless of grade.”
Looking back on the last century, Herbert warned the threat from new diseases had grown over the last 100 years.
“Just since the start of this century alone the world has faced SARS, MERS, Avian influenza, Ebola, and of course Covid-19,” he continued.
“Only one gained a significant foothold in the UK, but we are now much more aware of the potential damage that any new virus or infectious illness may cause to the nation and the world’s economy without adequate precautions in place.”