The Importance Of Offering Health Benefit Packages To Improve Employee Efficiency

October 30 2015 - There are lots of ways that you can make your employees feel truly valued. An obvious example would be by having a regular pay review structure or bonus scheme. More 'touchy feely' ways would be by offering benefits like their birthday as an extra day's holiday or throwing a summer barbecue.

But some of the best ways, and ones which offer advantages for you both, are by providing health benefits.

The benefits for staff are that they will feel that you really do have their interests at heart and that they are receiving something of real value that they might otherwise need to pay for themselves.

What's more, research has shown that not only does a good health benefits package both help to attract employees to a company, it also helps to retain existing staff. Even better, your staff will be healthier, more productive and less likely to be absent through illness or injury.

So what kinds of health benefits could you offer?

The most comprehensive, and most expensive would be private medical insurance. This would make it possible for staff needing treatment to have it privately. A key benefit for you would be that they would be treated quickly and able to arrange appointments at more convenient times causing less disruption for your business.

A less expensive, but less comprehensive, version of this could be a health plan from a company like Simply Health that would reimburse your staff for everyday health costs for things like dental, optical or physiotherapy services.

Another very popular health benefit is to offer employees a free health assessment.

The companies that provide these usually offer a different number of options to meet your budget. These can often be carried out at your workplace, maybe in a lunch period or after work, and look at everything from blood pressure, BMI indexes of your staff and levels of cholesterol. Many people find these especially useful as they can give early indications of health issues and are also a great source of advice for leading a healthier lifestyle.

Other health checks that you could provide include sight and hearing tests.

The former are especially useful if any members of your staff spend much of the working day in front of a computer screen and, in fact, they can sometimes be an employer's legal responsibility to provide them.

Similarly, hearing tests are a good idea if employees work in noisy environments even if you ensure that adequate ear protection is provided. By paying for employees to have an expert examination it will also give them the opportunity to be fitted with the most appropriate hearing aids should it be found that they need them.

This has just been a very brief guide to the many health benefits available - others could include workplace yoga or massage sessions, for example - and you'll find no shortage of companies ready to offer them to you. Whichever ones you choose you can hopefully be sure of two things - a more healthy and satisfied workforce and greater productivity all round.

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