People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 35

To-Do List for a
Healthy and
Productive Workforce
Insights from our research and client work
reveal that high-effectiveness organizations take a holistic view of health and
productivity that focuses on several key
areas:
* Gaining the commitment of senior
leadership.
* Developing a comprehensive strategy
that reflects the organization's specific
challenges and goals, is based on identified population health issues and
absence data, and integrates every
aspect of health and productivity-
from approaches to health benefits to
the management of vendor
relationships.

* Employees can navigate between work
challenge and work overload. Overload is
what happens when job tasks are too
numerous or too complex for the time
available, when people are unclear about
their roles and expectations, when boredom with repetition pushes out energy to
care and perform. Managers should
ensure that jobs are challenging and
engaging, but not impossibly burdened
with stress-generating expectations.
* People have support from their teams and
their managers. Advice from supervisors,
help from peers, technology that performs-these are the resources that make
challenging work feasible, rewarding, and
healthy. The manager's job is to ensure
that, to the extent possible, employees
have access to the physical, emotional, and
social support needed to make stressful
work manageable.
* People are given reasonable control over
how, when, and where they work. Autonomy over work process is a critical buffer
against stress. People who have the freedom to decide how best to do their work
consistently report higher engagement in
their jobs, greater commitment to their
organizations, and lower stress.

* Implementing employee engagement
strategies that promote a supportive
environment, offering financial incentives for program participation and
providing tools to help employees
understand their best health care
options.
* Engaging managers as role models for
a healthy lifestyle and training them to
provide the face-to-face communication employees need.Communicating
frequently using a combination of hightouch and high-tech tactics.
* Understanding and addressing the
sources of employee stress through a
cohesive, manager-led strategy.
* Providing easy access to high-quality
health care-both mental and physical-so employees can address health
issues early, thereby reducing or avoiding absence.

* People are provided rewards, especially
nonfinancial, intrinsic recognition, for a
job well done. Our research reveals a
strong link between manageable stress
levels and employees' perception of the
effectiveness of their employment deal.
More than 80 percent of employees who
say their employment deal is highly effective and well understood say their stress
levels are manageable, compared with 39
percent of those who give their employment deal a low effectiveness rating. Managers should focus on aspects of the deal
within their purview, including important
intrinsic elements-informal recognition,
development opportunities, challenging
and fulfilling work assignments, and, of
course, job mastery and career growth.
These are inexpensive to deliver but powerful in helping to drain stress from the
work environment.

The Role of HR
HR plays a critical role in the design,
execution, and ongoing management of
health and productivity initiatives. To build a
culture of health, HR executives begin by
enlisting the support of senior leadership to
make health a top priority. They use data and
analytics to better understand the employee

population, including demographics, drug
utilization, absence/productivity statistics,
and engagement levels. This information is
then used to develop programs focused on
wellness, prevention, and managing illness.

At the same time, HR must promote financial
well-being, which reduces stress and supports
a culture of health. This involves ensuring the
baseline competitiveness of both compensation and benefits, and establishing a clear line
of sight between employee performance and
pay by differentiating salary and bonus
awards based on performance. It is also
important to periodically assess employee
preferences and adjust the total rewards
package accordingly.
To be sure, this is not a simple or easy set of tasks.
Building a healthy workplace environment is a
multi-faceted challenge where there is no silverbullet solution. It requires continuous time and
attention where the activities, programs and
even your strategy evolve with the organization.
We observe, however, that few investments
organizations can make will generate a higher
return on investment. From our perspective, this
makes investment in employee health and wellness a prudent strategic initiative, as well as the
right thing to do.

Keith Caver, is the Americas practice
leader for Towers Watson's Talent
Management and Organizational
Alignment. He can be reached at
keith.caver@towerswatson.com.
Thomas O. Davenport, is a senior
practitioner with Towers Watson
Research and Innovation Center and
a senior consultant with Talent Management and Organization Alignment.
He can be reached at tom.davenport@towerswatson.com.
Steven Nyce, is research director at
Towers Watson Research and Innovation Center. He can be reached at
steven.nyce@towerswatson.com.
Christy Taylor, senior consulting actuary,
Towers Watson Benefits, contributed to
this article.

VOLUME 38/ISSUE 1 - 2015

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1