Five Features of a Successful Wellbeing Strategy

   

Despite rising investment in wellbeing programs in recent years¹, many organisations are grappling with a difficult challenge; their employees remain stressed, disengaged and burned out.

How can HR leaders address this ‘wellbeing paradox’ and ensure their wellbeing strategies create impact?

Our Wellbeing Masterclass webinar series has been exploring new tools and frameworks that HR leaders can use to understand the drivers of wellbeing in their workplace, and to measure the impact of programs on employees and business performance.

Deploying an effective wellbeing program takes a holistic and strategic approach that involves leadership, securing cross-functional and executive support, fostering a supportive culture, and ensuring programs are attuned to employees’ needs and wellbeing drivers.

 

The Key Elements of an Effective Wellbeing Strategy

At our recent Wellbeing Masterclass, two Aon clients shared their approach to developing a wellbeing strategy, and how they are improving business outcomes by delivering more targeted support for employees.

Established in 2013, FWD Group is a pan-Asian life insurance business with more than 13 million customers across 10 markets, including some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world.

Wells Fargo is a high-profile U.S. financial institution, with key APAC teams in Singapore and Hong Kong, and a local network of offices in 11 countries throughout the region, from Australia to Thailand.

While both companies developed their own unique strategies, those strategies share five key elements that are critical to success:

1. Holistic: To Benefit the Business and all Facets of Health

Launched in 2021, FWD LiveLife is a strategic, integrated wellbeing program designed to support FWD’s employees in Asia.

Addressing five pillars; purpose and meaning, emotional health, financial wellness, physical health, and social connectedness, the program offers activities that address specific objectives within each pillar. This approach delivers a holistic learning experience aligned to employees’ needs and makes it easier to track progress. For the physical health pillar, for example, the objectives are:

• Reduce risk factors
• Encourage early detection, and
• Promote a healthy lifestyle.

To embed the program across the whole business, FWD established a colleague ambassador group – their Wellbeing Influencer Network (WIN) – to support planning and rollout for all wellbeing activities across multiple locations.

This approach was also central to the Wells Fargo wellbeing strategy. When that program launched in February 2024, Aon was engaged by leadership to support a team of volunteer wellbeing champions from different departments and locations in Asia. As well as activities designed to respond to employees’ needs and address wellbeing pillars - physical, emotional, financial, social and personal in the case of Wells Fargo – Aon’s support for these local champions helped them raise the bar on employee engagement and participation.

2. Informed by Data and Listening

The Wellbeing Solutions team at Aon also helped Wells Fargo make the most of crucial data to inform the design of their wellbeing program. After implementing an employee wellbeing survey, Aon understood how employees felt about wellbeing and what was stopping them from engaging with key programs. The survey revealed that the two biggest obstacles were lack of time and stigma, and this insight provided the impetus for a plan to address those specific challenges.

The FWD team also conducted a wellbeing inventory before launching FWD LiveLife. This involved benchmarking their existing approach against industry best practice. Listening activities – including post-activity pulse surveys, reports from wellbeing vendors, and annual employee wellbeing feedback surveys – were also integral to the strategy. “By collecting feedback on our program, we continuously improve FWD LiveLife and ensure our approaches are effectively catering to employee preferences,” says Julie Chow, group chief human resources officer at FWD.

3. Flexible: Measuring Impact and Effectiveness

Using data is essential for ensuring programs continue to engage employees and improve wellbeing outcomes. Although the core components of their program are ongoing, activities at FWD have become more frequent over time based on employee feedback. “As the strategy evolves, we are shifting to a 50/50 split between group-wide and country-specific activities, versus the 75/25 split to date,” says Julie. “We tailor our efforts to address the feedback we’ve received from employees; that they wanted more in-person activities.”

With Aon’s support with program measurement and predictive analytics, Wells Fargo has been able to collect data and insights to help with future programming. “Having this data and expert support helps us see whether our approach is effective or not,” says Mark Haworth, execution quality assurance lead and co-chair of the wellbeing team at Wells Fargo. “We can be alert to what we need to change year-on-year, and make sure activities become ever more localised and targeted.”

 

4. Elevated: Supported by Leadership

Evolving programs according to feedback is essential for ensuring wellbeing outcomes remain relevant and effective in the long term. But both FWD and Wells Fargo also secured clear and continued leadership involvement to give their programs impact and to break through barriers. “With the stigma around wellbeing a key barrier, we identified via our survey that visible support from leadership is critical to driving engagement with the program,” says Mark.

The HR function at FWD has also benefited from the leadership team’s strong commitment to wellbeing, and their understanding that investing in wellbeing brings broader business benefits, including enhanced engagement, reduced absenteeism and presenteeism, and more manageable healthcare costs. Leadership support has also translated into more financial investment and resources, as well as personal involvement in activities. “Our Group Chief Executive Offer and the leadership team are role models and advocates for wellbeing,” says Julie. “They share their own wellbeing experiences, goals, journeys and learnings at group-wide events.”

 

5. Sustained: A Long-term Commitment

Wells Fargo have committed to a multi-year partnership with Aon to support their ambitious goal of lifting wellbeing impact and performance. “We know wellbeing isn’t about having an awesome one-year program,” says Krystal Tang, director of Wellbeing Solutions, Human Capital at Aon in Asia Pacific. “It’s about understanding employees’ needs and using this data to adjust our next action and what we deliver. Our multi-year program aims to help Wells Fargo become one of the leading employers in the industry in APAC.”

FWD have already collected a wealth of data to demonstrate the wellbeing improvements being created by their program. Perceived wellbeing has grown from 6.4 out of 10 in 2021 to 7.6 in 2023. Eighty-nine percent of FWD employees have changed their behaviour to take better care of their wellbeing, which is a 5 percent increase since 2021, pointing to significant and sustained behaviour change. With 86 percent of managers saying the wellbeing strategy helps them better support their teams, these results also speak to a culture shift toward wellbeing as a priority at every level of the business.

 

 

 

¹Aon’s 2022-2023 Global Wellbeing Survey Report