The WellRight Blog

A virtual commute might sound silly, but it turns out the commuting ritual has played an important role in employee well-being. And its absence has been noticed.

So much so, you may have read about the push to find ways to bring it back to the remote working environment.

FastCompany, in particular, highlighted the benefits of virtual commuting in its November 2020 article entitled, “Virtual commuting has extraordinary benefits—here’s how to maximize your own.” In it, two executive coaches and leadership experts highlight why virtual commuting can be beneficial to employees and companies.

Editor's Note: We recently updated this previously published post with new insights. Enjoy!

June is National Employee Wellness Month, and what a difference a year makes! Pandemic-related restrictions are slowly being lifted and life seems to be returning to some semblance of normalcy. There’s no better time to celebrate than this month when employees can once again get outside, resume their routines, and reconnect with friends and family.

In many companies, leading remote teams has become a new and ongoing reality as we move beyond pandemic-related social distancing and restrictions.

This puts a lot of pressure on those managers who’ve been “making it work” for over a year, fully expecting to return to an in-person environment.

How can they successfully lead remote teams for the long term?

If you’re looking for an added benefit to offer your employer clients, employee wellness programs are a solid investment and an invaluable asset. Not only do they give you a more thorough and holistic view of your member population, they help drive engagement and promote healthier, happier employees. That’s something that your employer clients will definitely see as a selling point.

Let’s look at the challenges employee wellness programs can solve for health plans and their employer clients.

Preventive care plays a significant role in your employees’ long-term health, helping them delay (or even avoid) the onset of conditions that can drastically affect their vitality and well-being.

For that reason alone, your company should be encouraging preventive care. But, if you needed another reason, preventive care may help employees avoid the need for medical services, expensive medications, and surgeries—which can result in major cost savings for your health plan.

However, people often have a bad habit of putting off preventive care. And the pandemic, with its lockdowns and restrictions, has only made that habit worse.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the pandemic has permanently changed how we work.

And the changes are far from over.

Workforce industry analysts are predicting some key trends for the future of remote work and hybrid workplaces that will impact where people work and even what they do for work.

But where does employee wellness fit in?

If you talk to most enterprise-level executives about lessons learned in 2020, don’t be surprised if employee wellness is mentioned—often.

According to the HR.com 2021 State of Employee Health and Well-being study, 63% of organizational leaders agree that mental health is among their Human Resources department’s top five priorities moving forward. And 75% of HR professionals reported in the same study that employee wellness has become more of a priority.

To put it bluntly, if your organization isn’t prioritizing employee wellness, you might soon find yourselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Regardless of your industry, COVID has clearly taken a toll on employee well-being. In a recent study, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than 1 in 3 U.S. adults struggle with pandemic-related anxiety and depression. A WebMD study also reported that the pandemic has had a negative impact on 77% of the employee respondents’ well-being.

How else has the stress and strain of the pandemic affected your staff and their health care needs? And more importantly, what can your organization do to help?

Information overload isn’t a new concept, but the stakes have gotten higher over the last year.

In early 2020, the pandemic forced entire companies to go remote or downsize in a matter of weeks. Employees took the brunt of the stress, having to suddenly juggle work and home responsibilities at the same time.

Add to that the mother of all information overloads—a constant stream of data about the deadliest global pandemic in over a century during one of the most politically divisive times in U.S. history—and it’s no wonder your employees are overwhelmed.

Hope is on the horizon. The spring of 2021 brings new promise—not only for the renewal of nature, but the possibility of life reaching some level of normalcy again.

This time of rebirth is a great time to get employees amped up for fun new wellness challenges. But with many employees still working at home, wellness challenge ideas for remote workers might be hard to find. You’ll need to be creative and find ways to connect people regardless of where they are.