Following the recent Vitality Launch 2025 and in the current workplace environment, creating additional value for businesses and their employees has never been more important, writes Pippa Andrews of Corporate Business Vitality. It’s no secret that declining mental and physical health is a major challenge in the UK, in particular for businesses and the UK economy.

In fact, the UK’s productivity loss has more than doubled due to poor employee health and wellbeing between 2014 and 2023, data gathered by Vitality’s Britain’s Healthiest Workplace revealed. In 2023, the average UK employee lost approximately 50 days productive time due to absenteeism and presenteeism.

It is estimated that the impact of this productivity loss alone has cost the UK economy an astronomical £860bn between 2014 and 2023.

Protection gap
The good news is that businesses are more aware than ever of the need to tackle these issues head-on.

Almost three-quarters of businesses now report that employee health and wellbeing is discussed at least annually at board level, whilst 85% discuss it at executive committee level 1.

The priority, therefore, is keeping healthcare and workplace wellbeing on the agenda, at a time of rising costs and economic uncertainty.

Also evident is that many businesses struggle with a ‘participation gap’, where staff aren’t engaging in the health and wellbeing support made available to them.

As a result, Britain’s Healthiest Workplace research found that while employees are, on average, aware of 70% of the interventions available to them, they use just 25% of them.

Shifting expectations
That’s not to say that employees don’t expect their employer to play a more active role when it comes to their health and wellbeing.

Indeed, some 63% of workers believe that their employer should be doing more to support their health and wellbeing.

Meanwhile, products like private medical insurance (PMI) are increasingly seen as a must-have employee benefit, increasingly influencing people’s career decisions and supporting staff retention.

An evolving health insurance landscape
In this environment, it’s vital that as an industry we deliver real value for clients, whilst helping to address the most pressing health challenges facing businesses and their staff.

For example, we know that tackling employee mental health – a leading cause of absenteeism and presenteeism – is a key priority.

Elsewhere, obesity and type-2 diabetes are key drivers of healthcare costs, and obesity rates are on the rise amongst UK employees1.

Against this backdrop and the ongoing challenges facing the NHS – one of the major factors driving demand for private healthcare – PMI products have evolved in recent years to better meet the changing needs of employees.

The broader range of everyday healthcare services now on offer, with an emphasis on prevention and early intervention, alongside more traditional PMI benefits, are resonating much more and helping to drive better health outcomes.

At Vitality, we’re always striving to respond to the changing health insurance landscape and deliver market-leading products for your clients.

At our recent Launch 2025, we unveiled two game-changing enhancements to our products, with the introduction of our new enhanced weight management and mental health pathways.

Our weight management pathway available through Next Best Action to eligible members now also offers a medication-assisted pathway, providing qualifying members with discounted access to weight-loss medications Wegovy and Mounjaro.

Meanwhile, our proactive approach to mental healthcare has been enhanced through the availability of a new digital self-management option, powered by Wysa.

This new app-based mental health support option is available on-demand 24/7, and provides access to a library of over 150 evidence-based exercises designed by psychologists.

Driving engagement and enhancing value
Making employees healthier also must go beyond just offering the right clinical and healthcare interventions.

Unlocking productivity gains from a healthier workforce is as much about driving higher levels of employee engagement with workplace wellbeing initiatives that focus on positive behaviour change – reducing lifestyle risk factors – as it is about offering access to private healthcare when staff fall ill.

This is where benefits like the Vitality Programme can be especially effective, by harnessing the power of rewards and incentives to help make employees healthier through an enticing app-based offering.

Our newest enhancements take this a step further, by driving even higher engagement through the launch of Pick and Play, which unlocks even more value for members and keeps them coming back.

In fact, with this addition alongside other rewards, the total value of the Vitality Programme can now reach £2,000* for each employee every year for Vitality Plus clients and over £1,000** for Vitality Select clients.

Plus, for employers, our new digital-first Employee Challenges initiative will allow organisations to roll out activity-based team challenges to encourage employees to get active, drive even more participation and inject some much-needed fun into workplace culture with ease.

A win-win for all
Ultimately, all of this proves that there doesn’t need to be a trade-off between investing in workplace wellbeing and the bottom-line.

Britain’s Healthiest Workplace 2023 shows that employees with Vitality Health Insurance are 11% less likely to suffer from depression, 8% more likely to reach exercise guidelines and 13% less likely to report low job satisfaction. They are also 17% more likely to agree that their employer plays an active role in supporting their health and wellbeing.

Best of all, the improved health metrics of employees with Vitality health insurance equate to 2.5 additional days of productive time per employee per year 2 – a tangible gain that could help to offset some of the estimated 20% hit to their wage bills organisations witnessed during 2023 through lost productivity.

So, helping businesses to make their employees healthier really is a win-win, given that it delivers shared value for all – employees, employers and the UK economy.