How AI can help revolutionise wellbeing at work

Over the past few decades, AI has truly revolutionised many areas of life. Now, HR leaders must understand its power in supporting better health and wellbeing of employees. 💪

Despite the payroll and onboarding capabilities of modern-day HR software, we’re yet to see any major transformation in the way of building healthier, happier teams. HR professionals should consider this a wake-up call to the growing frustration of employees, as they demand better wellbeing at work. 

Below, we’ve detailed three key possibilities of how AI could transform employee wellbeing initiatives for your team. 

Personalised experience 🔎

Each day, it sometimes feels like we’re running out of time - that the clock face is spinning uncontrollably, faster and faster. For this reason, it can be extremely difficult to personalise wellbeing initiatives for your team, with everything requiring your attention. 

Even more so if you’re trying to manage tens or hundreds of people. So, without a mountain of paperwork that would shadow Everest itself, how do leaders and HR professionals really personalise employee health and wellbeing for everyone?

The answer is modern technology. It’s tech that has enabled widespread personalisation for all kinds of functions in business, especially HR. And if companies are able to control turnover and payroll for 100 to 5,000 employees, they are capable of offering a personalised wellbeing experience in the workplace. 

This must obviously start with human interaction, a deeper understanding of what your people value when it comes to employee benefits and health & wellbeing. Armed with this insight, leaders can set about their search for applications and platforms that offer wellbeing benefits. Along with various other pieces of analytical software to track usage of said benefits. 

In fact, the App store itself has thousands upon thousands of free mobile apps all built for improving habits, sleep hygiene and personal wellbeing. However, these aren’t always ideal for wider, corporate use. 

Typically, there are two ways to personalise the wellbeing initiatives you offer your team of employees. The first is to ask and offer exactly what they suggest, such as subsidised gym memberships, cycle-to-work schemes, shorter working hours etc. 

The second method is to use a platform such as Heka. Allowing for a hands-off approach and personalised employee wellbeing strategy that doesn’t require you to find hundreds of individual benefits providers.

The one you decide on depends on how much time and resources you have available to give to your workplace benefits and employee health and wellbeing. In one survey, 94% of respondents said they want a “pick-and-choose” approach to employee benefits and initiatives - further highlighting the demand for personalisation.

Improved Communication 🤝

Moving on to improving communications, AI has the potential to transform how we connect with one another and the pace of communication. 

This point is especially important to remote working teams that rely on technology. Whether that be Zoom, Slack or Microsoft Office - all are designed for communicating with each other on business matters. 

However, when it comes to employee wellbeing, technology should be leveraged to support employees through 1-2-1 wellbeing meetings and regular teamwide video catch-ups. 

Of course, managers have a long list of other priorities. Although the use of technology to check in regularly with remote and office-based employees should make things much easier. What’s more, apps like Google Calendar allow managers to add weekly reminders and video meetings to employees' calendars. 

It’s the small differences like this that help managers and leaders alike to take better care of employee wellbeing through technology. There was once a time when everything had to be written on a sticky note and would often go ignored or unfinished. 

But leaders can quite literally ask their machines to remind them to tell employees to have a great day and ask if there are any problems. These are basic functions of course, but through instant messaging and the vast communication tools available online today, employee wellbeing should be much easier to manage, regardless of where team members are in the world.

Fewer Administrative barriers 🚀

Finally, and possibly one of the most significant advantages of using AI to revolutionise employee wellbeing is how it creates fewer administrative barriers.

In some cases, HR professionals are inundated with requests to ensure employees are able to exercise the employee benefits and wellbeing initiatives available to them. It’s through platforms like Heka, that remove at least 90% of all administrative requirements for employees to enjoy a full scope of employee benefits and initiatives. 

Most HR professionals have many other priorities to take care of, and would rather not assess hundreds of cycle-to-work applications or manually book a dozen yoga classes for employees. By using an employee benefits provider or platform, this hassle and time-consuming process is either shortened or entirely eliminated. 

However, it then depends on the level of health and wellbeing initiatives available through these platforms and providers. With Heka, we focus solely on employee wellbeing experiences, services and products, providing more than a thousand across fifty wellbeing categories.

This point will mainly appeal to busy leaders and HR professionals who simply don’t have the capacity to support personalised wellbeing.

Using AI to transform employee wellbeing in the workplace 🧠

As we’ve learnt, AI and the use of modern technology is a recipe for success when it comes to employee wellbeing and providing better employee benefits. 

Whatever your employee health and wellbeing initiatives might be, you can make use of 1000s through Heka. 

We’ve built a platform that provides a simple, accessible and personalised wellbeing experience for hundreds of employees in the U.K. 

Heka members are advised to answer a few questions on their current wellbeing, before receiving carefully recommended wellbeing experiences, products and services. 

Whether it’s therapy sessions, healthy meal deliveries or on-demand fitness content, there’s something for everyone through Heka. 

Find out more by speaking with our wellbeing experts today…

Book a demo now!