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The Popularity of Corporate Wellness Services in Europe

HR Tech Outlook | Monday, September 23, 2019

Organizations are increasingly introducing new initiatives and programs to address employee wellness issues.

FREMONT, CA: Employee health and wellness significantly impacts a business when it is considered over a certain term. A healthy employee can be expected to be not only more productive but also more active in the state of affairs. Wellness includes physical as well as mental aspects of an employee. Organizations are increasingly introducing new initiatives and programs to address the concern, especially in the age of the digital world that demands agile response to the issues. Businesses are increasingly utilizing corporate wellness services to offset costs and enhance productivity. With a consistent rise in health consciousness in recent years, it is natural that companies are considering employee wellness more seriously.

Growing employment and an expanding array of services offered by the industry have added to the cause of revenue growth in the UK in the past five years. However, changing regulations, job cuts in the financial services sector, and weak confidence are the roadblocks that are expected to constrain the growth of the industry in the next five years. Businesses are tightly regulating their budgets after the EU referendum that the growth revenue to slow. The Corporate Wellness Service sector’s revenue is expected to rise at a compound annual rate of 2.1 percent over the five years.

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Online Wellness Services

Various industry participants offer a wide array of online services that includes fitness and dietary programs, online seminars, and training schedules. Online services are designed to function in conjunction with services offered on-site, and they can cut down on costs for both clients and providers. Online service provision is expected to continue to grow over the next five years, and the incorporations of new technology to the services are also a possibility. For instance, wearable technology, such as fitness trackers to gather data on insights on employee wellness, is expected to gain popularity. Increased smartphone usage and faster internet connectivity are facilitating the growing range of online services with some players designing apps for the provision of such services.

Apart from the cost-saving and convenience of online services, the industry is also expected to gain from higher demand for wellness programs that center on mental wellbeing. One of the industry experts has highlighted the point benefits of the trend and has stated that an increased focus on mental wellbeing is expected to support demand for high-value services like counseling, potentially fostering the industry investment in counseling services. The potential boost in investment in counseling services offers the chance of high returns for the employees; especially as mental health issues and stress are a major cause of absences and productivity loss.

Potential Turbulence

Even after several beneficial demand trends, the performance of the industry is expected to come under pressure from weak confidence and changing pressure as the process of the United Kingdom exiting the European Union goes on.

The loss of United Kingdom’s access to the EU single market will profoundly impact the UK financial services sector as well as other white-collar businesses. Financial institutions and banks can operate across the European Union as long as they are included in a member state. An alternative to this would see the major financial institutions to move some of their operations away from the UK, resulting in job cuts. Large US investment banks such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have already started making contingency strategies to relocate to other European cities like Luxembourg and Paris. It could also hinder demand for industry services in the next five years. However, despite potential disruption such as the UK leaving the European Union, the corporate wellness services industry’s future looks bright. Industry revenue is assumed to grow at a higher pace over the first five years through 2024-2025.

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