6 Employee wellbeing initiatives for 2022

You won’t find any advice here about ordering “healthy” snacks or organizing a step counting competition. What you will find are initiatives and benefits that get at the core challenges of employee wellbeing. 

In our article about employee wellbeing at work, we make the case that companies need to back up their individual-level wellbeing initiatives with company-wide support. 

For example, if you’re offering employees a subscription to a meditation app, but then you also expect them to be responsive 24/7, employees can’t really take advantage of their meditation app. 

Instead, the wellbeing initiatives you offer should be supported by your company’s culture. Oftentimes this means that the wellbeing initiatives you should be offering are better thought out as wellbeing benefits. 

Like healthcare benefits, wellbeing benefits should be offered to everyone, equitably. Rather than a one-off initiative that comes and goes, wellbeing benefits are integral to the employee experience. 

Here we look at 6 wellbeing initiatives that forward thinking companies are offering as benefits to their employees. 

Offer a flexible work schedule

Many of the benefits that can come from wellbeing initiatives come down to employee’s being able to make responsible choices about how they get their work done. For example, when it comes to physical wellbeing, giving employees flexibility to schedule time for movement, eat their lunch away from the screen, or even go to their favorite exercise class depends on their ability to have a flexible schedule. 

What this looks like varies across companies or even specific teams within companies, based on what works. Flexibility can come in the form of location flexibility, schedule flexibility, or both. “Even in the absence of a pandemic, flexible work arrangements can improve recruitment and retention efforts, augment organizational diversity efforts, encourage ethical behavior, and help the organization's efforts to be socially responsible. Employers can experience cost savings, improved attendance and productivity, and an increase in employee engagement,” says SHRM in their toolkit on managing flexible work arrangements. 

Try out a minimum vacation days policy 

Sure, unlimited vacation is great - if employees actually take it. According to SHRM, “Unlimited vacation policies do not, in fact, allow employees to take an unlimited amount of time off. It's more of a marketing tool for recruiting talent than a literal interpretation of vacation policy.”

What typically happens is that employees don’t take as much time off as they would if given a set amount of days. Instead of an unlimited vacation days policy (or as a detail of that policy) you can specify that employees are expected to take a certain number of days off per year or even per quarter. 

Pyn offers communication that can be sent automatically to managers, alerting them to have conversations with employees that have accrued a lot of paid time off. See the communication here, One of your reports has accrued a lot of paid time off.

Transgender-Inclusive benefits for employees and dependents

According to the Human Rights Campaign, “Health insurance plans generally discriminate against transgender people. Discriminatory trans gender insurance exclusions in insurance contracts cause coverage to be denied for non-transgender care and care related to sex affirmation or reassignment.” 

More companies are now taking steps to determine if their health insurance plans are inclusive, and ensuring that transgender employees have access to proper healthcare. “We believe everyone should have the opportunity to create a life they love and feel welcome at work,” Candice Morgan, head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest, said in a statement to CNN. “That’s why we offer a range of benefits to help our employees across their lives, including gender affirmation and fertility treatments, and continue to foster an inclusive culture that embraces diversity.”

Regular company-wide compensation audits

Conducting regular company-wide compensation audits can help you address pay equity and correct gender pay gaps (and other pay inequities) promptly. According to 2021 survey data from SHRM, “Nearly 3 in 5 (58 percent) of U.S. organizations voluntarily conduct pay equity reviews to identify possible pay differences between employees performing similar work. Of those organizations, 83 percent adjusted employees' pay following a pay equity review.”

California requires employers to file the results of their equal pay reports annually, and other states are considering passing pay transparency bills of their own. Whether it’s required or not, conducting a compensation audit (which looks at not only pay but benefits and equity) on a regular basis will not only help your company from becoming part of the statistics, it will make a real difference when it comes to the financial and emotional wellbeing of your employees. 

IVF and other fertility benefits 

According to CNBC, in 2021, “The number of large companies offering or enhancing their family-building benefit grew by 8% year-over-year, according to FertilityIQ. That may include egg freezing, drug therapy, intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF).” 

Fertility IQ is expecting to see even greater growth in these types of benefits being offered in 2022. Easing the financial burden of having children by providing fertility benefits supports employees through a big life transition. This wellbeing initiative is really a healthcare benefit, and that’s the point.

Support for abortion services 

After the United States Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion after decades of protection, US states and companies were left with to make the decision of how to move forward. 

Many companies have released statements and created policies to support employee’s right to safe abortion services. This Bloomberg article lists over 65 companies, from Abercrombie & Fitch to Zillow. At Pyn, we’ve publicly shared our policy ensuring access to reproductive health care services.  

Providing this support to employees can be challenging due to laws being passed in certain states. For example, Alaska Airlines policy doesn’t mention abortion outright, instead it states travel will be reimbursed for “certain medical procedures and treatments if they are not available where you live.” It’s not an insurmountable challenge, and the companies that are stepping up to keep access for their employees are making a difference.