How can employers use a data-driven approach to protect women’s wellbeing in the workplace?

By Emma-Louise Fusari – In-House Health
Written for and originally published as an opinion feature in FEMTECH WORLD

You cannot drive strategy for change without key health data, says Emma-Louise Fusari. Here she shares what employers can do to protect women’s wellbeing in the workplace.

“Organisations need to think about the whole person, not just the worker. Leaders need to add wellbeing measurements to their executive dashboards,” details Gallup in their State of the Global Workforce 2022 Report. The report found record levels of stress. Nowhere in the world were female workers less stressed than their male colleagues.

When asked, 47 per cent of working women reported stress “a lot of the day yesterday,” compared with 42 per cent of working men. Wellbeing is declining among employed women, whether or not they have children, faster than among working men. This is worrying considering there is a disparity in health outcomes for women.

Research has found that women are regularly misdiagnosed, receive poorer medical advice and have poorer quality medical outcomes than men. So how can employers use a data-driven approach to protect women’s wellbeing in the workplace?

Data is essential to enable leaders to make good business decisions, yet when it comes to employee wellbeing, it’s often missing, therefore unable to influence strategy and identify areas of support that are needed. You cannot drive strategy for change without key health data and this data should be the foundation of your workplace health and wellbeing solutions!

Leaders need to be thinking and acting more proactively and using data to prevent problems before they arise. Here are the five Ps and ways in which employers can use a data-driven approach to help improve women’s* wellbeing in the workplace.

Participation
Women need to be involved in decisions about women’s wellbeing at work. Before making changes, first, collect feedback and data from employees to assess both the business and people’s needs. This is essential to increase buy-in, and engagement, and to get more accurate findings for your organisation.

Many women’s health issues remain taboo and have an unwanted stigma attached to them so proceed with sensitivity and compassion. Data can be gathered through anonymous employee wellbeing surveys or health checks provided by an external partner.

Ensure questions are asked to address what good support looks like and what can practically be done to offer that support. What can your organisation do to break down the barriers associated with women’s health issues?

Women’s health goes much further than menopause and pregnancy and data should be collected in other areas too, including but not exclusive to gynaecological conditions, fertility, pregnancy loss, mental health, cancer, violence against women and heart disease – the biggest cause of deaths in women.

Personalisation
Collect (anonymous) data from employee health checks. This will help on two levels. Firstly, it will allow you to identify current needs and respond with targeted education and resources specific to your workforce. Secondly, for individuals, a data-driven and personalised approach will result in greater health improvement.

Providing employees with health checks and lifestyle assessments (the tools used to extract the data from them) not only promotes higher morale and self-worth – but engages them in their health and wellbeing.

Approximately 70 per cent of individuals who have a workplace health check, make positive lifestyle changes that improve their health. We know a one size fits all approach rarely works and it’s no different when it comes to women’s health and an individual’s journey.

This is an opportunity for you to enable the women in your organisation to look at what their specific needs are and provide support for them to achieve better outcomes.

Planning
Do you have a relevant and up-to-date workplace wellbeing strategy? Company values should be at the heart of your strategy. Look at all areas of data from your organisation and look at what resources you have available to address the needs identified.

What can you realistically afford to pay for? Can you allocate time to spend on delivering what you say you can? Have people had the appropriate training and do they have the right skills to embed wellbeing into your culture?

Data is really valuable when it comes to strategy writing as it results in you aiming to improve the key problem areas affecting your employees. Communication is key here when workflows and processes are implemented to help improve women’s health.

Prevention
We have all heard the saying that prevention is better than cure. Yet as a society, we are still very reactive in most everyday situations. We all know that stress is impactful on our mental health, but how often do we think about the physical damage it is causing?

There are many women’s health issues that can’t be prevented. However, there are some that can and others where symptoms can be improved through a change in lifestyle behaviours. As well as using data for identifying current health issues, it can also be used to help prevent future problems from arising.

When I talk about heart disease or heart attacks, many people automatically think about a 50-something-year-old white man clutching his chest. You might recall that I said ischemic heart disease is the biggest killer of women globally. The risks of which can be prevented through good lifestyle habits and good working conditions.

You can read about the symptoms of a heart attack for women here.

What impact do preventable long-term conditions have on an individual, their community and your organisation? What can you do to prevent this? Identifying problems before they become a crisis can only be positive for everyone involved.

Policy
Adopt inclusive policies for the women in your organisation. Your policies should consider experiences that are particularly common but that are presently overlooked in the workplace. Use data and participation groups to find out what benefits and support the women in your organisation would like.

Policies may look at issues such as menstrual symptoms, infertility and menopause (both peri-menopause and post-menopause). They may look to incorporate flexible working, including working from home, paid leave for fertility treatment, miscarriage and pregnancy loss policies, and continuous professional development.

Research highlights that only half of the women reported they felt that their employers were supportive with regard to health issues and 66 per cent do not feel comfortable discussing their health at work.

Now is the time that employers can use a data-driven approach to support women, not just because it can make a significant difference to productivity, retention and bottom-line profits, but because it’s the right thing to do.

*This article explores women’s wellbeing. However, workplace culture, policies, and wellbeing initiatives should also take into consideration the needs of people who identify as non-binary, transgender, or intersex and may also experience these issues.

Emma-Louise Fusari is the founder of In-House Health, a welltech company that connects the physical and digital workplace to help maintain high performance through data-led wellbeing decisions.