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Over the last year, it’s become apparent that COVID-19 isn’t the only pandemic we’re facing. The diminishing health of our workforces due to chronic disease, health inequity, and declining mental health has come to the surface, requiring the urgent attention of employers, institutions, healthcare providers, and the global workforce.
From May 11th-13th, more than 3,000 workplace leaders, HR teams, healthcare professionals, wellbeing coordinators, and employees from across the globe joined us for THRIVEx 2021. Throughout this immersive virtual experience, attendees heard from industry experts and thought leaders, and discovered how to take on today’s most important workplace issues for a healthier, more resilient future.
And it was great to see such a positive response from attendees! Just have a look what some of them had to say:
“SO many great resources. Thanks for all the hard work that went into this year’s THRIVEx!”
“Thank you so much for your incredibly inspiring curation of this powerful 3-day event. I’m grateful for all the speakers’ time and energy…This is my first time at this event and I really enjoyed it.”
“Wonderful wealth of knowledge. Thank you all!”
As we reflect on the insights shared at THRIVEx 2021 and the challenges that have transpired since the arrival of COVID-19, both the employer-employee relationship and how we view health and wellbeing have evolved. We know employee wellbeing is an essential business strategy; however, to effectively address the chronic disease burden, mental health crisis, and health disparities impacting workforces today, the role of employee wellbeing is more important now than ever.
Our top 4 THRIVEx takeaways:
- To achieve health equity, organisations must address systemic racism, discrimination, and unconscious bias to ensure that their employee wellbeing initiatives are appropriate for and accessible to all employees.
- We’re facing duelling pandemics—COVID-19 and chronic disease. While coronavirus vaccines will help us return to a more normal life, we still need to address the larger, long-term health consequences of delaying care during the pandemic. We must reevaluate our daily behaviours to manage, prevent, and reverse the onset of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, which make us more susceptible to future infectious disease outbreaks.
- The mind and the body are connected, working together to define health and wellbeing. This connection further emphasises the importance of supporting mental health in the workplace to reduce stress, increase resilience, boost productivity, and improve the workforce’s overall health.
- As the prevalence of long-term stress, burnout, chronic disease and mental health issues continues to rise, social connections and one-on-one interactions play a crucial role in health Digital health tools are practical, but a combination of high-tech and high-touch approaches are needed to support individuals fully.
In order to recover and rebuild, we need a collective approach to health and wellbeing. Organisations who want to truly establish a culture of health, diversity, equity, inclusion, and resilience can’t pick and choose which areas of wellbeing in which to invest. Addressing ongoing global health crises requires smart, digital innovation that meet your dispersed workforce’s unique and ever-evolving needs.
THRIVEx sessions and keynotes underscored the importance of a unified, simplified solution that harnesses human-centred design to deepen social connections, leverage data to drive meaningful health outcomes, seamlessly connect members to their health and benefits, and effectively support chronic condition management…all while reducing administrative burden.
“Wellbeing needs to do more than ever done before. We are positioning ourselves to have the highest engagement with members, focusing on health every day and combining that with directing people to the right care and the right benefits at the right time.” – David Osborne, CEO, Virgin Pulse
It’s incredible how much we’ve learned over just three days at THRIVEx. We couldn’t have done it without our amazing keynote speakers, our partners, our clients, and those exploring Virgin Pulse for their own organisations. We look forward to helping Change Lives for Good with you in the near future.