Work-life balance, mental health and burnout pressing issues for Singapore workforce: Aon survey

• Aon’s 2021 Global Wellbeing Survey finds that globally, companies that improve employee wellbeing performance by 4% see a 1% increase in company profits.
• The top five employee wellbeing issues in Singapore are work-life balance, mental health, culture, burnout and virtual work environment.
• In Singapore, company culture is the number one driver in developing a business case for employee wellbeing programmes.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 27 April 2021 – Aon plc (NYSE: AON), in partnership with IPSOS, has released a survey that confirms the link between employee wellbeing and company performance. Aon’s 2021 Global Wellbeing Survey found that improvements to employee wellbeing within a company directly impact customer satisfaction and retention. While wellbeing performance overall has a direct connection to a strong and focused wellbeing strategy, a series of ad-hoc wellbeing initiatives will have less impact.

Company culture the main driver in addressing mental health, burnout in Singapore

The top five employee wellbeing issues in Singapore are work-life balance, mental health, culture, burnout and a virtual work environment.

Although 91% of Singapore companies have at least one wellbeing initiative in place, only 51% have a strategy and just 16% fully integrate wellbeing into their business and talent strategy. The survey also found that overall, 27% of wellbeing programmes are performing exceptionally or above average.

Company culture was cited as the number one driver in developing a business case for wellbeing programmes. Beyond financial resources and investment, almost half of Singapore companies (44%) indicated that being able to measure the return on actions being implemented is one of their biggest challenges in starting or expanding wellbeing initiatives.

Leadership can set the tone for culture and wellbeing. Forty-two percent of Singapore companies agreed that the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) is the champion of wellbeing initiatives, followed by the CEO (21%).

The survey also found that globally:

• improving employee wellbeing performance by 3% increases customer satisfaction and retention by 1%;
• organisations that improve employee wellbeing performance by 3.5% see a 1% increase in employee satisfaction and customer acquisition; and
• where employee wellbeing performance improved by 4%, there was a 1% increase in company profit and a 1% decrease in employee turnover.

Tim Dwyer, CEO, Health Solutions, Asia Pacific, Aon, said: “The impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and a volatile economy has elevated the importance of wellbeing to individuals, organisations and communities in the region. Companies will do well to ensure that there is top leadership support in creating a culture and a wellbeing strategy that is aligned with their business strategy. This will lead to a resilient workforce that moves forward with confidence and certainty driving business performance.”

About Aon

Aon plc (NYSE: AON) is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.

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