What Millennials expect from workplace wellness

This post comes from AllWays Health Partners' provider blog, Best Practice. It includes great insights into the impact the Millennial generation will have on workplace wellness.

More than one-in-three employees are Millennials, making them the largest generation in the workforce. They're on track to outsize the Boomer generation, which reached its peak in 1997 with 66 million employees. The American Census Bureau estimates that Millennials will hit 75 million in the workforce at once. So what does this giant generation expect in the workplace?

In their Wellbeing Report, Welltok — a leading consumer health software company — notes that Millennials will reshape the economy and the workforce, including workplace wellness. Employers will need to rethink their policies and benefits to retain Millennial employees. In fact, Welltok reports that currently more than half of Millennial employees are a retention risk due to work-related stress. Other key findings include:

  • Total wellbeing is non-negotiable: When asked to rank health and wellbeing priorities, Millennials placed a greater emphasis on positive relationships, manageable stress levels, and finding a higher purpose compared to the workforce as a whole.
  • Personalization is an expectation: More than 60% of Millennials feel that everyone is offered the same resources, and 62% agree to some extent that they have been offered irrelevant resources. If employers provided more relevant support, 85% said they would increase participation in health and wellbeing programs.
  • Millennials are non-traditional: Millennials would be motivated to take health actions by extra vacation time (64%), wellness benefits like gym memberships (56%) and flexible work schedules (53%).
  • Stress is a major factor: More than 40% of Millennials say work stress is negatively impacting their life. The large majority (73%) believe employers are responsible for helping manage or reduce workplace stress, which emphasizes the importance of a total wellbeing offering.

You can read the full report from Welltok here.

Wellness resources for members 

Together with Welltok, AllWays Health Partners offers CaféWell, an interactive health and wellness website that is included with our plans. Members can access CaféWell through the member portal for resources like:

  • A health assessment and personalized wellness report
  • Walking challenges and physical activity programs that connect to personal fitness trackers
  • Live, interactive webinars on popular topics like physical activity and nutrition
  • Healthy Living blogs written by experts
  • Online communities that connect patients with other members on a similar wellness journey
  • Tools to help patients make healthy choices about topics like managing cholesterol and pregnancy
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