Worldwide, employers are challenged to find and keep talent. The war for talent is going on in all sectors and since the pandemic some speak of ‘the great resignation’.

Employers have been investing in the health of their employees for some time. They do so in the workplace and through additional benefits (like life insurances). These benefits will become even more important in the future: European employees of all ages indicate health and wellbeing benefits are most valuable to them.

VanBreda risk and benefits, the biggest employee risk and benefits broker in the Benelux, is preparing this new era. To decide upon their strategy, they asked dashplus to help the team.

VanBreda was founded in 1937 and has 1,3 million customers in Belgium. They offer health insurances and benefits to Belgian companies, administrations, social profit organisations and self-employed workers.

Challenge: health benefits with impact

The average Belgian worker is 42.6 years old. Almost 42% of them work hybrid. In recent years, there has been a continuous increase in the number of vacancies on the one hand and sick leave on the other. This means employers face a huge challenge to attract talent AND to keep it.

Over 73% of all employees receive some form of additional benefit.

Challenge: What (digital) health benefits have impact for both employees and employers? What is happening in the ecosystem? What future health choices to make

• employees happy and more healthy
• employers face less turnover and absenteism

" Frank Fripon: Sofie brought a structured overview of worldwide trends and insights for us. This has made it easy to decide on next steps”.

Solution: workshop on future health services

We organised an internal workshop on future (digital) health services.

During this half day session, we took a deep dive into

• the most important trends in the Belgian labour market
• the digital maturity of Belgians
• Benefits in Belgium and how employees perceive (health) benefits
• 5 worldwide trends in health benefits services, with multiple examples of companies in the insurance market
• the relevance of each of these 5 trends for the Belgian market
• what’s happening already in the Belgian health benefits and insurance ecosystem
• what works and what doesn’t
• dashplus suggested 4 no-brainer strategic services in health for Vanbreda in Belgium and how they could be designed

Result: Vanbreda is ready to take next actions

The data and structured presentation of worldwide employee benefit trends helped the team to see and discuss opportunities.

Key benefits and results:

• exchange of ideas and visions in the team, opening the mindset of all members
• revelation of assets that could be activated in very short term
• a framework for ideas and decisions of the team
• a clear idea of priorities
• better understanding of how international examples work
• the workshop syllabus to refer back to
• the ability to use these insights for decisions and next steps

The discussion also revealed assets that could be activated in very short term.

Follow-up:

Questions that not had been answered yet during the session, received an answer and were send together with the syllabus by e-mail afterwards.

All participants received a survey on the workshop. They gave it a score of 9/10.

Do you want to explore the employee health and benefits market too?

• Employees of all generations (from babybomers to generation Z) appreciate health benefits in their top-3.
• 28% of all employees think about changing jobs when benefits change.
• Wellbeing and resilience of emloyees is the biggest challenge for HR in Belgian companies according to SD Worx.

An in-house workshop is an excellent way to understand trends and activities in the employee health benefits ecosystem, open up discussions and feel more confident on your own future decisions.

Feel free to get in touch: sofie.staelraeve@dashplus.be