Building your business case
Workplace benefits are an important part of your organization’s support for women’s health. But your plan doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s important to foster support across all areas of workplace culture to create meaningful change.
Here are steps to help you uncover opportunities and solidify your objectives, both inside and outside of your benefits plan.
1. Understand how your current benefits plan coverage meets women’s health needs.
Pulling your benefits usage rates will help you understand which benefits are most used by plan members. This information can help you assess which areas of the plan may be lacking. It’s also critical to ask women directly, rather than assume you know what they need or want. An Employee Engagement Survey is one way to understand if your plan meets the needs of employees. This data will help you understand your current state and determine what you can prioritize.
Organizational Health self-assessment
Our Organizational Health self-assessment helps you evaluate and measure the overall health of your organization. In five minutes or less, you can gain a full understanding of your organization’s strengths and areas that may need improvement. You can use the results from the assessment and tie them into women’s health.
2. Identify ways to address coverage gaps – and align these with your budget.
It’s important to understand your budget for any benefits plan refinements or enhancements. Long-term plan sustainability is a priority. You can work with your consultant, advisor or Sun Life representative to identify the most cost-effective enhancements.
If your budget doesn’t leave room for the addition of new benefits – that’s okay. Your plan likely already covers a wide variety of needs. Instead of modifying, focus on how you can highlight existing coverage to plan members. Learn more in the Communication section.
3. Set targeted, measurable, and realistic objectives.
When setting objectives, think about the resources you have available and what’s truly attainable. Start with a small number of objectives that can help you build engagement and get some quick wins. Some examples are:
- Setting goals related to launch campaigns to increase awareness of women’s health supports
- Taking steps to help plan members better understand the coverage they already have
- Rolling out any benefit plan enhancements in planned and well-communicated phases.
Once you’ve built momentum and have success metrics, you can enhance and evolve your strategy.
4. Strengthen your workplace culture.
We’re moving toward greater awareness and discussion of women’s health issues. But the stigma associated with women’s health remains.
Your organization can help by engaging your entire workforce in the conversation. One way to begin this is by celebrating annual events. These include:
- International Women’s Day, March 8
- Women’s Health Week in May (anchored by Mother’s Day)
- World Menopause Day, October 18
The Government of Canada has a comprehensive list of health promotion events.
These events are great opportunities to raise awareness, highlight supports and reduce the stigma. You can do this in many ways: communications from leaders, expanding intranet resources, encouraging respectful dialogue among colleagues and sharing on social media and more.
Leaders set the tone for an organization and their support is critical to make it safe to talk about women’s health at work.