At technology firm Oracle, the use of data is key to enhancing group risk provision for the organisation and boosting the benefits and workplace wellbeing strategy for its UK employees.
Michelle Bradshaw, compensation and benefits director UK, Ireland and Israel, says: “The data that can be drawn from things [such as] income protection claims, the take-up of certain benefits, and our sickness absence rates enables us to be much more strategic. For example, from a risk point of view, given that most group income protection claims are cancer-related, we decided to target the issue of male cancer through workplace campaigns, which breaks down the stigma that surrounds the subject and also raises awareness of the importance of early detection and intervention.”
The organisation’s effective use of data relies on the input of all of Oracle’s health-related benefits providers, including providers of the employee assistance programme (EAP), life assurance, group income protection and critical illness benefits, which Bradshaw invites to get together on a quarterly basis to analyse the data.
Bradshaw adds: “As well as helping to improve long-term sickness management policies and offer a more focused wellbeing offering, we can use the data to work out which benefits our employees want, whether [this is] income protection or life assurance, and by incorporating choice and flexibility into the offering, make those benefits available to them at a cost level that suits them.”