It was widely recognised how wellbeing analytics has to lead to actionable outcomes. This should ultimately have a bearing on how data is captured, analysed and reported back. However, there cannot be an assumption that the people looking at quantitative data (no matter how senior) will be able to draw meaningful insight from it. We must also assume that whoever is interpreting the data is time-poor, and so doesn’t want to be flooded with too much information.
So whilst the full data set must always be made available, it was a commonly felt belief that a dashboard or report should be simple to interpret, and only contain information which can inspire action. There should also be a clear distinction between outcomes and insights, and single moment-in-time data is not very useful. If an employee says they feel so much better, what does that actually convert into? If you run a satisfaction scale, and it comes back as 80% positive, what can you do with that information?
Financial reporting through ROI and VOI are much discussed aspects of wellbeing impact reporting that were seen as very good ways to inspire action. ROI allows heads of wellbeing to present to the organisation a business case that states “if we do these three things, I can give you an indicative commitment of £X as a return” It was highlighted how this is possible in every other area of an organisation apart from wellbeing, which explains why other areas get better funding and recognition.
If we were able to plan initiatives on a cost versus benefit model, as is currently not possible, it would allow for efficiencies, as initiatives can be selected that demonstrate the biggest impact for a given set of variables, based on the data. This was shown to be especially pertinent to organisations who have limited or tight wellbeing budgets, which is unfortunately still the majority.