Why employers need to prepare for the unpredictable

Uncertainty isn’t going anywhere. Economic volatility, rapid technological change, and shifting employee expectations are creating a complex environment for businesses. So here's a brief message for this year: don't guess the future — prepare for it. There are too many plausible scenarios and the pace of change will only continue to accelerate.

Instead, focus on workforce health — your company’s fitness. Just as physical fitness requires regular exercise, businesses need to work on consistently strengthening their fundamentals. Investing in workforce health and successfully preparing for the future, means not needing to predict every scenario.

Investing in people means being ruthless about what's working

When it comes to building a healthy workforce, we need to understand what’s working well. When budgets are tight, every pound must prove its value. So it’s more important than ever to judge your benefits strategy by impact, not activity:

• What moved? Are you seeing fewer absence days, faster time to support, and a quicker return to work?
• What didn’t? If an initiative doesn’t shift these numbers, stop, fix, or refocus it.

Preparing the workforce of the future

Workforce health drives productivity. It's estimated that small businesses lose £29 billion annually, due to sickness-related productivity drops.¹ This can be managed if people seek help sooner, recover faster and prevent small problems from becoming bigger ones.

• Prioritise proactive support particularly for common long term absence drivers, such as mental health conditions and cancer. Prevalence is growing across the working population and we can expect this to continue, with younger age groups being increasingly affected.²
• Support your teams with manager guidance and return to work planning. For example, setting up programmes with health and wellbeing champions to help support other colleagues in using the support tools available.
• Communicate around moments that matter (diagnosis, caring responsibilities, role changes, or returning to work).

Experience matters

Experience drives behaviour, and if it’s too difficult to access the support available, people often go without. Support only creates value if people actually use it — and expectations have changed. Thanks to big tech, we all expect simple, fast, intuitive routes. If finding help feels confusing or slow, your employees won’t use it, and your return on investment disappears. This isn’t design for design’s sake, it’s turning investment into outcomes like better health, faster return to work, and higher productivity. 

We know that digital healthcare makes this possible, with services like health and wellbeing apps making it easier for people to fit healthcare into their day. And it works — our recent research found that health concerns are often resolved faster than if booked elsewhere, and that virtual appointments can help reduce time off work.³ We can expect digital health adoption to accelerate as employees demand flexibility, making ease of access a critical success factor for engagement.

Turn insight into action

In uncertain times, evidence and data are crucial. Expect your providers to go beyond surface-level reporting and deliver joined-up insight on things like claims patterns, behavioural signals, and emerging health risks. This should be about uncovering what you don’t already know, like hidden trends that could derail productivity or inflate costs.

Use that intelligence to make hard choices, doubling down on benefits that deliver measurable outcomes. That’s the silver lining: hard markets force focus. When budgets tighten, clarity wins. Data-driven decisions turn uncertainty into an opportunity to simplify, strengthen, and build resilience.

The bottom line

Start building workforce health by knowing what creates value, and making sure the support you have in place is doing its job and getting used. Do this, and give your business the best chance of thriving in the face of uncertainty.

^{1 Original research of 2,010 UK business decision makers employed within organisations with 3-249 employees, conducted by YouGov Plc from 31st July – 14th August 2025.
2 Cancer Research UK, 2024: https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2024/06/03/cancer-rates-rising-in-under-50s-early-onset-24-percent-increase/
3 Survey of 826 Help@hand users who attended a 1-2-1 consultation in August or September 2025. Survey conducted by Unum during fieldwork period of 25th September to 5th November 2025.}