Back to School – Reasons to support your members with virtual care for dependants

As we approach the end of summer, a change is upon many parents – children are back to school. Whether it is their first year or last year, or somewhere in-between, it is important to recognise the possible support systems in place that are available for families, and how they could benefit your teams in the workplace.

It’s widely known that children are especially susceptible to colds and other viruses when they return to school after a long break. Colds tend to last longer in younger children who are under five, typically lasting around 10 to 14 days.  Schools monitor absences and each child is scored accordingly. This is then added to their school report. Getting timely access to GPs etc can reduce periods of absence from school but also limit time off work for parents.  

Here, we’ll delve into how extending virtual care to your team’s families can be delivered, and the mutual benefits of it.  

Virtual healthcare for families 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a paradigm shift in employee wellness. For businesses, taking care of employees can often mean that teams feel more equipped to do their jobs well and fulfil their professional duties.  

For many employers, extending workplace benefits to families of staff promotes the feeling of value to those in their workforce. This encourages job loyalty and staff retention. The benefits of this – financial and reputational – can be endless.  

Extending workplace benefits to families promotes feelings of value, bringing forth mutually beneficial job loyalty and staff retention. 

Virtual care services to cover staff and their families 

Many businesses have reaped the benefits of caring for their teams, post-pandemic and beyond from shopping discounts to teambuilding activities, there are many tried and tested routes for HR to go down when exploring staff rewards. When looking at the provision of private healthcare, there are many options to offer, depending on budget and employee need: 

• Virtual GP services 
• Mental Health 
• Expert second medical opinion 
• Virtual physiotherapy 
• Nutrition & Fitness 
• Smoking cessation  
• E-prescriptions 

Prevention benefits of virtual healthcare services

Access to Virtual healthcare services encourages teams and their families to take preventative action to protect their physical and mental wellbeing. For example, a nutrition review will uncover dietary tweaks that have significant long-term effects. Virtual Physio will enables people and their families to address aches and pains before they cause real issues. This policyholder is now able to be an active Dad, thanks for only a few physio sessions. Read more here.

How does virtual healthcare work for families? 

If you decide to extend virtual healthcare access to immediate family members, your team can register family users separately, under their general virtual account. This way, the ownership of the benefit stays with your staff member, safe in the knowledge that their families can utilise the service, should the need arise. 

Recently, policy holder Karla Gallifant,  told us her story of how Teladoc Health’s GP Service gave her quick and reassuring advice for her son: “I feel extremely lucky to have this resource available, especially with NHS resources so over-stretched.” 

“I needed urgent medical assistance for my 6-year-old son. The symptoms he was displaying were very swollen tonsils, a fever and a sore throat. Worryingly, he couldn’t eat, and I know from experience that he needed to get some antibiotics as soon as possible to start feeling better.” – Click here for more of Karla’s story. 

This is one of many examples that we see daily, about how virtual care supports families. If you’re interested in discussing adding this benefit to your employee wellbeing package, click here to get in touch with our experts today.