Australia
At Alight, our purpose is to power confident decisions, for life. This serves to ground us in our singular focus to ensure that we are supporting people in the two most important aspects of their lives – being healthy and financially secure.
My personal journey with Alight began in April 2020—just as the world was put on pause due to COVID-19. Over the next three years, I witnessed firsthand the impact the pandemic had on people’s mental, physical and financial wellbeing—and the realignment of their priorities as a result. Employers quickly recognized the need to support their people in ways they had never imagined—and they rose to the occasion, partnering with companies like ours as they committed themselves to caring for their employees’ total wellbeing—one of the key components of the “S” in ESG.
Our 2022 Alight International Workforce and Wellbeing Mindset Report revealed that more than one-third (35%) of employees find that wellbeing benefits and programs make a company more attractive. Yet fewer than half (44%) of workers rate their overall wellbeing positively and just 38% rate their financial wellbeing positively. What’s more, nearly three-quarters (73%) report moderate to high stress levels. Is it any wonder employers are facing quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays and other trends resulting from dissatisfaction with the employee experience?
As COVID fears have calmed and recession fears have taken their place, organizations are taking tough actions to help them weather the potential impact. While cost-containment will likely be the order of the day, it’s critically important that C-suite leaders and boards keep a sharp focus on their most important asset, their people. With less than one-third (31%) of employees rating their work experience as ‘great’ or ‘awesome,’ this is clearly not the time to cut wellbeing budgets. To survive in this environment, employers will need to be laser-focused on attracting and retaining their best talent—even as they are under immense pressure to trim the workforce.
“I believe leaders today have no higher calling than to care for the wellbeing of workers and their families. At Alight, we’re uniquely positioned to support employers as they answer this call and are proud to support 70 percent of the Fortune 100—encompassing 36 million employees and dependents worldwide—in caring for their employees, one of the key components of the “S” in our ESG strategy. We are also committed to identifying, articulating and acting on our own internal ESG priorities so our colleagues and the people we serve can thrive.”
We are defining the future of employee wellbeing through our integrated health, wealth, wellbeing and payroll solutions powered by Alight Worklife®, a tech-enabled employee engagement platform with a human touch that brings together our wellbeing solutions to drive better outcomes for organizations and individuals – and through our latest addition to Alight’s wellbeing solutions suite, the Alight Wellbeing Marketplace, which allows employers to provide their employees with access to 150+ services and experiences in over 50 countries that are aligned to employees’ unique life stages and personal needs.
Alight is proud to support 70 percent of the Fortune 100—encompassing 36 million employees and dependents worldwide—in that big “S” as we care for the wellbeing of the workforce. We are also committed to identifying, articulating and acting on our own internal ESG priorities.
I’m pleased to share a few notable highlights of the progress we’ve made across the three pillars that guide Alight’s ESG strategy:
- Champion our people. In 2022, we formalized our diversity equity and inclusion (DE&I) commitments with the creation of an Inclusion and Diversity policy and, for the first time, we are sharing data on the diversity of our workforce across the U.S.
- Social innovation. We continued to strengthen our wellbeing solutions to support our clients and their employees across all four pillars of healthy mind, body, wallet and life.
- Responsible business practices. We aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations and assessed the materiality of Scope 3 emission categories and calculated relevant emissions.
Looking ahead to 2023 and beyond, we’re focused on continuing to build on these successes as we seek to ensure maximum impact across all measures and to create long-term value for our investors, colleagues, clients, communities and other stakeholders.
Our 2023 Global Impact Report provides more information on our ESG accomplishments, strategy and journey ahead in greater detail.
The coming months will be quite telling in that they may bring further upheaval to a labor market still sorting through the after-effects of the pandemic. Many companies have already reduced their workforces, and others will be forced to consider painful layoffs. But that is all the more reason for executives to ensure that ESG is deeply embedded in their strategy and purpose. In particular, focusing on the “S” in ESG is what is likely to see those companies, their employees – and all of us – to the other side.
Stephan Scholl
CEO
Learn more about ESG
Alight is committed to clients and our people. Take a look at our successes and ways we continue grow, including more about our sustainable development.
