What if the Biggest Risks to Your Workforce Are Already Hiding in Your Data?

Insights from Sarah Taylor’s session at the Lockton People Solutions Forum

When employers think about healthcare benefits, their focus often falls on cost control, claims budgeting and ensuring employees can access treatment when they need it. But health schemes are evolving - fast. Today, data reveals not just how employees use benefits, but what risks are emerging, what future conditions are on the horizon, and how employers can proactively shape a healthier, more productive workforce.

At the Lockton People Solutions Forum, Sarah explored a question now facing every employer who funds healthcare for their people:

What if the biggest risks to your workforce are already hiding in your data?

1. What Scheme Data Tells Us: From Immediate Pressures to Long-Term Risk

Scheme-specific data provides a uniquely detailed view of workforce health - both the symptoms employers see today and the chronic, structural risks building over time.

Short-term indicators include:

• Shifts in utilisation, presenting conditions and access routes
• Rising chronic condition claims (up 142% year-on-year across Healix Health schemes)
• Increased use of diagnostics, particularly imaging
• Growth in virtual care and digital GP use
• Higher utilisation for women’s health and early cancer detection
• More high-cost claims reaching £100k+

Longer-term healthcare trends reveal:

• Chronic disease patterns intensifying (diabetes, CVD, metabolic conditions)
• Growing cancer incidence at younger ages
• Multimorbidity becoming the norm in an ageing workforce
• A shift toward precision medicine, genomics and risk stratified care
• The rising burden of metabolic syndrome - now affecting 25% of people over 50

Taken together, the message is clear: schemes designed around acute treatment alone will become increasingly expensive and less effective. Employers that blend prevention and early intervention have a real opportunity to flatten future healthcare costs and sustained condition management by keeping employees in work and reducing long-term absence, rather than relying on an insurance model focused primarily on funding treatment once illness has occurred. 

2. Workplace Culture: The Unseen Driver of Health Risk

Health outcomes don’t start in a clinic; they start in the workplace.

Sarah explored how long‑standing assumptions about work - including the 9–5 structure established by Henry Ford in 1926 - no longer align with human biology or modern working patterns.

Why this matters for health:

• 28% of UK workers now operate in hybrid roles, yet organisational structures still resemble those of the early 20th century.
• Human beings have biologically pre‑set chronotypes, influencing alertness, cognitive performance and long-term health.
• Misaligned work patterns contribute to poor sleep, burnout, errors and reduced productivity.
• Studies show aligning work schedules to body clocks can:
  • increase productivity by 15–19%
  • reduce errors by 25%
  • improve overall wellbeing and sleep quality

Despite evidence-based recommendations (NICE, 2022), William Flemming’s 2024 research shows most workplace interventions still target the individual - not the organisation. Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Report echoed this, highlighting “toxic rockstars” and poor leadership as key hidden drivers of attrition and stress.

Before investing in more wellbeing perks, employers must examine their culture.
If the environment itself creates stress, inefficiency or health risk, no number of perks will compensate.

3. National Health Trends Are Shaping Workforce Risk

The challenges employers see in schemes aren’t isolated - they reflect wider national health movements.

Metabolic Health

Obesity, poor diet, inactivity and chronic inflammation are driving:

• Type 2 diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Fatty liver disease
• Certain cancers
• Poor sleep and MSK dysfunction

Healix Health data shows:

• 142% growth in chronic condition claims
• Women account for 61% of usage
• 20% of claimants are aged 30–39

Women’s Health

Global evidence shows women:

• live longer but spend nine more years in poor health
• experience 47% of conditions disproportionately (WEF, 2024)
• face delays in diagnosis across many conditions

This is mirrored in scheme patterns:

• 87% of cancer self-referral claims come from women
• Strong utilisation of gender-specific pathways
• A rising demand for neurodiversity support among young females

MSK Health

Physiotherapy remains one of the most used benefits - but most MSK issues are preventable, rooted in:

• poor work design
• reduced physical activity
• obesity
• an ageing workforce

Relying on physiotherapy alone is “shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted.”

Primary Care Pressures

Digital GP usage increased by 55% in 2025. Not surprising when NHS access constraints push employees toward fast, virtual alternatives.

4. How Employers Can Use Data to Be Braver in Benefit Design

Benefit design is no longer an HR perk - it’s a population health strategy.

With the right data, employers can:

• identify real health risks in their workforce
• redesign schemes around prevention and long-term value
• challenge legacy benefits that no longer deliver
• targets spend toward interventions with measurable ROI
• simplify the health ecosystem so employees know exactly where to go

This is where Healix Health’s approach differentiates: we act as commissioners of healthcare, not just funders - analysing population needs, designing pathways, advising on provider quality, and measuring impact.

5. What Good Design Looks Like

A. Workplace Design

• Assess culture, leadership, working patterns
• Consider chronotypes - meetings 11–3 only, for example
• Embed the right to switch off
• Build health into objectives
• Avoid “wellbeing washing”
• Link scheme participation with personal responsibility

B. Prevention & Early Intervention

Prevention must be an embedded function, not an add‑on:

• Digital GP with onward referral
• MSK and mental health self‑referral
• Metabolic risk screening
• Cancer screening navigation
• Prescribed health improvement activities as eligible treatment

C. Integrated Clinical Pathways

• Reduce low‑value diagnostics
• Shorten treatment journeys
• Actively steer to high‑value providers
• Blend NHS and private pathways where appropriate

D. Data‑driven Personalisation

Analyse:

• population risk
• claims patterns
• cost drivers
• gender/age/job role differences
• absence vs spend correlation
• employee feedback

E. Shift Investment Toward Proven ROI Areas

• MSK virtual triage
• Stepped-care mental health
• Early cancer detection
• Health coaching for metabolic risk

6. What Effective Delivery Looks Like

A clinically robust scheme focuses on:

• accessibility
• timeliness
• care navigation
• reduced escalation
• improved self-management
• measurable health and work outcomes

Traditional cost controls (caps, excesses) shouldn’t block early access. Instead:

No employee cost for:

• GP (virtual and in-person)
• mental health triage
• MSK triage
• preventative services
• high cost care when navigated via preferred pathways

Co-pay only for:

• Non-network secondary care

This ensures appropriate use without deterring early intervention - where the greatest value lies.