Commentary: Whether a simple health risk assessment or a complex incentive plan, employee wellness programs have become a fixture of the modern workplace, helping companies support and improve their employees’ health and well-being, boost productivity and morale, and reduce health care costs. But not all programs are created equal. Why do some succeed, engaging employees and creating change, while others remain sidelined with untapped potential? The answer isn’t just in flashy rewards or prizes – it’s in the planning and infrastructure.
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Successful wellness programs have three things in common: a strong underlying strategy, highly segmented data that drives personalization and creates flexibility, and leadership advocates within the organization who connect wellness to company culture – demonstrating commitment and creating trust.
Whether your program is 30 years old (like LL Bean’s), 100 years old (like Prudential’s), or you’re just getting started – and whether your employee base is large or small – thoughtful up-front planning, continuous re-evaluation, and capable back-end infrastructure will enable your wellness program to improve health, lives and business results. The following tips will help guide your organization to success.
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1. Begin with a strong strategy – don’t dive into tactics. Employee wellness programs are not standalone undertakings; the most successful examples are part of a broader well-being strategy for the organization. Consider approaching wellness from the individual, organizational, and community perspectives, going beyond traditional biometric measures of “health” or “fitness” to include social, emotional, and even financial aspects of well-being. By broadening the definition of health to address priorities for everyone from baby boomers to Millennials, and incorporating strategies to reduce health disparities, the organization will be able to engage target employee groups more successfully.
Once your wellness goals are defined (or redefined), determine the metrics by which you will measure success – and design your program, including back-end infrastructure, to address those needs. Customizing the program up-front will help the organization obtain the data it needs to measure progress and success. With a strategic approach like this, employee wellness programs become a tool by which to achieve organization-wide wellness in a way that is meaningful to your employees and your leadership.
2. Leverage data to frame your story and improve targeting. Ensuring that program infrastructure can gather and analyze relevant input from employees means increased customization, opportunities for engagement, and, ultimately, risk reduction. That’s why it’s critical to consider at the outset, and at regular intervals, a segmentation strategy that supports obtaining the data you need.
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With the right back-end infrastructure in place, health data can be segmented by business unit, geography, demographics, work function, and more, helping to paint an accurate, up-to-date picture of employees’ experiences and challenges. In some cases, having multiple data sources – both a longer-term analysis based in health claims data, such as measures of hemoglobin A1-C in individuals with diabetes, and a real-time assessment of health measures, such as daily blood sugar reads – can provide a more robust understanding of employee needs.
Detailed data enables the wellness team to act as consultants to both business units and the C-suite, empowering managers and executives alike to connect with and support their employees. For example, during the years of the financial crisis in 2008-2009, real-time analysis of Prudential health assessment data showed that employees were experiencing a surge of stress due to financial concerns – both customers’ and their own. The company used this insight to quickly enact modifications to its program and provide financial wellness offerings, resulting in a decrease of financial stress among employees, from 31% to 17%.
As industry veteran Holly Morganti, director of consulting relations and employer market strategy for WebMD Health Services, observes, “Almost everyone involved in wellness program administration understands the importance of data, but they don’t always think about the importance of creating flexibility in the back-end platform architecture, allowing for clear data segmentation that produces meaningful insight. Personalization is known to be a key driver of program success, but ultimately, it’s the back-end infrastructure that enables companies to customize rewards, report and collect data effectively, brand and message appropriately, and target programming to different populations – ultimately, to execute on the overall strategy.”
3. Tie data and culture together. Sharing data insights with employees can create opportunities to demonstrate commitment, reiterate company values and create trust. When leadership uses data to show the “why” of programming, employees are more likely to feel that changes are inclusive and coming from a place of support – not being imposed on them.
At LL Bean, the wellness team used customized data segmentation to create a visual heat map of company divisions with the highest health risk factors, revealing that a specific call center population had the greatest weight-related risk. The team then used that information to design a targeted program providing nutrition education, paid time for exercise and on-site counseling for those employees – and, importantly, shared that motivating data with the employees themselves. By leveraging those insights to show interest and investment in employee well-being – and then acting on those observations – the organization’s commitment to incorporating health in both word and deed rang true. The pilot program was so successful that it has been in place for five years, achieving an average of 5-7% weight loss for participants – and becoming a fixture of company culture.
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Employee wellness programs are not one-size-fits all – what works for one company may not for another, just as a narrow program may be ideal for some employees but not others. But whatever your organizational needs are, the key to personalized, targeted, flexible programs that can achieve success lies in a well-designed data strategy and the back-end technology platform to support it.
K. Andrew Crighton, MD, is vice president and chief medical officer with Prudential Financial. Deborah Roy is director of health, safety and wellness at LL Bean.
