Wellness

They're more common than ever, but some company initiatives don’t have the intended effect.

Commentary: While an employee assistance program may be promoted to employees when it’s launched, it quickly becomes lost in the collection of employee benefits and is rarely utilized. To maximize its value, ask whether your prospective vendor includes some of the following services.

Transparency and flexibility are among the attributes brokers look for when implementing a wellness program, EBA survey shows.

With desks the central point for getting work done, employers often focus on having employees sit at their workstations to complete assigned tasks the entire day. Encouraging employees to stand, stretch, and walk around is counterintuitive.

Without an effective strategy or the right tools to reduce costs, brokers and employers continue to embrace cost shifting through payroll contributions and changes to deductibles and coinsurance to manage rising healthcare cost. However, there are resources that can help employers effectively measure the success of a wellness plan, while incorporating specific cost-saving strategies.

Commentary: As the EEOC’s proposed regulations for wellness programs remain under review for public comment until mid-June, employers should not feel paralyzed in designing new wellness programs nor compelled to throw out existing ones.

Finding ways to deter painkiller abuse has been a high priority for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in recent years. And with opioid abuse costing U.S. businesses close to $26 billion a year, health plan sponsors should take note as well.

The benchmark for demonstrating return on investment of population health management programs has been medical cost savings. But that's notion is changing as employers are discovering that several other measures of program success are also in their grasp.

The proposed regulations provide guidance on the extent to which employers may use incentives to encourage employee participation in wellness programs that include disability-related questions and/or medical examinations.

Employee engagement is the challenge of many wellness programs, but several companies have improved employee participation with gaming and, yes, zombies.

Wellness programs have been at the forefront of employers’ minds, and in light of the recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s aim to tackle the questions lingering on what plan sponsors can or cannot do, employees are voicing a disconnect in wellness program engagement.

Comparing wellness program participants to nonparticipants is a widely repeated mistake. It continues because employers are not schooled in research study design.

Wellness programs focused on biometric screenings and health risk assessments remain popular but are slowly giving way to more nontraditional wellness benefits such as paid time-off, parenting classes, leadership training and communication and community volunteer projects.

Major employers like Facebook and Virgin share workplace strategies to improve culture, happiness and, ultimately, a company's bottom line.

The EEOC released its highly anticipated, proposed regulations setting forth the EEOC’s interpretation of the term “voluntary” as to the disability-related inquiries and medical examination provisions of the American with Disabilities Act.

In a sign of increasing employer urgency for results, the percentage of wellness program sponsors offering incentives for various forms of employee engagement with those efforts rose to 87% last year, up from 77% two years ago.

Employers must focus on the right objectives if they want a long-term ROI on their wellness plan. That includes engaging in four pillars of lifelong well-being.

In human resources and insurance circles, we’ve been talking about wellness for quite some time. And most employers have dived in and now offer a wellness program. So, how are these wellness programs performing? Too often, the answer is “not well.”

Employers are bracing for double-digit pharmacy cost increases in the next year, but advisers can help them to take steps now to mitigate those cost increases for both their active and pre-retiree populations.

Commentary: Employees can make the transition to high-deductible health plans and be successful when provided some key education and support from the financial services marketplace.