Did you know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that six out of ten adults live with a chronic medical condition? This type of statistic is why you might consider focusing on promoting wellness in the workplace because effective corporate wellness programs don’t just make employees healthier and more productive, they will positively impact a company’s bottom line over time. For most companies, addressing chronic disease will yield the best results, considering 86% of all medical dollars are spent on chronic conditions. But where do you start?
Step 1: Getting a Baseline
The first critical step toward creating health and wellbeing programs for employees is to obtain information about your current workforce’s health – and your organization’s willingness to improve health outcomes based on this information. This will enable your company to design and implement programs that benefit both employers and employees. Here are some steps you can take to obtain this information:
- Survey your employees
You’ll need to gauge both your employees’ personal needs and their interests. Surveys help you assess what health information employees are willing to share and how motivated they are to take advantage of a wellness program. If you’re unsure where to start with a survey, don’t worry, the CDC can guide you. - Conduct a health risk assessment
Evaluating your workforce’s current health will help you to determine the best programs to implement. You can start with clinical screenings and biometric assessments. There are laws governing health risk assessments, so ultimately it will be wise to have legal counsel. For now, to get an overview, start with the CDC guidance on workplace wellness programs. Follow that up with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on how wellness programs related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). When workplace wellness programs are part of a group health plan (premium incentives, etc.), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) will also apply. - Assess which programs will best align with employee needs and preferences
Different organizations have different needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. You’ll want to make sure your wellness initiatives align with your organization. UC Berkley provides an excellent guide, Finding Fit: Implementing Wellness Programs Successfully, which includes sample assessments for different types of programs. - Review current healthcare cost data and health plan utilization rates
To understand the most common and expensive health conditions and reduce costs, analyzing current healthcare expenditures, trends, and healthcare and pharmaceutical claims data will help you decide how best to target your efforts. You can obtain this information from your company’s group health insurance provider. Again, here’s guidance from the CDC. You’ll want to keep laser-focused on clinical conditions that drive top costs and utilization. (Bear in mind that obesity is a chronic condition but may be coded by doctors as a lifestyle condition or behavior, rather than a diagnosis, meaning it may not come through in your data. So, you may need to rely on more anecdotal evidence for this.) - Conduct an environmental assessment
An audit of your work environment can provide important information on your workplace culture and how it drives employee wellness behaviors.
Step 2: Find your top return health areas
Now it’s time to dig into the insurance data, clinical screenings, and biometric assessments you’ve collected to closely scrutinize your findings. You’ll want to focus your efforts on the areas that align with the company’s overall health strategy and provide the highest return. Concentrate on addressing the most prevalent health risks and chronic conditions in your population. This will provide you with the highest ROH – return on the health of your employees over the long term. Over time, ROH will naturally lead to a positive ROI (return on investment).
What will give you the highest ROH by directly targeting the most pervasive chronic conditions and costs among your people? Simple. Disease management and risk prevention. Let’s take the leading chronic conditions among individuals aged 18-64:
- hypertension (30%)
- cholesterol disorders (20%)
- respiratory diseases (19%)
- and diabetes (12%)
Obesity is both a chronic condition and a risk factor and tops the list at just under 42% of US adults. Obesity is responsible for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions. It is related to a dozen types of cancer, and the incidence of obesity-related cancers among young adults is rising rapidly. These chronic conditions are among the most prevalent causes of premature death and are almost always preventable. Chances are that your employee population will roughly mirror the statistics above. There’s also a good chance that the conditions are going undiagnosed among your working population. So how do you target these and the behaviors that lead to them?
- Dig into data such as health claims and biometric reports to identify the top chronic conditions.
- Conduct health screenings and incentivize employees to get regular check-ups with their primary care providers.
Then focus your company’s well-being initiatives around developing vital healthy habits – like eating better, moving more, drinking less alcohol, kicking the cigarette habit, and lowering stress levels – and reward employees for achieving measurable, controlled outcomes.
Final points to consider
Targeted, comprehensive health and well-being programs for employees clearly provide an identified return on investment. To give an example, the Rand Wellness Program Study analyzed 10-year data from a Fortune 100 company’s wellness program. Tellingly, managing chronic conditions generated a $136 savings per employee per month, and reduced hospital admissions by 30%. And lifestyle management generated a $6 savings per employee monthly – and these figures don’t include productivity gains, reduction in absenteeism and presenteeism, and the savings gained through less employee turnover! And it’s a win-win for everybody. If employees just develop the following five behavioral habits, on average they will save 33%-50% on their own healthcare:
- Walking 30 minutes daily
- Eating healthy foods
- Ceasing smoking
- Limiting alcohol consumption
- And getting their waistlines down to less than half their height.
So, there you have it – promoting wellness in the workplace generates significant cost savings for a company and its individual employees. And that’s a beautiful thing.
