Where to Start with Corporate Wellness Programs

Ten Steps Toward Strategic Corporate Wellness Programs

The Corporate Health Promotion Plan management world is evolving rapidly. Each month, there are new research findings that support the premise that Corporate Wellness Programs and disease management have a long-term impact on healthcare costs. Many large companies that started Corporate Wellness Programs three to five years ago are showing savings in health, disability, and workers compensation costs. Small to mid-size companies are watching all this and wondering where to start with wellness.

Getting upper management support and budget approval is one of the challenges at the beginning of a Corporate Wellness Program. This is the case because Corporate Wellness Programs can be expensive, averaging $150-300 per employee per year in large companies. Most of the savings are not realized for a number of years. This long-term investing is hard for companies on the move.

The key to success for Corporate Wellness Programs is to take a strategic approach. Here are ten steps to consider when starting a Corporate Wellness Program.

1. Start with upper management. Without upper management support, a health promotion strategy can fall flat. Start with the health of your executive team and discover your wellness champions at the top of the organization.
2. Assess the problem. Look at your healthcare claims and analyze the trends. Which conditions are driving your medical, disability, and workers’ compensation claims and which are modifiable? What’s worked and what hasn’t thus far? What is the long-term impact of doing nothing?
3. Hold an initial wellness meeting. Invite your primary stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. Ask your broker to facilitate the meeting and invite primary health vendors including health, disability, Employee Assistance Program (EAP), fitness, and occupational nursing. Review claims and utilization data and establish primary areas of concern. Look at current offerings and see how they can be tailored to the needs of the population.
4. Consider both healthy and unhealthy staff members. Since 85% of claims are usually attributed to 15% of claimants, it is essential to reach those with the most costly conditions while also reaching staff members who are at risk for developing preventable diseases in the future. Voluntary Corporate Wellness Programs such as brown bag wellness seminars miss many of the staff members who need them most. Consider initiatives that are population-wide or target intact workgroups. Wellness incentives help but do not motivate everyone.
5. Establish short-term goals for the Corporate Wellness Programs. Establish some realistic short-term goals based on your primary areas of concern. Are there any plan design changes that could have an immediate impact on spending? Are there some programmatic actions that could have immediate results?
6. Find out what staff members are thinking. Hold some focus groups to determine where staff members are with wellness. What’s working? What isn’t? How much interest do staff members have in the Corporate Wellness Programs? What obstacles and barriers are staff members experiencing when they try to change behavior?
7. Make sure you have a high-impact Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Your first wellness dollars should go into upgrading your Employee Assistance Program (EAP). A highly utilized Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can provide a foundation for all of your future wellness programs. A good Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a trusted link to the hearts and minds of staff members. At no additional cost, the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can provide needed follow-up coaching and personal attention for staff members who are working on modifiable health behaviors or involved in disease management initiatives. Nutritionists, fitness, pregnancy, and stress management specialists are all part of a high-value Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
8. Establish three to five year goals for healthcare savings and measure them. Get help from your broker and insurance carrier help you on long-term goals for your health, disability, and workers compensation plans. Create program metrics that will help you to measure ROI. Go beyond participation rates, completion rates and program satisfaction. Measure changes in readiness, changes in behavior, and changes in risk factors. Create rigorous methods to measure healthcare savings over the long term.
9. Establish goals for organizational health. Consider the more intangible benefits of a Corporate Wellness Program and quantify them whenever possible. Include employee turnover rates, cost of new hires, employee morale, benefit satisfaction data, and employer of choice issues in setting goals. Create ways to measure success in these areas.
10. Add specifics to your short and long-term plan. Include a Corporate Health Promotion Plan strategy, a communication strategy, and a Corporate Health Promotion Plan incentive strategy that will fit with your organization culture. Focus on integration of related components along a health continuum with communications that are focused, simple, and human. Create a budget that includes primary components such as consumer education, health promotion, Health Risk Assessments / Health Risk Appraisals, and regular biometric screens.