Investing in better benefits

For thousands of workers at Avaya, health and the choices relating to it are starting to take on new meaning. The ability to change the thinking of a workforce is not something that happens overnight. At Avaya, we view the health and productivity of our workforce as a strategic, rather than a tactical issue, and this has a direct impact on how we manage and deploy our benefit programs.

We share the concerns of many major corporations about healthcare inflation and the implications of an aging workforce. We also take our commitment to our retiree population very seriously. But most importantly, Avaya seeks to win in a highly competitive, global market, and our people are our primary source of competitive advantage. Avaya engineers and technicians design, configure and deliver some of the most advanced communications applications, systems and services in the world. Our customers expect outstanding products and outstanding service.

Fostering business success

The first question we ask ourselves as we administer our benefit programs is “how can we contribute to Avaya’s business success?” Asking that question changes the way we do everything. For example, it’s not enough to offer a health plan. Rather, our job is to foster a healthy, resilient, productive workforce. Moreover, our administrative processes need to mirror the level of service we strive to deliver to our external clients. Avaya’s goal is to foster a culture of health within the company – a fundamental transformation of our organization that supports our business mission.

To accomplish this goal, we looked at all of our health programs, including coverages, spending accounts, disease management, health and wellness, EAP, decision tools, corporate clinics, enrollment – even the food we serve in our vending machines and cafeterias – as a single holistic process supporting employee health. Secondly, we needed to take the participant’s point of view. How often do we touch a participant? What messages are they receiving? Are these consistent and reinforcing? Do participants have the tools they need in order to manage their personal health and well being, whatever their personal circumstance? Have we engaged our workforce? Can we build and continuously improve upon this dialogue on health over time?

As a result of this process, we quickly learned that too many programs were touching our employees. For example, up to three different nurses could contact an employee with a chronic condition who was out on disability. The consistency of program communications, ranging from quality of information to reading level, look and feel could be completely different. Employees were bombarded by messages about personal health, but most of it had little impact. We realized that there are very few ‘teaching moments’ in which to help a participant navigate personal health and health benefits – we needed to make those moments count.

We also noticed that each external vendor – disability, health plan and disease management – had had their own metrics for success. But nobody was looking at that success across all programs. We needed a single set of consistent measures across the entire system that we could tie back to employee health outcomes, productivity and reporting on health costs.

Healthy decisions

The result of these efforts is a program called Avaya Healthy Decisions. There are three key components to Healthy Decisions:

• Integrated strategy: creating a culture of health.
• Integrated messaging and delivery: creating a seamless participant experience.
• Integrated measurement: if we are doing things right, we should see a healthier workforce, at lower cost.

To make Avaya Healthy Decisions work, we took several important steps. Our first step consolidated the number of vendors. While no single vendor can do everything, a strategic partnership with a handful of organizations lets us create a more seamless participant experience. The vendor offerings in the health arena that a company must administer and manage can drive confusion and sub-optimal outcome for the employee and the business. To address this, Avaya now uses one vendor – SHPS – to manage our enrollment, spending accounts, wellness, disease management and overall health and productivity metrics. SHPS is charged with coordinating closely with other vendors as well as our corporate teams.

The second step has been a complete makeover of all participant messaging across both benefits and healthcare. Avaya Healthy Decisions synchronizes all messaging across every program. For example, enrollment communication is timed to support health communications with information that is accurate, timely and engaging: what you need, when you need it.

Thirdly, Avaya coordinated and consolidated participant/vendor interaction. For example, the nurse line and disease management functions are carefully coordinated to ensure knowledgeable handoffs to the carrier. Our company clinics deliver health messaging consistent with our disease management programs.

Finally, Avaya is developing an integrated metrics process to measure program success. At the end of the day, we need to manage the actuarial trend on health spending. We also use multi-linear regression to determine which parts of our health program are having the most impact, and where improvement is needed.

A focus on innovation

Avaya Healthy Decisions is a year old, and it will continue to evolve as we integrate all of our health processes and link health outcomes with productivity metrics. To address the concern of the aging workforce, we look to these programs to engage our participants to take better care of themselves, which will result in improved health as they age. We are striving to get more feedback from our associates on what works and what doesn’t. The early results have been promising.

The bottom line is that our benefits administration team faces the same challenges as Avaya overall in the marketplace – to engage our customers, execute flawlessly, manage costs and continue to innovate.

Looking after your staff
Benefit plans and programs available to Avaya’s US-based salaried employees include:

Earnings, savings and stock programs
Short-term incentive plan
401(k) savings plan
Employee stock purchase plan
Stock options

Health and welfare benefits
Medical and dental programs (including prescription drug benefits)
Disability plans
Life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance
Long-term care insurance
Reimbursement accounts (healthcare and child/elderly care)
Optional vision, legal services and auto/homeowners insurance programs
Global travel plans
Work and family programs

Education programs
Academic scholarship awards for undergraduates
Training and education
Tuition assistance

Other perks and programs
Paid time off
On-site credit unions at certain facilities
Employee discounts
Matching gift program
Mortgage program