What’s Draining Your Corporate Wallet?

You have a virus protection program for all your computers. You pay annual maintenance fees for all your office equipment. But are you doing enough to maintain and protect the health of your employees—without draining the corporate wallet?

The fundamental asset of the organization goes home at night, and you can't afford to let their health impact your bottom line. The good news is that you already understand the importance of employee health as it relates to corporate success. In a recent survey of health and human resources senior executives, 86% indicated, “workforce health is a key to company performance.1” In addition, 93% said “keeping employees healthy is a key corporate goal.” You also believe—at least 81% of you—that productivity loss is at least as big a problem as health care costs.

So now, the big question is, how can you implement an effective worksite health management initiative that will improve workers health, increase worker productivity, have a positive ROI and, most importantly, have the outcomes to prove it—all without severely damaging your annual budget?

Worksite health management is all about changing behavior to a healthier lifestyle. Obesity and inactivity are the root of an inordinate number of health conditions and productivity impairment. Chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic pain are common in white-collar employees as well as blue-collar ones. Not to mention, these conditions are also often linked to co-morbid and co-behavioral issues like depression, stress and insomnia. When initiating a health-related behavior change program, employers often lean toward counselor-based interventions, either delivered onsite or telephonically. While these types of interventions can be highly effective at behavior change, they are costly—a big burden for large employee populations. Today, the internet age is upon us—people are constantly connected 24-7, choosing to manage their life, health, bills, online purchasing and social networking on their own time. You can now do almost anything in the privacy of your own home computer, and as such, the contact rate of phone-based counseling is declining. More than likely, your workers are wary of engaging with phone counselors because of work interruption, convenience and/or confidentiality issues. Additionally, phone-based counseling sessions are often structured and reserved only for those who are at higher acuity levels in the care continuum.

On the other end of the spectrum are online health content sites. Just about anyone can use Google or Yahoo and find numerous examples of health encyclopedias and ‘self-help’ sites where it is up to the user to search and find the information that may be relevant to his or her health issue or condition. While these types of sites clearly have a broad reach and are typically low cost, they are not designed to truly invoke behavior change. We have known for a long time that pamphlets don’t work—if just reading information alone could change behavior there wouldn’t be any smokers or type 2 diabetics. With static content, there is little to no interaction with the individuals to determine their needs, motivations, barriers, and health history—so that they have the best information and guidance to begin the behavior change process. However, unlike in-person or phone-based counseling, these health sites do allow your employees to search for information at their convenience and in the privacy of their homes.

Now the challenge is to somehow marry both the effectiveness of a counselor-based intervention with the low cost and wide reach of an online health content site.

HealthMedia, Inc., an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company, has done just that. They have invented and developed a technology that effectively emulates a counseling session—without the costly counselor—and is delivered via the web. These behavior change interventions incorporate the same behavioral science models a personal counselor would apply, yet possess the wide reach and low cost of a web-based solution. Essentially, HealthMedia created a new category of behavior change solutions: web interventions.

Just like a counselor, each web intervention begins by effectively engaging the participant, assessing each individual to understand his or her unique motivation, confidence and barriers to change. Then, a structured treatment plan is delivered that:

• Establishes an emotional connection
• Follows proven clinical guidelines
  
• Incorporates established behavioral science models
• Is uniquely tailored for each individual
  
• Is longitudinal
• Offers supporting tools, tips, and resources
  
• And delivers quantifiable outcomes measures

Because HealthMedia delivers these unique programs via the web, you can cost-effectively provide the same high-quality interventions to any population size. And combined with effective engagement strategies structured for your population, you make certain you achieve impressive participation rates. An additional benefit to this approach is that these web-based behavior change interventions can be delivered across the entire care continuum, identifying and treating at-risk employees early on to prevent further complications.

Productivity Impairment

One of the areas that have garnered much interest lately is the area of productivity impairment and the impact that health risks and conditions have on productivity in the workforce. The productivity impairment is composed of both absenteeism (employee is not at work) and presenteeism (the employee is at work but not working to full potential). The impact of presenteeism is typically more significant than absenteeism. Due to compounding health factors, while the employee is at work, he or she is not completing their duties in a timely and high quality manner. This not only causes wasted salary for the employee, but also can have a ripple effect on the organization, leading to additional tension, extra workload for other employees, and financial impact of lost revenues and customers. Having an effective health management initiative in place that can measure the impact of health conditions on productivity becomes of paramount importance. While studies and dashboards have been developed to show the impact conditions can have on productivity, there has not been a lot of work that shows how to actually improve this situation.

But now, HealthMedia has been able to demonstrate the direct positive impact their behavior change interventions have on decreasing productivity impairment from health-related conditions. Examples of productivity gains for a sample company of 10,000 people at $50,000 annual salary can range from $150,000 for a weight management intervention to over $650,000 for a back pain treatment intervention. These figures represent the potential productivity impairment reduction as a result of taking the online behavior change intervention. Productivity impairment improvement gains for a single organization are significantly higher than the actual cost of implementing the HealthMedia web interventions, resulting in a positive ROI.

Outcomes

At the end of the day, the bottom line for you and your employees is measured in outcomes. If your health management initiative cannot provide documented results, what’s the point? Many organizations shy away from true outcomes measurement, but HealthMedia takes the opposite approach by guaranteeing them and welcomes the opportunity to show you precisely the results your population has achieved. These outcomes will also be related in terms of your ROI.

Here’s a sample of the outcomes you can expect to receive by implementing the HealthMedia suite of web interventions:

Scalability and interventions result in outcomes. Outcomes are measured by meaningful behavior change and improved quality of life and quality of health— resulting in your positive ROI through enhanced productivity and decreased medical utilization.

Engagement

Every intervention begins with effective engagement. When you partner with HealthMedia, you will be supported by HealthMedia® Connect™, the participation strategy service that provides expert guidance in recruiting and retaining program participants. HealthMedia Connect offers a dedicated resource focused on engaging your population in HealthMedia’s interactive online programs. Help is provided in areas of discovery, promotion, incentives, communication, intelligent recruitment and tracking and reporting - ultimately endorsing a culture of health for your population and helping you make informed business decisions, all while maximizing your ROI.

In addition to HealthMedia Connect, HealthMedia offers core services in the areas of specialty program design, private labeling, single sign-on, data integration (EMR, PHR, and Claims), data analysis, persistency risk appraisals, behavioral audits, and much more.

Having the right health strategy for your workplace environment is key. Choose a vendor whose service approach aims to maximize participation through smart promotions, strategic recruitment and exciting incentives.

Behavioral Science

Attempting to change behavior without basing it on core behavioral science principles creates non-repeatable, non-scalable solutions. From the beginning, HealthMedia has continuously worked closely with the University of Michigan Center for Health Communications Research to put the latest in behavioral science theory into practice.

Developed internally by a staff of experts including physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, smoking cessation experts, epidemiologists, dietitians, exercise physiologists, and behavioral scientists, HealthMedia’s suite of products delivers remarkable, measurable results due to the extensive integration of evidence-based national guidelines (US Preventive Task Force) and cognitive-behavioral constructs such as:

• Health Belief Model
• Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behavior
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Self Regulation Theory
• Transtheoretical Model
• Motivational Interviewing
• Solution-focused Therapy
• Individualized Treatment
• Motivation and Self Efficacy Matrix

The use and impact of these models in web interventions effectively promotes the kinds of positive, lasting behavior change that, in the past, was only obtainable by a costly counselor session.

Conclusion

More and more employers are recognizing the need for worksite health management initiatives and the importance of productivity impairment impact on the organization—now there is the opportunity to really make an impact, by providing revolutionary, effective, scalable web-based behavior change interventions that are proven through outcomes.

References

1. Lynch WD, Riedel JE, Hymel PA, Loeppke RR, Nelson RW, Ashenfelter JW. Factors affecting the frequency of value-focused health activities and policies by employers. J Occup Environ Med. 2004;46:11:1103-1113