Making the link: Helping employees engage in health and productivity programs
Health care costs are on the rise. This is no surprise to employers who, through private insurance companies, are the leading provider of health care services in the U.S. There are many cost-cutting strategies. No doubt, your company has explored options. The option that has the most promise for sustained rate decline is investing in employee health and wellness. When employees are well, they utilize fewer medical resources and are more productive.
An important caveat to consider is that no matter how well designed a program is, if no one uses it, it will not work. "Many companies offer really excellent services to their employees, such as health risk assessments and health and wellness programs," says Wendy Ryals, Ceridian product manager. "But employees don't always know what is available or what the programs can help them achieve." Employers can learn from states' mistakesIt is startling, but up to a quarter of the country's uninsured qualify for public health care, but don't know it. For example, in Minnesota alone about 60 percent of 383,000 uninsured citizens could be eligible. When uninsured individuals seek treatment, it is often in later stages of illness, when medical problems are more severe and treatment more intensive and expensive. This drives up medical costs across the board. The few states that have done public awareness campaigns and put efforts into simplifying benefit sign-up -- including Wisconsin, Vermont and Minnesota -- for a time, have seen enrollment dramatically increase. This is money well spent. Having medical coverage means seeking treatment at an earlier stage which lowers overall health care expenditures. Unfortunately, state budgets don't often take this into consideration. In a similar fashion, employers who offer high-quality health and productivity services to their employees can see an increased return when services are better utilized. "Overlooking this element in health and productivity planning can devalue the investment of the employer," says Catherine Macpherson, Ceridian product manager. "One factor that really drives return on investment is program engagement." Engage at each stage for the best return
Investing in engagement strategies can stretch dollars invested in health and productivity programming. There are several ways to increase employee participation. Offering incentives, doing in-house promotions and scheduling events can heighten awareness and drive participation. The key is keeping these drivers easy to understand and appealing to the diversity of employees in your company. An additional approach is to build engagement right into your program, which is what Ceridian can do with our new service, Ceridian Outreach and Engagement. "Think of this as a wrap-around for every product you offer," says Ryals. "It touches each service you provide for employees." "Outreach and Engagement is additive to other engagement initiatives a company is doing." says Macpherson. "It doesn't cancel out offering other participation motivators such as incentives. Instead it helps increase the level of program participation even more." The foundation of Outreach and Engagement is risk identification. Based on results of the risk identification phase, employees with identified health and productivity risks receive targeted outreach to offer program support and engage them in taking action for behavior change. The value is clear. Health Risk Assessments (HRAs) are excellent tools often used in identifying the health and disease risk of your employees, however, the divide between risks identified on an employee's personal health report and the action to contact a health and productivity program is large -- and one that is often not crossed. This rift exists for many reasons. First, the employee may not fully understand the risks that show up on an HRA report. Second, employees may not remember or know how to enroll in offered health and wellness programs, the employee assistance program or work-life program. Finally, even if both the report results and program offerings are well understood, workers still might not make the mental link between program participation, lowered risks and improved productivity. Make risk ID to program enrollment a fluid process
"That is where Ceridian's health and productivity experts come in," says Macpherson. "Receiving a personal call from a qualified expert with an offer to discuss your HRA results and answer questions about what comes next is really a powerful engagement tool. Our experts assess readiness to make behavior changes, describe all programs the employee is eligible for, and can process program enrollment right on the phone or do a warm transfer directly to the service the employee needs." Outreach and Engagement can be added-on to any of Ceridian's full portfolio of health and productivity management programs, including Health Coaching (for tobacco cessation, weight or stress management), Employee Assistance Program, Work-Life Services or Corporate Lactation, which provides support for new mothers. It is ideal for making the link between risk identification and program engagement. Outreach and Engagement specifically offers:
- Identification
- Outreach
- Assessment
- Wellness Plan
- Cross-program referral
- Follow-up
- Reporting
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