Study: Corporations moving from wellness programs to multidimensional well-being programs

Heather Provino is chief executive officer of Provant in East Greenwich. / COURTESY PROVANT
Heather Provino is chief executive officer of Provant in East Greenwich. / COURTESY PROVANT

PROVIDENCE – As the health care industry is evolving to respond to changing demands, so, too, are wellness initiatives. A report from the Society for Human Resource Management, “2016 Employee Benefits: Looking Back at 20 Years of Employee Benefits Offerings in the U.S.,” noted that wellness resource information is the most common benefit offered by surveyed employers, but its popularity is declining. Seventy-two percent of them offered that benefit in 2016, down from 2015’s 80 percent, and 61 percent of employers offered wellness programs in 2016, also down from 2015’s 70 percent.

The SHRM study conflicts with other studies, said Heather Provino, chief executive officer of Provant, a national wellness company headquartered in East Greenwich. “It’s not that wellness benefits are declining, but … well-being programs, which also focus on other components – financial, social and emotional health – are all increasing.”

Wellness program reductions are very modest, said Robin Bouvier, a vice president with AON Risk Solutions in Boston. With the Affordable Care Act fully covering such preventive care as flu shots, some companies realize it’s not cost-effective to bring a flu shot vendor to the workplace. Employer-offered 24/7 nurse lines are also less popular, as many insurers offer them and employees generally have greater health care access through telemedicine and walk-in clinics, said Bouvier.

Many employers, including some in Rhode Island, said Provino, offer health insurance premium reductions, contributions to health savings accounts or reimbursement accounts and/or bonuses or gift cards to motivate employees to adopt healthy behaviors. When Provant’s clients offer monetary or benefits-linked incentives, 65 to 80 percent of employees participate in those programs.

- Advertisement -

Provant is witnessing huge trends – nationally and in Rhode Island – in programs that augment physical health with well-being coaching and personalized services addressing sleep, nutrition, financial well-being and resiliency. For example, an obese employee whose financial stress is contributing to his sedentary lifestyle and excessive eating will not benefit from nutrition counseling alone, but his fiscal and physical health could improve with nutrition and finance counseling services. Over the years, companies have increased eligibility for spouses or domestic partners for both wellness and well-being programs, said Provino.

Do healthier employees offer a return on investment?

“As companies migrate from wellness to well-being, they’re starting to think differently about ROI and the value of a healthy and high-performing work force,” said Bouvier. “They’re looking at recruitment and retention of top talent, absenteeism, productivity, customer satisfaction and performance ratings. If companies don’t have a 24/7 perspective and are not looking at health outside the work setting, they’re missing a [huge piece of the puzzle],” she said. Rhode Island organizations are starting to move down the path of total well-being, which AON identifies as four interrelated components – physical, financial, social and emotional. Amica, CVS Caremark, IGT and Textron are among AON’s Rhode Island clients.

Companies participating in AON’s 2016 Health Care Survey measured the success of their well-being programs against several milestones:
• 79 percent of respondents evaluated health costs
• 74 percent evaluated program participation
• 47 percent evaluated employee engagement
• 31 percent evaluated their absences and disability claims
• 31 percent evaluated employee attraction/retention

Now, companies can evaluate multiple sources of data – including medical and pharmacy clams, workers’ compensation, absenteeism, well-being program data comparing participants and nonparticipants and longitudinal studies – and determine the impact on business metrics, Provino said. Provant’s clients include a wide array of mid- to large companies in manufacturing, risk management and health care; it has seven clients in Rhode Island.

Noting that companies are moving to a VOI, or value on investment, Provant cited the C. Everett Koop National Health Awards, whose recipients have produced double the returns of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index over the past 14 years, according to The Health Project, a nonprofit private-public consortium. It gives the C. Everett Koop National Health Award to entities whose wellness programs lead to documented health behavior changes, risk reductions and cost savings.

Is New England an outlier?

“Historically, although employers in Rhode Island and [the rest of] New England have been slower to adopt aggressive cost-management strategies such as high deductible health plans and outcome-based wellness initiatives, their current approach is much more closely aligned with the marketplace’s evolution from traditional wellness to well-being,” said Bouvier, co-chair, Health & Productivity Committee at Rhode Island Business Group on Health. She cited several reasons for that historical approach, including the region’s strong managed care marketplace and relative wealth, which enables companies to invest more money in their workforce than can some companies in the southeastern United States, for example.

No posts to display