Wellness on a shoestring for employers

Employee health care costs, insurance premiums and whether the Affordable Care Act will be repealed, replaced, or repaired is creating anxiety and uncertainty for all employers. But one thing is certain: the best way to control health care costs is to avoid them in the first place.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that treating people with chronic diseases accounts tor 86 percent of our nation s health care costs. It's also well documented that simple health self-management techniques and a healthier lifestyle can reduce or negate a significant portion of those costs.

So if you're concerned about health care, don't sit on the sidelines and watch your team get stomped. It's up to all employers, large and small, fully insured and selfinsured, to take a proactive stance to support and enable their employees wishing to achieve better health.

The keys to better health are pretty simple. Get regular exercise, maintain a healthy diet and know your numbers. It's basic stuff. So why don't employer groups, especially smaller groups, offer wellness? The answer is also simple: time and money.

Ask the HR manager of any fully insured company if they'd like to offer their employees a wellness program and they all say sure. But if it's not going to directly lower their insurance premiums, wellness becomes a hard sell to senior management. It's another expense and something that's going to take time to deal with. So many smaller employers are hard-pressed to spend the time or money to implement wellness.

The problem is that 80 percent of our workforce is employed by those same small employers. The only way we re ever going to get our arms around this health care crisis we re in is to get those smaller employers motivated and enabled to help their employees achieve better health.

Wellness for smaller groups needs to become the norm. It's something we all need to do for the common good. It should be like driving, where we all stick to the same rules because it's better and safer for everyone.

Wellness doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg; you just need to use them. It doesn't cost a dime to walk at lunch or stretch or meditate. And if managed well and communicated correctly, wellness doesn't have to require a lot of time on HR's part either.

The trick is to make it low cost, easy to implement and easy to maintain for the employer, while making it fun and engaging for their employees.

STEP 1

The most important thing in any wellness program is communications. No matter how great the program is, it needs to be promoted initially and reinforced continually. Communications needs to be two-way as well. Feedback, input, and support are also critical. Before you start building the program, define your communications process.

STEP 2

Create the community. If you're going to build a culture of wellness, you need to build a community and that community needs a place to come together. It can be on social media, your benefits portal, intranet or other. What's key is to create a simple, centralized access point for employees to engage with the program and other employees.

STEP 3

Define the components of your program. Start with maximizing the utilization of your health care coverage. The average health care premium is well in excess of $10,000 annually. It can represent up to 16 percent of your payroll costs and should be managed the same way you'd manage any resource. Most plans include many wellness benefits and screenings but due to ptxir communication, are grossly underutilized. Build on these fixed-cost assets. Also, check with your carrier to see if they offer "wellness buck" or other financial support of wellness.

Health education is also key. There's a ton of great, highly credible health information available for free online. Then think about at all the mobile apps, social media venues and other web-based technologies that are available for free. And let's not forget about the wearable devices employees have already purchased. Think about all the physical resources in their proximity. There are parks and paths, local high schools and colleges, services providers and merchants.

Finally, don't overlook your own workforce. There are people who love this stuff and would be fantastic champions.

STEP 4

Bring it all together at an easy to access but secure location where participants can learn about the program, access the resources you've provided and engage with others interested in improving their personal health and well-being.

The amount of good-quality, free resources that are available to any employ- er is astounding, and what's fun is coming up with creative ways to piece these things together.

One way to do this is with a wellness challenge that extends over a long duration. One example of how all these resources can come together is found in Westchester in the Benefits Optimization Fit by the 4th and Fall in 2 Fitness corporate wellness challenges. These events provide a fun, 10-week wellness challenge that brings local businesses together in a friendly competition to see which can achieve the highest average wellness score and win the 2017 Wellness Cup.

Although the program costs about $30 per participant, it embodies the concept of getting the biggest bang for your buck by maximizing utilization of local resources and rewarding participants to utilize their health care benefits.

The strategy of creating a competition and building teams to compete also is a very powerful influencer. It engages people, drives morale and provides the support and comradery many people need to stay on track and in focus. *

Wellness doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't need to be complex. Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest solution. Get active. Get smart. Eat right. Be healthy.