Trends in corporate wellness and family outreach programs

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Lee Dukes, president of of Principal Wellness Company.  Lee has over 30 years of experience in employee health including initiating programs to help schools promote nutrition and health to children.  He recently published new data on workplace wellness programs, a report summarizing the benefits of corporate wellness.  

Some of the key findings from this report was:

There is a strong movement by corporations to reach the family driven in part by financial reasons because 60-70% of health costs come from family members rather than the employee.

Companies are recognizing the influence of family on employees.  Employees are more likely to have success in changing their health habits if the family is involved

The challenge is that many employers are looking at bottom line and need data that shows a programs correlation with improving employee health before they are willing to invest.

He is seeing a trend of more corporations offering  web-based program for families at no cost.

Employers are most interested in measuring the success of a program so they look for data that can be assessed like BMI, cholesterol level, weight etc.  These initial screening tools also help guide employers in what programs are most needed for their specific population of employees. 

We talked about corporate programs for children of the employees.  Because of the COPPA guidelines, some companies provide programs for children starting at age 13.  In order evaluate the efficacy of a program, wellness programs need to gather and track specific data.  Meeting all the COPPA guidelines adds another level of complexity to working with younger children.  Lee did agree that we need to be reaching children at a younger age.

The most popular and desired corporate wellness program offerings seem to be customized or personalized programs such as:

• team activities
• health coaches
• challenges

Employers tend to offer incentives or rewards to encourage employee participation in these wellness programs.  The number one incentive are financial incentives such as:

• lower cost health insurance
• HAS
• additional employee benefits such as added PTO

However, Lee discussed the need to get people incentivised through intrinsic motivator versus external motivators that are currently used.

We need more research on how to get employees to participate in wellness programs because they want to do it.  Although we have made some strides in understanding this, Lee says, "we are still years away from universal approach."  A positive, caring workplace seems to have more success in getting employees to participate than one that is adversarial.