Making Corporates Healthy

Corporate Healthcare costs a pretty penny. This is prompting corporates to look at employee wellness from a whole new perspective. Businesses are beginning to understand the role behaviour plays in their success story. Today, Corporate Wellness Programs are neither a marketing ploy nor a strategic imperative—only employee well being and profit to boot.

With an average person spending more than 7 to 8 hours at work, workplaces need to up the ante for corporate healthcare. And statistics are nodding in approval. According to a WHO report, India is speeding towards lifestyle diseases, with the odds of dying from a lifestyle disease twice the times than any other infection.

Alarming, isn’t it?

Health. Happiness. Productivity. Corporates want to foster all three. A recent study survey on wellness that accumulated responses accumulated from 91 organizations in India , stated, 98 percent organizations agree that there is an opportunity to enhance their wellness offerings with only 12 percent offering effective disease management programs.

Taking Cue From Successful Wellness Campaigns

• Johnson & Johnson embarked upon the journey of corporate well being more than a decade back. Since 1995, the number of their employees who smoke has reduced by 2/3rds. Their strategically designed wellness programs have saved company $250 on health care costs. At one point, the return was $2.71 for every dollar spent.
• Tata Consultancy Services offers a program to conduct regular health screening of their employees. The program includes screening tests, counselling sessions, and physical activities to combat lifestyle diseases. An edge to regular corporate programs are their sleep management sessions. This has turned out to be one of their most successful programs.
• Larsen & Turbo, Unilever, Accenture and others entered the bandwagon with some of the most effective campaigns that saved them those towering costs on healthcare. From fitness challenges to expansive health programs, the roads are many.
• Family Care: Wipro’s healthcare program packs a punch by offering a program that not only takes care of the employees but also covers family. With tie ups with some of the most trusted hospitals around the country, they help in building a better healthcare system for families too.

But Are Wellness Programs Profitable?

Yes and No both. It’s interesting how healthcare has become a major milestone in the success pyramid. Corporates are finding success in various dimensions.

• Higher employee retention
• Reduced healthcare costs
• Financial benefits to company
• Combating lifestyle diseases
• Improved healthcare for family
• Increased productivity at work

That being said, Corporate Wellness Programs can’t ride on the philosophy of ‘One size fits all’. From what is gimmicky and flashy, companies need to look at tailored concepts that are of tangible value to employees. 

Unilever’s Lamplighter: A perfect example

The Lamplighter program worked by using health risk assessments to create individual scorecards for each employee. This card used yardsticks like nutrition, exercise, mental resilience and biometric indicators to assess the results. Since this was a global program, it touched each country’s particular context and did exceptionally well in Africa.

And the corporate benefitted big time. When they did the first survey of the program’s impact in UK, they were surprised to see a significant improvement in employees’ health. And company got back £4 for each pound.

The Road To Sustainable Corporate Wellness

In the Indian scenario, corporates are predominantly focussed on physical fitness aspects, encouraging people to run, walk and lose weight. There’s a long way to go before health risk assessment and disease management programs become a significant part of these programs.

The journey to profitable employee healthcare rides on some vital steps:

• It’s time for corporates to get all the relevant data on individual health. This is followed by making use of this data for preventive healthcare management.
• Create customised healthcare plans that cater to individual needs.
• This will succeed with sustainable plans and approach.
• Creating milestones to monitor the growth of these corporate wellbeing programs is vital.

The Way Forward With Corporate Wellness

Technology is changing the way we look at the world. But this needs to come in faster. The times ahead will see tracking health by using a relevant data points to and employees beyond traditional means.

The future will see apps that bring more to the table than just monitoring your steps for scheduling your workouts. The bottom line—designing and implementing a wellness program which actually makes a difference to your employees’ health.