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It starts with having in mind a clear objective on what you want your new healthcare programme to achieve — are you focusing on employee health as a whole, or aiming to tackle a specific workplace challenge?
This article is brought to you by Cigna.
Whether it’s your employee health benefits or a new wellness initiative, an effective corporate health programme balances the needs of your employees along with achieving measurable impact on your business. A holistic healthcare benefits strategy improves not just your employees’ health and wellbeing, but also increases productivity, and overall job satisfaction.
Not sure where to start? Here is your guide to an effective health programme for your office.
Step 1: Define objectives and goals
First, you need to have a clear objective on what you want your new healthcare programme to achieve. For example: are you aiming to focus on overall employee health or are you trying to tackle a specific workplace challenge?
Once you have established your objective, you’ll be able to set simple, achievable, measurable, and health-specific goals, which help define the outcomes you’re trying to drive.
These sample goals and metrics can help you get started:
Additionally, while you’re thinking through this, be mindful of how you may align your healthcare strategy with the goals of your overall business; to help your key decision-makers see the connection between the two.
Step 2: Get an overview of the health of your employees
In order to know what you may need to focus on, you need to have a firm understanding of your employees: their health and wellness needs, the types of services they’re looking for, as well as their healthcare status.
Have your employees fill out a Health Risk Assessment to gain insight into their general health and lifestyle. Then, if appropriate, consider hosting a worksite health screening to test for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), HDL, TC/HDL ratio, and other common indicators.
Some key data points for the best overview of your employees’ needs include:
- General health status: Are most employees generally healthy and live active lifestyles? Are there a high number of chronic conditions, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol?
- Attitudes toward health: How do your employees feel about regular preventive care or healthy eating?
- Healthcare use: How do your employees use their current health plan? How often do they receive treatment? Are there any common conditions for what they’re seeking treatment on?
- Demographics: What’s the average age of your employees? Are there concentrations in particular generations? Do many employees have children?
Step 3: Establish a performance benchmark
Benchmarks help you understand what ‘normal’ is for your organisation, in terms of healthcare status as well as health-seeking behaviours. Examples of benchmarks you may consider include:
- Prevalence of chronic conditions in the office
- Usage of specialist care services or preventive care programmes
- Attendance numbers for health and wellness activities
You may select several key metrics as your benchmarks, and these should be relevant to the objectives and goals you had defined earlier. Having a benchmark before you implement your new programme or introduce new benefits lets you know eventually how well this programme or benefit has done, in nudging healthier outcomes for your office.
Step 4: Create an engagement plan
Once you’ve put together your plan, it’s time to roll it out. It’s usually not enough to simply announce a new benefit or wellness programme; and that’s where your employee engagement plan comes in. This could be through sending out regular HR communications about their available health benefits, introducing in-office activities to make your wellness offerings more prominent, or have your leadership team demonstrate their participation publicly.
If you’re working with a healthcare partner, you may also consider doing an outreach programme with them: such as identifying and pro-actively reaching out to employees with high health risks, discounts on health and wellbeing products, one-on-one coaching sessions, and more.
Step 5: Measure your success
How do you know if your health programme is successful? This goes back to the benchmarks and metrics you had set earlier on. Improvement in these key metrics may indicate that your health programme is working; especially if you see monthly or quarterly improvement.
Other indicators you may want to look out for are employee engagement and satisfaction scores. This can be done through an employee survey, with questions on the specific aspects of benefits you offer.
Actionable metrics are critical for ensuring your plan is on the right track for success. If it seems like you’re missing the mark, it may be a good idea to pause, re-assess what you’re doing, and try something new in terms of implementation or strategy.
Ultimately, an effective healthcare plan would lead to better health for your employees and improved productivity in the office – but these changes may require a longer time to come to fruition.
Looking for a health and wellness benefits partner for your team? Reach out to Cigna Healthcare for customised corporate healthcare solutions that addresses your employees’ needs and supports your company’s growth.
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Photo: Provided by Cigna
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