When it comes to wellness programs, it could be tough to get past all the hype. Here’s how to avoid the three most common traps businesss fall into.
Trap #1. The “one-size-fits-all” approach
For good reason, your company doesn’t simply copy other firms’ 401(k) plans or compensation designs. Yet, all too often, firms adopt ill-fitting wellness programs based on things that have worked elsewhere.
Your CFO may have seen data on the cost savings other companys have achieved via certain wellness incentives. Or an old colleague of your CEO swears by the wellness program at his or her own firm.
In response, the top brass pushes for a copycat health promotion program â.” for instance, offering smoking cessation incentives.
That might be a good idea, as long as smoking-related illnesses are a key driver of your company’s health costs. But how can you be sure? is it good enough to have your employees undergo a health risk assessment?
Usually, the answer is no.
Health risk assessments are a excellent starting place, but it’s often a mistake to stop there. The assessments help you get a feel for what your employees’ baseline physical problems are before you try to design a wellness program around them.
This creates rough outlines of what your health promotion program goals ought to be and where to target worker programs. When you want the maximum bang for your wellness buck, you’ll have to dig a little deeper for information. Key places to look -
o your organization’s medical-claims breakdown for the last three years
o prescription-drug claims
o staff member absence information
o employee assistance program (EAP) use
o disability claims, and
o worker demographics (workers’ ethnic, gender, age and dependent coverage status points to greater â.” and lesser â.” health risks associated with each category).
Trap #2. Leaving the health promotion program on autopilot
Many wellness programs often get off to a good begin and then fizzle out. Companys are left wondering what went wrong. Their mistake - They failed to revisit the wellness program on an ongoing basis â.” at least every other year.
Why it’s vital - Your cost-drivers can easily shift as personnel come and go from the company.
Example - This year, emphysema and other tobacco use diseases might be your biggest cost driver. But two years from now, it might be obesity and diabetes.
Unless you continuously track the health promotion program and adjust your objectives as necessary, you might not be prepared to meet those new challenges.
Trap #3. Unrealistic expectations
Usually, it takes at least a year and a half for corporations to break even on the cost of a wellness program. As a rule of thumb, the average program cost per staff member per month to the corporation is about $3 to $5.
If, after three years, you still aren’t seeing results, something went wrong. Currently, the benchmark Return On Investment (ROI) after the third year of a wellness program is $4 to $5 saved for every dollar spent.
Just how can you manage the cost in the short-term? In many cases, corporations pass the cost of the wellness program on to the workforce. for instance, let’s say you want to roll out a wellness program effective January 1 (or no matter what your first day is of the new plan year).
You can roll that $3 to $5 per worker per month cost directly into the employee’s monthly share of their healthcare premium. That makes the wellness program a budget-neutral expense for your corporation.
But remember - You get what you pay for â.” both in time and money invested. The less guesswork that’s involved in the planning and execution, the better the chance for success.
