So What? 

Employees are listening to their employer. The numbers tell the story:

• 75% trust their employer and expect them to "do what's right."²
• 80% expect their employer to provide personal empowerment.²
• Targeted messaging influences behavior when it matches personal motivation.³

Now What? 

• Use trusted messengers. Ensure their motives match your employees’ motives.
• Differentiate mass communication efforts from personalized communications.
• Align your messaging and directional efforts with the desired role (rational consumer or concerned patient?).
• Since motivation cannot be sustained, design frequent and timely behavioral prompts. 
• Measure outcomes (e.g., health results), not outputs (e.g., click-throughs, “likes”).

So What? 

In companies with health woven into their organizational culture, employees are more likely to perceive their employer positively and be actively engaged in managing their health.⁴ Employees are:

• 70% more likely to cite health and well-being programs as one of the reasons they stay with their employer;
• 67% more likely to compare health services costs;
• 25% more likely to have not avoided necessary care; and
• 32% more likely to have a normal BMI.

Companies that improve their culture of health (as defined by the CDC Worksite Health Scorecard) realize some important benefits, including:⁵

• Reductions in biometric and behavioral health risks (i.e., high blood pressure, high BMI, poor nutrition, alcohol use, depression and tobacco use) and health care utilization (i.e., prescription drug use).
• Lower health care cost trends.

Now What? 

• Consider having your corporate mission statement or business objectives incorporate employee health and well-being.
• Recognize, reward or celebrate employee health achievements (e.g., employee awarded a badge to include in email signature).
• Leverage your leadership team as health advocates and role models. Consider having senior leaders share personal stories or sponsor/participate in health events (e.g., zoo walk with the CEO).
• Consider all actions that improve overall employee health (e.g., employees given one afternoon off each month to focus on personal well-being priorities such as time with children, a hobby or getting preventive care).
• Actively encourage your employees to incorporate health activities into the workday (e.g., a sponsored film screening, discussion or challenge centered around the documentary, The Walking Revolution, which offers a new perspective on the physical environment and demonstrates the impact that a walking routine can have on an individual’s life).
• Encourage your employees to share their health-related efforts with others (e.g., free mammogram offered to someone in need for each employee who receives a mammogram).
• Cultivate a work environment that makes it easy to get and stay healthy (e.g., stand and/or stretch breaks every 90 minutes for increased energy and focus in meetings and throughout the workday).
• Ensure your cafe/vending services offer many convenient and affordable healthy options (e.g., nutritious food items displayed in the cafeteria express line).

So What? 

• Positive employee experience is related to increased discretionary effort and work performance. However, high engagement with negative experience leads to frustration.⁶
• 91% of employees with high well-being and organizational support are less likely to leave.⁷ Companies that invest heavily in employee experience are 11.⁵ times more likely to earn a place on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list, compared to their counterparts.⁸
• Evidence has shown improved engagement in preventive care and disease management with more positive health care experiences.⁹ Likewise, health care consumerism is higher among those with positive health plan experiences.¹⁰

Now What? 

• Measure experience at both the interaction and cross-interaction levels and include in your regular dashboarding.
• Integrate experience and engagement data together to uncover and prioritize key drivers.
• Loop learnings back into design (to address drivers) and monitoring (to catch drivers upstream).
• Implement standards for vendor partners.
• Involve employees regularly to validate and supplement other experiences.

So What? 

• An integrated system approach allows employees to make more frequent touchpoints (with their benefit offerings and the system as a whole) that are relevant to them. 
• An integrated platform is more likely to motivate employees to make repeated visits to the platform out of sheer curiosity about their total health. The goal is to create an intrinsic motivation vs. a simple habit.

Now What? 

• Identify the various programs and services to support an employee’s well-being and health care journey.
• Ask your chosen vendor partner to outline how the user experience is configured and prioritized to present the relevant programs and services available in support of the user’s well-being and health care journey.
• Define your key objectives driven by data.
• Request data points to show that users are accessing the platform for total health care needs (vs. simply checking in on their incentive/ challenge status).
• Request data points to show that users are accessing the various third-party programs.
• Ensure the user experience is personalized to the individual’s unique needs, while not becoming overwhelming.

So What? 

Employer survey data show that the positive impacts of incentives have increased from 2016 to 2018.

Two-thirds of employers believe incentives are highly effective in increasing participation (e.g., screenings, surveys, coaching and other population health activities) and outcomes (e.g., improved blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI and blood glucose).¹¹

Participation and incentive amount have a linear relationship until they hit the point of diminishing returns, at which point they are no longer linear, but level out (lower bound of $100 and a point of saturation or diminishing returns at $600 total incentive value).¹²

Employers with richer incentive plans are observed to have higher user acquisition and participation in benefit offerings. There is higher participation in plans with incentives that include activities combining well-being, risk reduction and disease management.¹²

Now What? 

• Ensure equitable value across the continuum of care: a) all have equal opportunity to earn and b) the action is fair for the level of effort.
• Align incentive activity set to overall strategy and goals, then use choice architecture or points economy to drive to desired activities.
• Consider ancillary reward options including discount offers, charitable donations and the ability to earn tangible rewards to keep the program relevant for all.
• Ensure that the program is long enough for members to earn their rewards.
• Keep the program understandable and simple for the members to comprehend; complexity will erode response rates.