Getting employees to buy into health and wellness programs isn't just good for employees, says a new white paper from Welltok. It can pay off bigtime for employers' bottom lines as well.
The study, "The Business Case for Employee Engagement," finds that not only are health and wellness programs a means of keeping employees healthier and thus reining in rising health care costs, but the more employees are engaged with those programs, the bigger the payoff — for the employer.
But that's not all; healthier employees, according to Welltok's findings, not only pay off on employers' bottom lines but also become more loyal and productive. The report finds that boosting employee and dependent engagement, even by a few percentage points, can result in a substantial payoff for employers.
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"Evidence suggests," the report says, "that increasing engagement in key health actions by just 10 percentage points among employees and dependents can produce significant value. For example, this level of engagement would generate almost $3 million in new value for an employer with 10,000 employees and 9,000 dependents."
Where do all the savings come from? "…[K]ey medical and administrative cost reductions and productivity gains from an array of specific actions taken by employees and dependents in response to being more engaged," the study says, totaling $1.52 million in medical cost reduction, $1.28 million in productivity gain and $0.17 million in human resources direct cost reduction, for a grand total of $2.97 million in total annual savings.
So how do employers manage to take advantage of all these savings, and actually get their employees to better engage with health and wellness programs?
Part of the answer lies in actions by employees that produce quick results — such as following treatment and follow-up plans after being discharged from the hospital, getting flu shots, making informed decisions about major decisions like elective surgery and emergency room care, using lower-cost ways to fill prescriptions and getting support for emotional health needs as well as treatment for back pain and other acute pain.
Naturally employees are more likely to take these actions if they're more involved in their own wellness needs.
So, to increase employees' willingness and readiness to be active partners in their own wellness, Welltok suggests four basic actions on the employer side: focus on the impact of the program, so their efforts are concentrated in the right direction; build employee trust, so that employees believe bosses' care for their well-being is sincere and thus actively participate; make those programs relevant for each person, via advanced analytics; and making it easy for employees to take advantage of such programs via "integrated rewards and multi-channel nudges" for participation.
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