Now in its fourth year, National Employee Wellness Month showcases how prevention, coupled with supportive social communities like the workplace, helps to improve employee health and productivity, lower healthcare costs and create a workplace culture of health. This annual initiative helps employers learn from best practices of how companies are developing successful strategies around prevention and good health.

Forward-thinking employers know helping employees make healthy lifestyle choices can have a significant impact on curbing the rising cost of preventable and highly manageable chronic diseases.  Throughout June, participating organizations will promote the benefits of healthy lifestyles, and provide motivation and opportunities for employees to engage in a range of healthy lifestyle behaviors.

Wondering how you can mark the occasion – and, more importantly, promote a culture of health in your workplace? It’s easier than you think.

Here are 5 simple ways to promote healthy habits in your workplace this June and all year round:

1. Hide the candy bowls (or replace them with fresh fruit or veggies).

   We all know how incredibly tempting office candy bowls can be – and just a few candies daily can really add up. Offer a bowl of fresh fruit or other healthy snacks instead.

2. Have you refilled the office water coolers?

   Good health includes drinking lots of water – 8 glasses a day, to be precise. While we absorb some of that water through the foods we eat, it’s important to make a conscious effort to stay hydrated.

   Make it easy for your employees to get in the habit. Place water coolers in convenient locations around the office and fill them regularly. (Or you can invest in a filtering-water pitchers in the office fridge. Or even filtering-water coolers in kitchens and break areas to cut down on the plastic bottles.)

3. Encourage teams to “walk and meet”.

   The season of nice weather’s upon us – so why not take some meetings outdoors? Encourage your employees to “walk and meet” simultaneously at least once daily. It’ll get their blood pumping (and maybe help the creative juices flow, too).

4. Sponsor a healthy recipe swap in your workplace.
   Cooking at home cuts down on your restaurant bills and promotes a healthier way of eating. But many of us could use some fresh inspiration. Invite your employees to share their favorite healthy recipes with their peers.  Say 30 people participate, everyone gets 29 new recipes to try for themselves – that’s a whole month of healthy eats! 
5. Nudge healthier options for the takeout-lunch crowd.

   Many officemates order lunch as a group, relying on the same old stack of (usually unhealthy) menu options. Distribute healthier menu options to all teams; if you can swing it, arrange for an employee discount from local cafes offering healthier options.

   If your company has its own cafeteria, make sure there are healthy options offered daily and that your prices accurately reflect the choices you’re trying to promote.

Stay tuned for more tips and ideas on how you and your workforce can celebrate National Employee Wellness Month. We’re eager to hear your favorite tips, too. Watch this space for more crowd-sourced tips to kick off National Employee Wellness Month right. And follow #WellnessMonth on Twitter for the latest news and tips.

The 5 Mega-Trends That Are Changing the Face of Health Care
The Atlantic
By Chris Rivard & Karl Rebay As the nation’s highest court weighs the fate of President Obama’s health care reform legislation, it’s important to keep one thing in mind: No matter what the nine justices ultimately decide, significant change is coming …

Obesity in the US projected to grow, though pace slows: CDC study
LATimes
Obesity in the United States is projected to continue its rise over the next 18 years, extending to 42% of Americans by 2030, according to a study released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.That expected growth in the proportion of obese Americans — up from 34% — contained good news and bad: Obesity’s growth has slowed from the record-setting pace that has marked most of the last three decades; at the same time, the numbers of the severely obese — those carrying 80 or more pounds more than the healthy, normal weight for their height — is expected to grow by 130%.

U.S. Report Outlines Strategies to Prevent Obesity
USNews & World Report
The IOM strategies include: integrating physical activity into people’s daily lives; making healthy food and beverage choices available everywhere; changing marketing about nutrition and physical activity; using schools to promote healthy weight; and urging employers and health care professionals to support healthy lifestyles.

U.S. exercises half as much as it should
UPI
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends adults ages 18-64 get about 4 hours of physical activity each week by exercising moderately for 2.5 hours per week and engaging in a vigorous activity — running and muscle strengthening — for an 1 hour and 15 minutes per week. The study Americans spend, on average, only about 2 hours each week participating in sports and fitness activities.

Fitness in Middle Age Lowers Medical Costs Later: Study
HealthDay
Subsidizing exercise and fitness-related lifestyles in middle age could significantly reduce the ballooning cost of health care in later years, a new study of more than 20,000 people suggests. The study, slated for Thursday presentation at an American Heart Association meeting in Atlanta, found that fit middle-aged men and women had significantly lower medical expenses later in life compared to people who failed to stay in shape.

7 in 10 employers offer wellness benefits
BenefitsPro
Seven in 10 employers provide wellness benefits, including flu shots, health screenings and weight management programs, which are contributing to the improved lives of their employees, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ recent survey, Wellness Programs and Value-Based Health Care. The survey shows that wellness programs have become more popular over the past 10 years, and while nearly…

A recent Towers Watson survey reports 26 percent of employers support or are considering supporting employee health management with the use of online games (up from just 9 percent in 2010).

And earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal featured an article on the topic: “Pitting Employees Against Each Other … for Health.” The author, Anna Wilde Mathews, talks about how employers are leveraging game techniques to help employees improve their health.  Here’s a quick video, which provides a nice summary of the article.

So what do game mechanics have to do with health?

Game mechanics are a powerful tool. They’re a great way to engage your employees in good health – both in the employee health programs you’ve put in place, and in those all-important offline behaviors you want them to engage in – like getting enough physical activity, eating healthy, avoiding smoking, and more.

Game mechanics help ensure employees can easily learn how to participate, what they need to do to make healthy behavior changes, and better understand their progress against goals.  They make things fun and spark competitive spirit.  What’s more, they offer short-term reinforcement cycles and help keep momentum going over the long-term – which is crucial for sustained engagement and behavior change.

Earlier this year, Tom Abshire, SVP Products and Marketing here at Virgin HealthMiles presented a webinar about the role of game mechanics in employee health programs.  You can check out the recording here.  In the webinar, Tom shared four keys to effectively use game design techniques and game mechanics to engage your employees in your workplace health improvement efforts:

1. Break long tasks down into small, achievable short-term goals that reward achievement.
   Achieving health goals is a long process. Even with a sizable personal or financial goal or incentive at the end, it’s hard for many individual to take those daily steps towards better health.  With game mechanics, you can break down these long paths into small steps that make the long-term goal achievable. Game mechanics can help create small victories that support developing habits.  And things like incentives and levels can reinforce achievement.
2. Turn tasks into paths. Actions into habits. And effort into play.
   Conversely, at times we need our employees to focus on a number of related, but disconnected tasks. Employers usually have a range of programs you want employees to take part in.  Game mechanics can be an important tool to help employees make sense of the range of programs you offer by creating paths to follow and certainty on where they should start.  Points and incentives can help them understand what’s most important or where they need to focus next, based on their specific needs or the plan design for their segment.
3. Convert users into players.
   Game mechanics can convert users into players.  This speaks to the shift in motivation.  As users, we’re externally motivated to achieve a task – to get the job done.  By converting users into players, motivation shifts internally. With internal motivation, we’re more likely to pursue the next step in the program, discover what other tasks or challenges that are available that can help us advance or achieve. We’re more open to collaborating, not just competing. Game mechanics can open up another dimension of motivational possibilities.
   
4. Create a unifying experience around a changing array of tasks.
   Gamification can be important in creating an overall unifying theme, tying together the disconnected incentives and game mechanics that individual programs attempt to employ.  This is critical when you’re changing partners or your overall plan design.  Employees can more easily adapt to and understand the changes when the changes happen within the familiar context of the overarching game.  A unifying game also allows for better cross-promotion of programs – increasing the awareness and perceived value of your overall health and wellness strategy.

If you’re considering using game mechanics in your employee health initiatives, be sure to keep this in mind: if you’re asking your employees to engage and change their behaviors, you need to support them with things they want to do.

Your gamification strategies shouldn’t be too complex. Otherwise, you’ll lose your employees’ interest and they won’t participate. And low participation won’t lead to very much impact for your business or improvements in workforce health.  To see success with your gamification strategy, keep things simple and interesting.  Use game mechanics everyone understands – points, levels, rewards, badges, leaderboards, etc. – to drive adoption of healthy behaviors and ongoing engagement.

Buzz phrase, sure.  But game mechanics aren’t all hype. Since the very beginning, we’ve incorporated them as a key component of our engagement mix. And we’ve seen them help employers and thousands of their employees reap significant benefits – like participation rates nearly three times the industry average and significant workforce health improvements and cost savings.

Learn more about how game mechanics can drive employee engagement and better health in your organization in this free white paper.

Traditional wellness efforts have failed to help organizations improve workforce health. Historically, they’ve been “one size fits all” – an approach that’s yielded low employee engagement and proven ineffective at driving real, sustainable employee behavior change.  And their insufficient data and reporting (if any) have offered few, actionable insights they can use to drive real workforce health improvements that help lower healthcare costs. At Virgin HealthMiles, we’ve turned the tides on this model, and today, we’re unveiling our Spring ‘12 product release.

Spring ‘12 helps organizations better motivate employees and drives higher employee engagement with a more personalized digital health experience based on better segmentation and more detailed data.  With Spring ‘12, employers get even more methods to collect detailed employee health data and enhanced real-time reporting so they can better measure and manage the impact of their employee health investments.

“Individuals are motivated by different things at different points in time.  What motivates one person may not motivate another. And what motivates someone today may not motivate them tomorrow. A ‘cookie-cutter’ approach won’t help employers create the culture of health or the lasting employee behavior changes they desire,” said Tom Abshire, senior vice president of products, marketing and member engagement for Virgin HealthMiles.

“But that’s been the approach most providers have offered employers. Here at Virgin HealthMiles, we do things differently. We take a consumer’s point of view and create a compelling, personalized experience that drives deeper engagement and leads to long-term healthy behavior change. With Spring ‘12, we’re equipping employers with more ways to target and tailor their programs for their workforce. And we’re offering new products and data collection methods that provide the data and insights employers need to optimize their employee health investments.”

With Spring ’12 release, employers can drive even better results and impact from their employee health investments.

Key Benefits of the Spring ’12 Release: Better Insight into Employee Population Health Driven by New Biometric Capabilities, Improved Health Assessment and Enhanced Real-Time Reporting

• Personalization, Detailed Data Drive Higher Motivation and Increased Employee Engagement:  Health and wellness programs won’t work if they don’t appeal to employees. Spring ‘12 leverages a more complete data set and enables employers to better target and tailor their programs to specific employee segments.  Employees can also utilize new tools to gain a better understanding of their health and develop a personalized set of health activities they find compelling. Developing their own plan increases employee motivation, engagement and behavior change.

• Expanded Suite of Methods to Collect and Measure Detailed Employee Health Data:  Spring ‘12 offers more methods to collect detailed health data and helps employers gain valuable insights to help guide decisions, strategy, and increase employee engagement.  Spring ‘12 includes expanded biometric screenings and health assessments, which provide employees with a better picture of their overall health and areas for improvement.  Armed with this data, employees can make more informed decisions and change lifestyle behaviors that lead to better health.

• Enhanced Real-Time Reporting Helps Organizations Target their Wellness Investments, Optimize Impact:  Spring ‘12’s enhanced real-time reporting helps employers better utilize data to identify, segment and market solutions that drive maximum employee engagement.  Improved real-time reporting helps organizations see which health areas are most important to address and then act on clear data to develop a strategy.  With real-time insights, organizations can focus or adjust programs to optimize their impact.  Enhanced reporting also enables employees to see all of their own, personalized data in one central place. This makes it easier for them to understand where to focus for improved health, set goals and track their progress over time, and personalize their experience and engage in activities that motivate them most.

Spring ’12 is now available to current and prospective Virgin HealthMiles clients.  Learn more at http://us.virginhealthmiles.com/resources/Pages/Spring12_WhatsNew.aspx.

More U.S. employers tie health insurance to medical tests
USA Today
Gone are the days of just signing up for health insurance and hoping you don’t have to use it. Now, more employees are being asked to roll up their sleeves for medical tests — and to exercise, participate in disease-management programs and quit smoking to qualify for hundreds, even thousands of dollars’ worth of premium or deductible discounts. Proponents say such plans offer people a financial incentive to make healthier choices and manage chronic conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, which are driving up health care costs in the USA.

Lifetimes of Tech Changes
Human Resource Executive
The days of IT owning HR technology are now basically over. We’ve already seen the trend of business units taking ownership of HR technology and working with IT as a partner and also using third-party partners. While IT support continues to be critical — even in the age of hands-off SaaS — HR and the business units must complete the process of taking control over HCM software.

Study: Obesity trumps smoking when it comes to impact on long-term healthcare …
Drug Store News
Obesity adds more to healthcare costs than smoking does, according to a study published in the March Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental …

Tech’s Top 10
Human Resource Executive
The world’s “Most Powerful HR Technology Experts,” as selected by the editors of Human Resource Executive®, offer HR leaders their thoughts and advice concerning today’s and tomorrow’s HR technology trends and challenges.

Survey: Health care reform splits employers
Workforce Management
Forty percent of employers want the high court, which is hearing oral arguments this week on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to strike down the 2010 law. But an even greater percentage of employers—43 percent—do not want the justices to reject the law, while the remaining 17 percent said they didn’t know, according to the survey of 437 employers conducted by the Midwest Business Group on Health and co-sponsored by the National Business Coalition on Health, Workforce Management and sister publication Business Insurance.

Study: Wellness programs improve health
UPI
The survey was completed by 361 organizations representing a broad spectrum of industries in the Chicago healthcare marketplace. Wellness programs varied by organization, but activities included health-risk assessments, questionnaires, screenings for blood-pressure and cholesterol, and smoking cessation, weight management and nutrition programs.

Financial impact of health reform on employer benefits not as significant as anticipated
MBGH
In spite of employer fears, the financial impact of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not been as significant as anticipated for most businesses and fewer U.S. employers responded that they plan to drop coverage due to the law’s mandate than was reported in 2010. These are some of the key findings from a new 2012 employer survey conducted by the Midwest Business Group on Health (MBGH) and co-sponsored by the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH), Business Insurance and Workforce Management.

10 lesser known effects of health care reform law
CNN
But the health care reform law gives companies incentives to start wellness initiatives. Small business got incentives in 2011, when companies with fewer than 100 employees working at least 25 hours per week became eligible for wellness program grants.

Benefits decision-makers cite wellness, voluntary benefits among top 5 cost-control strategies
Employee Benefit News
Employers across America face unprecedented challenges in providing competitive employee benefits while still controlling costs. Public-sector employers face additional obstacles from revenue shortfalls and increased public scrutiny of government spending. Yet employers, both public and private, have access to many proven solutions that can help them control and even reduce costs while continuing to offer a strong benefits package.

Dash, The Employee Health App
CoolBusinessIdeas.com
A great new app by Virgin HealthMiles, of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, is taking seriously the responsibility companies have for the health of their employees. Based around the idea of providing wellness activities and mobile incentives for its users, this app has an accelerometer that tracks steps and workout calories and then syncs the info to the users’ Virgin HealthMiles account. The Dash app allows users to …

Family health care costs to exceed $20,000 this year
CNNMoney
Three days of Supreme Court arguments have left the fate of the 2010 health care reform law uncertain. What is certain, however, is that health care costs are continuing to eat away at consumers’ budgets. The cost to cover the typical family of four under an employer plan is expected to top $20,000 on health care this year, up more than 7% from last year, according to early projections by independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc. In 2002, the cost was just $9,235, the firm said.

Weight and inactivity are threatening to overtake tobacco as risk factors for cancer
American Cancer Society
Unfortunately, the incidence of some cancers continues to increase. And, as explained very clearly in this excellent report, this nation continues to suffer from an epidemic of overweight, obesity and physical activity that the authors suggest-but don’t actually say-has the potential to overcome the favorable impact of declining smoking and tobacco use on cancer incidence and deaths. The implication is clear that if we don’t do something-and do something quickly-to reverse the trend we will see incidence and deaths from certain cancers continue to increase in the future.

Waiting to treat people after they get sick isn’t a strategic way to improve workforce health. Forward-thinking companies see that disease management programs, for example, certainly have their place in a suite of employee health offerings for the people they serve. But they also know that in order to drive long-term business impact, they need to focus on prevention and create a culture of health that helps get (and keep) the majority of their workforce healthy – before costly conditions and diseases develop.  Fortunately, a progressive shift toward prevention is underway and population-based approaches are at the heart of it.

A population-based approach to employee health centers on reaching a large number of people at low and moderate risk that lead to more cases of costly conditions and diseases, rather than a small number of people at high risk.  Thinking holistically and keying into socio-ecological factors—the individual, their social system and network, and surrounding workplace environment, policies and programs that encourage healthy behaviors—is why a population-based approach is so effective. Influencing social norms and creating an environment where employees can more easily make healthy choices results in healthier, more productive employees.

This type of approach in the workplace makes sense since social relationships and culture play a tremendous role in our health.  Science proves individuals are heavily influenced by the behaviors and environment of those around them.  And with most adults spending a third (or more) or their day there, the workplace is an ideal venue in which to leverage social connections and help employees get healthy together.

Take physical activity, for example. It offers tremendous health benefits for everyone and is the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle.  Adults who get 150 minutes of moderate to intense activity over the course of a week significantly reduce their risk of developing the majority of today’s most prevalent and costly chronic diseases.  What’s more, the benefits are even greater for those who get 300 minutes or more per week, or include strength and flexibility training as a part of their program. A population-based approach that incorporates physical activity as a key element can help support a range of healthy behaviors, such as eating healthier, getting better sleep, avoiding tobacco, managing stress, and many more.  The workplace is a great place to help people become more physically active and embrace other healthy behaviors together.

Recently, I presented a webinar about physical activity’s role in disease prevention and how a population-based approach to employee health drives more significant workforce health improvements and greater impact for businesses.  I encourage you to check out the recording if you’re interested in learning more about how population-based approaches can help your organization improve employee health and productivity.

The lifecycle costs of obesity in health and financial terms: the true math
Health Populi
About 50% of women and men in the U.S. are projected to be obese by 2030. The majority of people in America concur that the nation has an obesity problem. What’s been unknown and underestimated is just how much the epidemic is costing the nation in both health and financial terms…

Population-Based Approaches Revolutionize Workplace Wellness
Corp! Magazine
Poor health cripples a workplace. It debilitates employees, as well as business profitability. Factor in rising health care costs and U.S. businesses are being forced to abandon the “same old, same old” approach to corporate wellness.

Benefits Professionals Name Top Five Priorities for 2012
HR.BLR.com
The Top Five Total Rewards Priorities Survey series, sponsored by Deloitte, LLP, and the International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists (ISCEBS), is an annual barometer of talent and benefits management challenges facing organizations.

I was going to exercise but…
Chicago Tribune
Dozens of things can derail a workout. You’re too tired, too hungry or too stressed. You’re bored with your workout or progressing too slowly. Your favorite machine is occupied or the swimming pool is closed for repairs. Your throat is sore or your knee hurts. The American Council on Exercise calls these …

Survey: Successful Companies Have an Employee-Focused Culture
TLNT.com
The report concentrates on three areas: the HR focus and landscape in 2012, the nature of assessment use in organizations, and the use of technology in HR processes. There’s a lot in this survey, but here are some of the highlights.

Really? Carrying a cold bottle aids exercise
New York Times
Studies of athletes have found that wearing cooling vests or similar items during exercise can help lower the rate at which the core temperature rises, delaying fatigue, improving performance and causing less perceived effort. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that the simple act of carrying a cold thermos can have the same effect in people who are overweight.

Obesity costly in more ways than one
The Chattanoogan
It’s known that obesity takes a toll on physical health, often leading to chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and joint problems. What many don’t recognize is the financial burden associated with obesity — costs that go far beyond the obese individual.

Join us on Wednesday, March 14^th at the free Workforce™ Benefits 2012 Online Conference.  From 12:00-1:00pm ET, Virgin HealthMiles will co-present the live webinar “Effective Incentive Practices:  How Integration Maximizes Your Employee Health Strategy.”

During the webinar, Barrett Coakley, senior product marketing manager, Virgin HealthMiles and Beverly Davis, CPA, RSBO, director of finance, Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) will share best practices and a real-world incentive strategy case study. Participants will discover how centralized management of incentives helps in reviewing results, adding programs and changing rewards structures as health and wellness strategies evolve.

This webcast will cover:

• how incentives help improve the impact of employee health and wellness strategies
• how integrating incentives helps to maximize budget, improve reporting, and drive program participation
• a real-world example demonstrating how to successfully align rewards with program participation and healthy behavior change

That’s not all. From 3:30-4:15pm ET, Tom Abshire, SVP of products, marketing, and member engagement, Virgin HealthMiles, will participate on an executive panel, which will provide strategic guidance, expert observations and proven best practices for creating a workplace culture of health that supports employee health and business performance.

Register for the free Workforce™ Benefits 2012 online conference.

Can’t make the event?  A free recording of the webinar will be available after the event on the Virgin HealthMiles website.

WorldatWork: Employee Wellness Programs Expand to Well-Being
MarketWatch
Organizations’ health & wellness offerings have expanded beyond traditional programs (that primarily focus on physical health) to integrated well-being programs that now include mental and emotional health, financial health, work-life effectiveness, and workplace environment and stress.

Large employers increasingly see incentives as solution to health
Employee Benefit News
While there is still much discussion about whether and how incentives really work for engaging employees in wellness programs, …

26 percent of U.S. adults obese in 2011
UPI.com
One-in-four US adults were considered obese in 2011, a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found. The index used Americans’ self-reported height and weight to calculate body mass index scores. The 2011 metro area findings …

As cost increases stabilize, employers remain aggressive about healthcare cost-cutting
Employee Benefit News
Although the rate of health care cost increases is expected to remain stable in 2012, employers are taking more aggressive steps to manage their rising costs and improve employee health, according to findings from the 2012 Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care.

Survey reports that just over 10 percent of American adults regularly practice healthy habits – lack of time is a culprit
American Heart Association
Are you one of the many Americans not practicing healthy habits? A recent American Heart Association survey reports only 12 percent of American adults regularly practice all of these healthy habits: good nutrition, exercise and oral care.  Of those that listed an excuse for not following through with healthy habits, the most common culprit is said to be a lack of time.

PFCD Announces Sponsorship of National Employee Wellness Month
HealthWorks Collective
This June marks the fourth annual National Employee Wellness Month, an initiative that provides business leaders with fresh ideas and proven strategies around prevention and wellness. At the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, we know …

How Exercise Can Change Your DNA
Time Healthland
Exercise does a lot of good things — it burns calories, helps keep your weight in check and lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Now add one more thing to the list: physical activity can change your DNA.