Recently, Tom Abshire, SVP of Products, Marketing and Member Engagement at Virgin HealthMiles spoke with David E. Williams, author of the Health Business Blog and co-founder of MedPharma Partners, LLC, about workplace wellness and why standard approaches to employee health and wellness don’t work.  Here’s a brief excerpt:

Williams:
A lot of people do wellness programs and there are many standard approaches.  I’m wondering from your perspective, what’s wrong with those standard approaches to wellness that are used by most employers? If the standard approaches aren’t very successful, why do we see them persist in the marketplace?

Abshire:
Standard approaches just aren’t as effective as they need to be.  Much of the cost of health care and the increases are driven by preventable lifestyle related diseases.  That’s where wellness is supposed to be at the forefront of prevention and reversing those trends.

They persist as much as anything because of inertia.  They keep coming back to the same old things with the same old partners and getting the same results.  Much of the approach to wellness has been driven by the tradition of the medical system with which we evolved. There’s really much around last century’s focus on communicable disease when the answer was ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do this.’  It was more of a point in time issue.  The top down approach like what we have today really made sense.

Health issues today, the issues of lifestyle related diseases, are largely behavioral, so the fix needs to come from within.  That’s why Virgin is leading the way with our consumer group.  We think about the problem from the point of view of the individual and their motivations and helping them find the simple things they can do to stay healthy.

Williams:
Wellness is a topic that a lot of companies are interested in. There’s a feel good and positive image that can be created by investing in wellness, but does wellness have a real impact on profitability?

Abshire:
It certainly does.  Look at the economics behind the treatment of diseases and the impact on profitability. We know we have to do something.

Our group did an economic study last year and found, looking across different industries, that for the average company in a leading industry like technology or financial services, the impact over the next ten years of lifestyle-related diseases alone would cause about 25% reduction in per employee profitability.  Even the profitability leaders would see a 10% reduction in the average profitability per employee.

They have to do something unless they can raise prices or change behaviors.  That’s where wellness really comes into play.  That’s where more employers are going to see more of an impact on profitability.  There would be fewer consumers for the health services that they’re paying for and providing.

Added to that, there will be benefits in a couple of different ways; lower health care costs and higher profitability.  There is quite a bit of research out there that shows a large part of the positive impact of the healthy employee base is the increase in productivity.  Sometimes there is two to three times the cost savings that one would see in the savings from medical care costs alone.

As we come out of the current economic struggle, retention of top talent is going to be critically important for companies.  We hear all the time through our interactions with employees all the time how they love programs that they feel part of and enabled by because they feel that that’s much more of an investment in them by their employer. It really drives up loyalty and cohesion within the culture for the company.

Listen to the full podcast here. 

There’s no denying the power of social connections when it comes to improving our health. Ever wonder why it’s so powerful in the workplace? Because social reinforcement within your organization is targeted, contextual, flexible, and natural.

Targeted – As workplace peers, we know something about our colleagues—their interests, their past struggles, their tendencies.  In a social context we can encourage and support one another based on this specific understanding of our friends.  We understand something about their internal point of view and how they are best motivated.

Contextual -  Since we work in the same environment, we understand the external influences on our motivation and ability to act or adopt new behaviors.  When health-related events are scheduled automatically from the top down, they may inadvertently coincide with a big project, a vacation or when we are focused on another goal.  But within our social group, our peers understand this context and have ongoing, real-time feedback about when we are most open to a new event, a fun competition, or a new behavior.

Flexible – As peers we can be very adaptable to internal and external factors and fluidly adjust our support in the moment.

Natural – As human begins, we are social animals.  We respond to social norms and social feedback, and we work to find our place in the social structure by changing our behaviors or approaches to other people.  And this desire to fit in can increase the impact of other motivational levers you may use, like incentives or competitions to promote healthy behaviors and healthy cultures.

We’re seeing the evidence of these powerful social elements within our HealthMiles program’s new social community, Connections. Learn all about Connections, and how you can leverage social influences to improve employee health.

News from this past week.

New IBI Research Finds CFOs Play Critical Role in Health Care Benefits Decisions
Sacramento Bee
C-suite understands the impact of employee health on financial performance and ability to compete in a global economy SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — According to …

Fewer Americans Have Employer-Based Health Insurance
Gallup.com
WASHINGTON, DC — Fewer Americans got their health insurance from an employer in 2011 (44.6%) than in 2010 (45.8%), continuing the downward trend Gallup and Healthways have documented since 2008. As employer-based health insurance has declined, …

Exercise a Defense Against Dementia: Study
HealthDay News
Here’s another reason to get into shape: Physical activity may reduce the risk of dementia-related death, according to a new study. Researchers assessed the health of more than 45,000 men and nearly 15,000 women, ages 20 to 88 years, in the United States and grouped them into one of three fitness categories — low, middle or high.

US Healthcare Costs Annual Growth Rates Show Broad Based Increases in December …
MarketWatch
Across the board, healthcare costs as measured by annual rates of change went up in the last month of the year. The S&P Healthcare Economic Composite Index indicates that the average per capita cost of healthcare services covered by commercial …