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Results-Driven Worksite Wellness

How do you build executive support for Worksite Wellness?

Thursday, October 9th, 2014

Building sustained executive support for Worksite Wellness is often one of the most important roles of a wellness professional. In my decades working with over a thousand organizations, here are the top three best practices with the biggest impact:

Starting with number three…

#3: Dig into the details and show them the plan.

None of us really enjoy putting proposals and plans together, but I have found it to be absolutely critical to getting senior management buy-in for an employee wellness program. All managers want to be seen as good decision-makers. This means they need to be taken through the details so that they can satisfy themselves that the program will deliver results and mitigate any risks. A well-written proposal for an employee wellness program should answer all the major questions that a good manager should be asking.

Questions I hear senior managers ask are: What will the program cost? How much new overhead will it add to our costs? How will we measure its impact? What economic impact will the program have on our organization? Will employees adopt it? Will they like it? How will the program be rolled out? What policy and physical changes will be necessary? How soon can we see the results? What future actions are we going to be committed to taking? What are our main competitors doing about wellness? A well-written proposal becomes your best defense against potential critics while it also creates a blueprint for implementation. A carefully prepared proposal for a wellness program is an incredibly important strategy for building strong senior management support for wellness.

#2 Cultivate a “C-level” champion.

Your program won’t thrive without a senior executive talking it up to the organization’s top decision-making group. Most of the time this leadership comes from the VP of Human Resources, but sometimes it can be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Someone needs to speak on behalf of the wellness program and be a credible advocate. Once I was sitting with a group of senior managers for a signature national company and I watched the CFO make a fool of himself by citing a number of deeply held, but erroneous views on wellness. Thank God the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) was well-read on wellness and easily shot down the CFO’s spurious arguments and irreverent bluster.

One way to cultivate a champion is to deliver a cadence of communications to them via email, and in-person meetings, arming them with powerful pro-wellness sound bites. By communicating high-quality independent research and the results from your own program, you can turn a casual supporter into an ardent champion. There will always be competing priorities and resource needs that will have the potential to derail support for wellness efforts. Cultivating a credible and effective wellness C-level champion is absolutely critical to the long term success of your wellness initiative, ensuring that support for your program stays strong regardless of occasional headwinds.

And now for #1…drum roll please…

#1: Three little letters: R…O…I!

The most effective wellness program leaders use a strong economic rationale and positioning for their program. The thousands of senior managers I have worked with over the years all resonated with the economic argument for justifying investment in an employee wellness program. The prospect of avoiding future health plan costs, sick leave absenteeism costs, workers’ compensation costs, disability insurance costs and presenteeism costs helped senior managers support the funding and initiation of a worksite wellness program. Most of the time a PowerPoint deck with economic highlights of peer review studies did the trick. With that said…. we all still need to be very careful not to over-promise and risk under-delivering, so make sure you make conservative estimates of economic return for your program that you can easily surpass.

Of course if you pursue this strategy you have to measure economic return and make sure your wellness program uses a broad array of programming strategies to affect economic variables. This is about more than just reducing selected health risks! In my experience, making the case that spend on wellness programs creates significant ROI has been critical to unlocking the investment and support for the kind of program structure that actually impacts employee health.

There are more than a dozen other strategies for building strong senior management support for wellness. The first session of our Wellness Certification WellCert Level 1 covers this topic in more depth. To dig into wellness ROI, check out our series of online courses on Wellness Economics.

For more Results-Driven Wellness, follow @WellnessCzar on Twitter. This blog covers topics from our five-level WellCert certification program for worksite wellness practitioners. We love your feedback. Use the comment tool below to let us know how you liked the post and any ways we could improve.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Friday, May 9th, 2014

ACA Title II, Sec. 2202. Permitting hospitals to make presumptive eligibility determinations for all Medicaid eligible populations. “Ugly” – “Of course you are covered by Medicaid!” This provision gives authority for hospitals to determine the preliminary eligibility of each patient for Medicaid. This opens up the opportunity for hospital admissions staff to presumptively determine that the patient is Medicaid eligible. The more the merrier, after all our children and grandchildren will pick up the tab. This legislative initiative provides an enormous incentive for hospital admissions staff to creatively game the Medicaid eligibility rules of a state agency that historically suffers from chronic under-staffing. Who is going to care if you fudge the rules? Anybody ever heard of the concept of “checks and balances”? Apparently not. No discernible improvement in population health status and no discernible improvement in long term health cost control.

Please let others know about this blog and have them “follow” @Wellness Czar on Twitter for the section topics. This information is also available in summary PDF form by making a request to [email protected].

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

ACA Title II, Sec. 2201. Enrollment simplification and coordination with state health insurance exchanges: “Bad” – Streamlining is not always good. This provision requires a streamlining and simplification of eligibility for Medicaid, both the categorically eligible and the CHIP eligible. This makes it easier to qualify for Medicaid while Medicaid itself has almost bankrupted the states. It is a program that has a historical compound growth rate of almost 10% per year since 1965. It’s out-of-control and we are adding millions more people to its roles. Is that very wise? I don’t think so. Get Medicaid under fiscal and programmatic control then add more people to it. Not the other way around. “Streamlining” means reducing the potential obstacles to coverage, for example whether the individual is really eligible for the program. No discernible improvement in population health status and no discernible improvement in long term health cost control.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Monday, May 5th, 2014

ACA Title II, Sec. Technical corrections: “Bad” – Further unwisely expands eligibility. This legislative initiative further opens up eligibility for the CHIP program. It relaxes the legal language for residence and expands the eligibility caps. Because those controlling federal expenditure patterns (aka Democrats) did not have to compromise with those who oppose more federal spending (aka Republicans) , initiatives like this were included in the Law. Unfortunately the financial burden created by the other legislative initiatives in the Law makes every one of these overly generous and unwise provisions just one more insult to long term economic solvency for the U.S. economy. No discernible improvement in population health status and no discernible improvement in long term health cost control.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec. 1563. Sense of the senate promoting fiscal responsibility: “Ugly” – No way is this Law going to reduce the federal deficit. This section is the explicit statement by Congressional sponsors of the expectation that the ACA will reduce the $17+ trillion federal deficit between 2010 and 2019 and improve the solvency of the Medicare Part A Trust Fund. I am sorry, but somebody is definitely smoking something. This is a huge case of wishful thinking with somebody else’s money. The net economic effect of the ACA as it currently stands will be to significantly increase the deficit and the insolvency of the Medicare program. It does not take a PHD economist to recognize that significant expansion of health insurance coverage without adequate cost controls will not lead to lower total health costs, no matter how creative your accounting practices are. Shame on you CBO!

Please let others know about this blog and have them “follow” @WellnessCzar on Twitter for the section topics. This information is also available in summary PDF form by making a request to [email protected].

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Friday, February 28th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec. 1562. Conforming amendments: “Good” – Required to consolidate the federal role over both group and individual health plans. This provision standardizes the federal Public Health Service (PHS) Act language regarding the regulation of group and individual health plan. This “clean –up” provision simply amends the language in the Act which allows the same legal treatment to group and individual health plans. Primarily housekeeping changes.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec. 1561. Health information technology enrollment standards and protocols: “Good” – Requires enrollment technology. This provision requires the development of standards and guidelines on how streamlined enrollment technology will be developed. The emphasis here appears to be on streamlining the process with minimal attention to standards of accuracy and fraud avoidance.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec. 1560. Rules of construction: “Good” – helps establish clarity in Law’s impact in four collateral areas.Lawmakers clarify here that no part of the ACA negates any of the antitrust laws, counters the ERISA exemption of the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act, prevent any institution of high education from offering student health insurance plans or modify the requirements on state agencies responsible for Medicaid and CHIP Programs. This is a typical kind of legislative provision to help resolve unforeseen construction or applicability issues.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec. 1559. Oversight: “Good” – General authorization of Inspector General’s role in ACA. This provision recognizes that the Inspector General of the DHHS has administrative oversight over the Department’s role in the administration and implementation of the Law. This is a general intention statement on the part of the Congress related to the function of oversight of departmental activities. Standard item in most domestic legislation.

ObamaCare Revealed: The “Good”, the “Bad” and the “Ugly”

Monday, February 24th, 2014

ACA Title 1, Sec 1558. Protections for employees: “Good” – Provides general protection to employees. This provision provides general protection to employees that utilize either premium credits or subsidies under the ACA. This statutory provision prohibits employers from discharging an employee because of their use of these features of the ACA. Seems like a way to prevent an employer from firing employees that utilize the credits or subsidies included in the Act. Would be better balanced if it also protected employers from employees that make intentional or unintentional misstatements about their coverage.