The WellRight Blog

Employee wellness platforms are most valuable if they’re flexible and can adapt as your company goals and employee needs evolve over time. Just because a platform has all the bells and whistles doesn’t mean it will still be relevant in five years—or even one year.

Among the essential factors to consider when choosing a corporate wellness platform is the ability to integrate with additional health and well-being partners. The more seamlessly you can integrate your platform with other solutions your business will need, the more effective your wellness program will be.

A successful wellness program isn’t as simple as just communicating company benefits and offering a few additional services—especially in today’s work environment where it’s a challenge keeping employees happy where they are.

Instead, effective wellness programs have to be designed to meet employees where they currently are and where they will be as they progress on their wellness journeys.

This means your wellness program should never be static.

In our webinar “Why Personalization is the Secret to Your Wellness Program Success,“ WellRight Chief Medical Officer LouAnne Giangreco, M.D. talks about common barriers health plans face when creating personalized wellness programs—and how engaging the right mix of stakeholders improves offerings and demonstrates value to employers.

As companies consider a systematic approach to wellness program development where stakeholders are engaged, they must account for equity. Are they considering the needs of every member of the employee population? How can they leverage qualitative and quantitative data, have conversations within teams, and build out new programs? Are those programs truly applicable to the needs of diverse groups so everyone can participate?

In this blog, we’ve highlighted four ways to garner interest and engage stakeholders.

In the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent Consumer Expenditures Survey, health care costs made up 8.4% of the average American household budget.

When you pay that much, you don’t want to waste a dime. That’s why employees are becoming increasingly discerning health care consumers, seeking out care and resources that work for their unique needs.

How can you help employees effectively curate their health care for optimal results … without getting too involved in their health care decisions?

Member satisfaction and reenrollment—the holy grail for health plans—is becoming more challenging. Today’s health plan members are concerned about value. They want the best health outcomes for the lowest cost.

Employers and brokers have a big stake in the game, as well. It’s their job to select plans that offer the most holistic, equitable care for everyone.

Health plans rely on an understanding of member needs to create interventions that improve population health. That presents a challenge in the best of circumstances, but the pandemic added another nuance—delayed care.

While they were actively involved in providing access to the information, vaccinations and care members needed to prevent and treat COVID, health plans lost valuable insight into the health needs of their members … because routine checkups and tests were put on the back burner.

“How much should our corporate wellness program cost?”

It seems like a simple question, but it’s not easy to get a straight answer. There’s plenty of conflicting information out there, and not a lot of transparency about what goes into the costs involved.

But that’s OK, because we’ve got answers for you that will help you plan out a corporate wellness program budget that’s attainable and effective.

Health care is expensive.

And with the payment models currently in place, it’s not going to get any cheaper. In fact, health care analysts are expecting the annual cost per employee to reach $15,000. That’s enough to make any CEO spit out their coffee, no matter their business size.

But there’s hope on the horizon. A new approach to managing patient care and reimbursement—called value-based care—could be the key to making health care more affordable and more effective. Even better, your corporate wellness platform is already laying the groundwork for value-based care, shortening your runway to better health care and more manageable costs.

“Nurses see the world in its most raw, inexplicable, unfair form of reality and somehow, by the grace of their inherent hope for humanity and unmeasurable depth of courage, still love it.” – Danielle Leveck, @nurseabnormalities

Burnout among nurses is at an all-time high.

The pandemic escalated an already tenuous situation—so much so that nearly a third of health care workers have been rethinking their choice of profession.

“Our health plan doesn’t offer an effective employee wellness program.”

If your members are saying that about you, first of all, you’re not alone: Many health plans haven’t invested in a wellness platform or programming for their employer groups.

But, there are plenty of reasons why they should.