Consider an outside company — and your employees
When you have the results of the HRAs and screenings, you’ll want to work with your insurance company to perform an annual claims review. At that point, you’ll be able to plan for the installation of a wellness program.
But you might not want to keep that plan under your own roof.
Because of compliance regulations and the general complexity of HIPAA laws, you might be better off turning to an outside company to ensure that your burgeoning program remains legal. After all, you already work with a law firm to handle your legal matters, an accounting firm to handle your numbers and a bank to keep everything in order, so why not work with professionals when it comes to the literal health of your business?
“Running these programs is difficult,” says Michael Nadeau, president and chief executive officer, Viverae Inc., Dallas. “There’s a lot of work that goes into coordinating it and making it all happen. And it’s just as easy to coordinate a program for 1,000 employees as it is for 50 employees. That’s why the spend tends to be a little higher per employee for smaller companies.”
No matter your choice on that matter, your employees do need to feel a sense of inclusion in —and perhaps even some sliver of ownership of — the program, so involve them as early as possible. Tell them about the program as you develop it, and if you build a wellness planning committee, make sure you bring in people from as many departments as possible. And when the program is prepared to launch, make sure you pass along that information well in advance.
The key to increased participation is to offer an incentive, especially now as we continue to recover from recession and every little bonus bears the glint of gold. Perhaps your employees would react to paid time off or reduced premium costs. Both are common incentives, according to a panel of more than two dozen industry experts.
“You need to show someone you’re thinking about their health,” Nadeau says. “This is where you need to provide the right information at the right time and at the right frequency, because you need to have specific programs designed for a specific population.”
