Wellness programs have long been a
mainstay of the insurance industry’s efforts to educate customers about ways to maintain and improve good
health. Today, outreach methods are more
sophisticated and effective in developing a
consciousness about healthy behavioral
change habits.
Lunchtime lectures, redesigned cafeteria
menus, and wellness services accessible
through assessments and media such as
online tools, Webcams and podcasts are
some of the ways that employees are kept
informed about maintaining weight, reducing
stress and identifying risk factors that contribute to creating a healthier lifestyle and
managing or mitigating chronic conditions.
Smart Business spoke with Rose Gantner, Ed.D., senior director of health promotion for UPMC Health Plan of Pittsburgh, about how businesses can work
with the health insurer to improve eating
habits and why this is important.
Why is a wellness program important in a
company setting?
Research supports that having a work-place culture in which everyone is on
board about the measures they can take to
improve health saves the company money,
increases productivity and helps with
employee creativity and retention. A national study conducted by the University of
Michigan concluded that for every dollar
invested in a wellness program, a firm
reaped the equivalent of three dollars in
savings. Health promotion programs are a
hot trend now as businesses have realized
that keeping people healthy is not only
good for morale, but has a major influence
on their ability to operate with fewer disruptions while engaging employees to mitigate risk factors as well as decreasing
health care costs.
What are some ways to spread the word
about the importance of eating well?
You can offer a series of different programs after conducting assessments on
everything from food served in the company cafeteria, products stocked in vending machines and the level of employees’
knowledge about everything from calorie
and fat intake to exercise. Your aim should
be to make sure that you target specific
interventions that address healthy living.
Many of the features of some programs are
free while others — such as a weight management coaching program that allows session telephone consultations regularly for
up to one year and with follow-up — have
an added fee. Reports provide employers
with defined goals and outcomes from
employee participation and completion.
What does it take for programs such as these
to be successful?
Senior management must buy into the
effort. Among other factors, their support
and leadership demonstrates to the work
force that the insurance company is not individually targeting people in order to lower
health care costs but reviewing the aggregate
data of their population and, more importantly, determining what strategies and incentives can be implemented to improve the
employees’ well being. We approach our task
in an interdisciplinary way by finding internal
champions who can promote the benefits of
sustaining healthy weight management
throughout an organization.
Sixty-five percent of the American population is overweight, creating far-reaching
consequences for most companies. Employers want a work force that continues
to perform at its optimal best, but poor eating habits give rise to a whole host of circumstances that affect profitability.
Workers’ compensation and disability
claims drop, absenteeism is lowered, presenteeism — the ability to focus on the
work for longer periods of time —
improves and productivity rises.
Studies have shown it takes $45,000 on
average to train and retrain a new mid-level
worker. If a company can provide the tools
that allow an employee to implement a
healthy lifestyle or change his eating
behavior, the cost of refilling a job that’s
lost to illness is lowered substantially.
How do you teach healthy eating?
We’ll go into a company cafeteria and,
working with the firm, help redesign the
menu so that it offers more items that are
high in fiber and a wide selection of foods
that is both lower in calories and fat. We
will create ‘dining smart’ cards; labels
placed adjacent to a food item that show
the nutritional information of each serving.
Of course, the extent to which we redo the
menu also depends on how much a firm is
willing to spend to improve an often
already-subsidized cafeteria program. We
have seen that many companies will
charge less for healthier foods, in order to
encourage their consumption, and more
for high-calorie and fat-laden products.
We offer lunch and learn programs during
which UPMC nutritionists and certified
health coaches lead discussions on healthy
eating during the lunch hour and after work,
and as the program spreads companywide,
we often find that a number of workers have
become enthusiastic about developing
healthy eating habits. We then find these
champions to show others how they, too,
can lose weight and more importantly,
maintain the sustainability of weight loss.
ROSE GANTNER, Ed.D., is the senior director of health promotion for UPMC Health Plan in Pittsburgh. Reach her at (412) 454-8571 or at [email protected].
