Proving ROI on health and fitness programs is a challenge for many HR professionals and their organisations. Melissa Yen looks at the latest trends in the market and examines how healthy employees can bring business benefits
Proving ROI on health and fitness programs is a challenge for many HR professionals and their organisations. Melissa Yen looks at the latest trends in the market and examines how healthy employees can bring business benefits
With the current social focus on health and wellbeing, the business benefits that healthy employees can bring are often well known to HR professionals. Health and fitness programs can increase productivity, attract and retain staff, fulfil social responsibilities and assist in creating a positive and caring culture.
“There is a growing awareness of the value of company-sponsored health programs in the corporate sector, particularly in a service-based economy,” says Kerryn Phelps, former president of the Australian Medical Association and managing director of Uclinic. “With a highly competitive environment, quality health programs offered to employees are a significant incentive for attracting and retaining staff and signal a culture of caring about the health of employees within an organisation,” she says.
As a result of such incentives, Phelps claims that the role of an HR director has increased and evolved significantly. Gone are the days when the role of HR could be defined simply as “career and business carer”. Now, as health checks become part of the working day, the role of “health carer” joins the list.
Taking action
For Goulburn Valley Health (GV Health), a regional health service in Victoria, the high number of overweight nursing and other staff on the payroll led to the implementation of a Weight Watchers at Work (WW@W) program in April 2005. Classes and weigh-ins are conducted at lunchtime and workmates support each other by sharing their experiences with the program.
As Stacey Minotti, HR officer for GV Health explains, “it started off with a few people going to Weight Watchers and then HR thinking that if we could encourage more people, they could attend the classes on site during their lunch break, making it easy to maintain”. Being a health service provider itself, building a business case for this program and others such as the QUIT program for smokers, Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), and Family Day Care initiatives was not difficult for the HR team.
As a result, the combined weight loss by staff this year has reached 407.3kg. Both Minotti and Kerryn Healy, director of finance at GV Health, believe that initiatives such as the WW@W program have been such a success due to the support and involvement of the executive team.
“It is really about getting the buy-in at the top and trying to encourage executive or senior people to be involved in the programs and be fully supporting them,”says Healy. “I think it is also about trying to ensure you’ve got the resources and that you do have an idea about what you’re trying to achieve. That is, if it’s a culture change or if it’s a set participation that you’re really focussing on. You must genuinely try and make it as accessible as possible, so look at timing when you run things, make sure you’re flexible with your staff and make sure they can feel that they can attend these things and not be penalised for doing it.”
Optus rolled out a health and wellbeing program in 2003, which was born out of their employee Enterprise Partnership Agreement (EPA). Before that, the company did not have a detailed health program, so the idea was tendered and various providers were pitched different programs.
Optus developed an intranet site on health and wellbeing, which provides a range of information on fitness, nutrition and a monthly calendar of topics of different health issues. Newsletters came next and are sent out to all 10,000 employees nationally, an initiative that has been well received. In addition to this, the company runs a biannual Health Expo for employees, where a range of service providers attend providing health information, screening tests for cholesterol and blood glucose, healthy eating demonstrations and general information such as QUIT. According to Wotherspoon, this proved invaluable for the organisation, as they were able to build a profile of the organisation’s fitness and mental wellbeing, which they had no information on prior to the initiatives taking place.
Building ongoing initiatives from there was simple and a key objective of the company OH&S programs. “We didn’t really have to do a hard sell, the timing was right and it was very much driven by that notion of Optus as an Employer of Choice and what sorts of programs they offer via HR to maintain that status. Providing a range of health and wellbeing initiatives was one aspect that we knew we needed to put in place and has been embraced by the organisation,” she says.
Phelps recommends HR managers look at evidence on health programs in comparable workplace settings. “The most significant health risk factors are modifiable: that is, tobacco use, obesity, inactivity, excessive alcohol use and poor nutrition. This means that they are amenable to intervention with well targeted comprehensive programs which address these risk factors.” Phelps also believes that negotiations with insurers may reveal a benefit in terms of lower insurance costs for companies or individuals participating in health programs.
Challenges in establishing ROI
Although there appears to be an abundance of data supporting a positive ROI for health promotion programs in small and large companies, Phelps says one of the main challenges for any preventive health program is that the ROI will not necessarily be seen within one or even several financial years. This can mean that companies may merely rely on assumptions or other extrapolated evidence that healthy employees are more productive.
Even then, Phelps believes simple values for ROI may not be the best indicator of the ultimate value of a health program. “For example, do the calculations include all employees, or only the participants in the programs? How do you distinguish the ROI for disease management versus wellness initiatives? What factors, such as absenteeism, intellectual capacity, number of acute events, effect of external events, delay of early retirement, are included in the savings analysis?” she asks.
“When you look at data, there is a wide variation in results for ROI reported; however, there is consistent reporting of positive ROI, even though the quantum might vary. A one-size-fits-all approach will not work from country to country, region to region or even company to company. Successful health programs in one environment cannot be expected to transplant into other cultural situations.” This ultimately makes the task of deciphering which wellness programs are appropriate for your organisation and its workers more difficult.
Tips and suggestions
According to both Healy and Wotherspoon, effective communication with employees is the key.
“You need to talk to your people about what they want. You need to find out what your organisation’s needs are and then tailor your program to those needs and expect that it will take time to develop it and drive it,” said Wotherspoon. “Another tip is to look broadly, look at what other organisations are doing and don’t be afraid to ask. Look at the number of health and wellbeing providers out there but you really need to choose providers that will work in well with your company and the culture within your organisation.”
Healy claims that ensuring people around the organisation such as department heads and supervisors know what’s available and know they can refer people to those programs for assistance is vital, as is celebrating successes so that such initiatives are not only talked about, but rather, become central to the organisation and encourage healthy lifestyle changes among workers.
As the role of HR professionals shifts from administrator to champion of health and wellbeing, Phelps believes that “it is important that they build an evidence base for the programs they choose to implement and monitor participation and outcomes. Demand can also be driven by stimulating the interest and involvement of employees to maximise voluntary involvement.”
