buyersguide_wellbeing

Employee Well-Being Platforms A Buyer’s Guide15 Categories to Compare32 Questions to AskWritten for Virgin Pulse by Fran Melmed Founder, context communication consulting

From the time involved in finding the right partner to the money required to implement, communicate, and measure effectiveness, the investment in an employee well-being platform is significant. This guide walks you through how to evaluate your planned investment so you may be confident in your decision.

“Well-being” is a word without consistent definition. Yet most of us, if asked, would come up with one broad enough to encompass feeling strong and vibrant, being emotionally connected to others, possessing a sense of security—and, overall, experiencing a high quality of life.

Employers are intent on improving employees’ well-being because of its impact on business performance and results. Employers that invest in well-being see lowered turnover and increased attraction.1 They see a reduction in sleep disorders, anxiety or depression, and obesity, and an upturn in productivity.2,3 Culturally, their investment leads to a heightened sense of organizational commitment, strengthening trust and improving morale.4

It’s therefore unsurprising that employers are connecting the dots and expanding their approach from one that tackles physical well-being alone to one that considers all aspects of well-being:

1 Edelman Health Barometer, 2011

2 Small Shifts in Well-being Have a Big Impact on Performance, Gallup, 2013

3 Improving Employee Productivity through Improved Health, Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 2013

4 What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs? Harvard Business Review, 2010

The Meaning and Value of Well-Being

To support their aims, employers are looking for products and services that operate from this shared orientation. Well-being platforms are one.

• Physical • Emotional

• Mental • Social

• Economic • Spiritual

The majority of employers currently target the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of well-being, with an increasing number incorporating financial aspects, too. Their interest in targeting multiple dimensions is growing.

Interest Grows in Targeting More than the Physical

SOURCE: Health and Well-being Touchstone Survey, PwC, June 2014

Currently Targeting

93%

55%

73%

64%

Physical Mental

Emotional Financial

Interested in Targeting

27%

20%

26%

23%

Social Career

Community Spiritual

Employee Well-Being Platforms: A Buyer’s Guide © Virgin Pulse 2014. All rights reserved.1

The appeal of well-being platforms lies in their flexibility and breadth.

These software-as-service tools simplify the process of designing, developing, implementing, and managing various aspects of a well-being program. Their task is to bring together much of what employers offer employees into one easily navigated, easily digested space, then individually guide employees as they make strides to better health.

Modern, robust well-being platforms handle health assessments, varied and ongoing challenges, goal and progress tracking, and incentives and rewards management. They integrate with third-party services that deliver biometrics screenings and coaching, and sync with self-directed health technologies such as tracking devices and apps. They can come with a robust content management system that promotes news-breaking items and pushes targeted and customized health content covering a range of topics. And they support each employer’s incentive design, efficiently managing rewards fulfillment upon the completion of certain tasks or the attainment of specific goals. The insights they collect from users reveal interests, priorities, participation, and changes in behavior, and their modular nature allows employers to adapt and expand over time.

Platforms: The Underpinning of Your Strategy

While the specifics vary, platforms:

• Serve as a daily destination: Platforms are a well-being hub, giving employees myriad reasons to return—whether to review their numbers, set or track progress on a goal, take a stress-management quiz, motivate colleagues with a virtual high-five or a little smack talk, make an appointment with a health coach, or collect a reward.

• Create a unique, personalized experience: Platforms facilitate user-driven and user-focused interactions so employees start from where they are and head to where they want to be.

• Distribute rewards: Platforms customize and manage incentives and rewards—intrinsic and extrinsic—based on employee interest, health risk profile, participation, and use of the platform and its tools and services.

• Provide insights: Platforms turn “big data” into actionable data. The data they pull in from health risk assessments, biometrics, wearables, and other sources reveals a fuller picture of each employee, enabling more targeted promotion of services and content. The analytics and reports employers receive reveal program performance, providing necessary direction for strategic adjustments in program design.

• Simplify administration and delivery: Platforms also serve as a hub for employers, easily integrating tools, activities, and services from various vendors so they intelligently “speak” to one another and the employer while speaking more coherently to employees, too.

Platforms perform a herculean task, making the selection criteria for vendor selection crucial.


The primary consideration is whether the platform delivers what it says it does. Your focus may be health care cost reduction, broad engagement, or specific behavior change. Isolate your primary objectives for investing in a platform. Then, with each vendor, inquire about the platform’s results and how these results are determined.

Impact

Outline the research and methodologies forming the backbone of your approach.

Include information about partners, too, such as those who may have designed your

health risk assessment, delivered your coaching services, developed your mobile application

strategy, or helped to evaluate program impact.

Include in your documentation any study or clinical trial demonstrating the effectiveness of

your platform.

1. Proven Effectiveness

What to Look For

What to Ask

Comparing Vendors: 15 Things to Look ForUse the following information and recommended questions to evaluate and more straightforwardly compare options.


What does the platform support and how does that align with your objectives? Review the platform to see how well it supports all aspects of well-being. Then, consider your long-term objectives and evaluate each vendor based on its ability to grow, and counsel, alongside.

Review how each potential vendor can customize its platform, from content and the user interface to services and resources. You want to know whether customization is limited to adding your logo to the platform, or if it means you can develop new content and new challenges and turn other modules on or off without time-consuming and expensive software coding.

Features

Provide a summary of the components or services you provide, including the vendors or

third-party companies that supply them.

Outline your approach to, frequency of, and process for developing new content,

programming, and partnerships.

Describe how you customize the user interface to reflect our company’s branding

and incorporate our messaging.

Describe what’s involved in updating what’s available to employees, outlining what we can

manage independently and what requires your involvement.

2. Platform Components

3. Flexibility and Customization

What to Look For

What to Ask

What to Look For

What to Ask


5 The Consumer Health Mindset, Aon Hewitt, 2014

Having a one-stop shop increases use and exposes employees to more of what’s available to them. Thoroughly review how easy (or difficult) it is to integrate all your third-party services and content. Check also to see how each platform simplifies reporting, pulling data threads together to reveal a bigger, more accurate picture.

More employers are relying on financial incentives to motivate and recognize behavior change. And employees signal they want them. The 2014 Consumer Health Mindset report from Aon Hewitt found consumers ranked financial rewards as the most appealing feature of a wellness program (65 percent).5 Of course, we all like money, but money goes only so far when it comes to behavior change. Find out whether any potential vendor can consult on the strategic application of extrinsic incentives while also drawing upon intrinsic ones. Inquire about the ability to customize incentive design to fit your philosophy as well as your budget. Look also for an understanding of the legal environment, including regulations such as GINA, PPACA, and ADA.

List your company’s experience coordinating with the following third-party companies: (List the third-party companies you wish to integrate the platform and its data with—partners such as EAPs, disease

management, providers of health risk assessments and biometric screenings, tobacco cessation, health plans, voluntary benefits, etc.)

Outline your approach, and the constraints, to integrating existing data from our other vendors with your platform.

Explain your incentive philosophy.

Describe the various methods you have for empowering,

recognizing, and rewarding. Identify both extrinsic and intrinsic tools you use to engage, motivate, and reward.

4. Integration and Collaboration

5. Incentives

What to Look For

What to Ask

What to Look For

What to Ask


You’ll want to know on a regular basis how your employees engage with the platform. How frequently do they return to the platform, and for what duration? What do they find most appealing? You may also want to peel back the layers and see how certain groups of employees use the platform and what impact that’s having. Get clear on what administrative rights you have so there are no surprises about how you gain access to reporting, or at what cost.

Describe the standard reports available to us, including content included, delivery

method, frequency, real-time versus delayed data, ability to compare over

years, etc.

Describe our ability to segment data for reports (e.g., to segment data by geography,

business, health profile, or other segments).

6. ReportingWhat to Look For

What to Ask


The outcomes you desire rely on frequent platform use by your employees, making a well-designed user interface and user experience a requirement. You’re seeking intuitive navigation, consistent treatment, and a clear visual hierarchy so employees know where to find what they want and can accomplish what they want, efficiently and painlessly. Should employees go awry, you want a user experience that anticipates the error (making it a non-event) or gently guides them to correct the mistake. It’s equally important that the platform guides employees to what you want them to see and do, and that it exudes emotion in the same way your content messaging does. And of course, you want a platform that is optimized to perform and look good on mobile, so employees can access information and participate from wherever they are.

User Experience

Explain what tactics you use (e.g., personas, user journeys, usability testing) to design with the end user in mind and to improve your product.

7. User Interface and Experience

What to Look For

What to Ask


Continuing use of the platform is a key marker when evaluating a platform’s performance. What employee percentage regularly interacts with the platform, its available content, and promoted activities and tools? Are current users drawn back and new users drawn in? How broad is each user’s engagement? Ideally, users would return to the platform’s many features and functions on a daily basis so they sustain healthy habits that drive long-term behavior change.

Employees have high expectations for any user experience, thanks to what they’ve come to expect as consumers. You want a platform that performs as easily and looks as good on a phone as it does on a tablet, and for both tablet and phone performance to rival the experience users find on a desktop. When it comes to apps, sensors, and trackers, consumers are the leading purchasers here. Be confident about the breadth of apps and wearables the platform supports so employees don’t have to leave behind a tool they’ve come to value.

How do you define and measure engagement?

Describe the ways in which you create paths for engagement for various users.

Sketch how you customize this experience for individual employees by describing three separate employee scenarios.

How do you ensure a quality experience across various devices (Web, phone, tablet)? Please

include images of your platform on the various devices you support.

List the apps, sensors, and other devices your platform recognizes and syncs with.

8. Engagement

9. Mobile

What to Look For

What to Look For

What to Ask

What to Ask


If your company is global, you may extend some, if not all, of your well-being initiative to countries outside the United States. Seek to understand how well versed each vendor is in serving multinationals. Look for a vendor that has experience with global implementations and customizing for culture, language, and legal requirements.

Describe your experience working with multinational companies, including the number of companies you work with in each country.

Describe how you’ve supported international populations and customized

for local culture and work laws.

10. Global Reach What to

Look For

Employer Appetite for Social, Mobile, Personal Grows

Mobile Apps/ User Interface

User Profiling/ Personalization

52% 40%

50%

42%

Employers show an increased interest in their wellness investment, reflecting employees-as- consumers’ social and mobile habits.

Features Interested in Offering

Feedback Loops

Activity Tracking Devices

What to Ask


Marketing and promotion play a key role in building excitement and driving interest, and maintaining that interest over time. Explore the depth of each vendor’s marketing support to understand what’s available. You’re looking to see if they supply launch materials only, or if they also provide ongoing communication and marketing support for sustained engagement and behavior change. Determine also the ability to customize materials for your audiences, messaging, graphic identity, and channels.

Support

Describe in detail the marketing support you provide for activation and ongoing engagement. Please identify what is included and what

is optional but at additional expense.

Describe how you can customize your communications with our brand,

messaging, and audiences.

11. Promotional SupportWhat to Look For

What to Ask

Your customer support needs will differ from your employees’, yet you both deserve quick, accurate resolution of any problem. Review whether the vendor dedicates a team to support you through implementation and ongoing, and whether this team includes an account manager who understands your goals and acts as your single point of contact. For employees, review whether they’re left to find answers online or if a person is available when they seek assistance.

What staff is assigned to help us? Will we have a single point of contact?

Describe customer support for employees and their families. What resources

(on- and offline) are available? How are employees’ needs triaged and handled?

Describe your service standards and service level guarantees.

12. Customer SupportWhat to Look For

What to Ask


You want to be confident your vendor provides a reliable service and is prepared for any technology disruptions. Equally important is its approach to data protection and security breaches.

Security, Stability, and Pricing

What is your system uptime? How do you handle necessary downtime for

maintenance or updates?

Describe your disaster recovery/business continuity plan.

Who has access to our data? What policies are in place to protect it?

13. Technology and Security

What to Look For

What to Ask

Review the number of clients your prospective vendor represents and its renewal rate, but don’t stop there. Explore the depth of experience, the stability, and the anticipated growth of your potential partner. Look as well for a partner that has experience with your company size, employee populations, and international presence.

Detail the number of employers with whom you currently partner, their size,

and their renewal rate. Identify the number from our industry and include a few references.

List all affiliated companies and any subcontractors.

14. Experience and Stability

What to Look For

What to Ask


Comparing vendors by price can be difficult because of the variation in platform design, services, approach to pricing, definition of a user, customizable features, and so forth. Make sure you understand how you will determine outcomes and what’s included in the price you pay. Be confident you’re comparing apples to apples and you’re aware of any additional pricing considerations that may come up.

Outline your base platform pricing and define eligibility (e.g., do you include spouses

or family and friends?). Make sure the pricing you’re comparing is consistent (PEPY, etc.).

List pricing for these additional services: (Identify the areas of interest to you—

health risk assessments, onsite biometrics, coaching, on-site events, champions programs,

integrations, etc.)

Identify any bundling of services available and how that affects pricing.

15. PricingWhat to Look For

What to Ask


Very Effective Somehwat Effective Not Too Effective

Not At All Effective Don’t Know

The place to start is considering how to measure the investment within the context of your requirements. For many employers, cost cutting is the priority.

The 2014 Employer Health Benefits Survey from Kaiser Family Foundation found wellness programs ranked highest among employers asked to evaluate the most effective tactic for containing health insurance costs.6 Wellness programs ranked higher than high-deductible health plans, narrow networks, increased employee cost sharing, and a number of other recognizable practices.

This belief stands despite evidence increasingly calling such thinking into question. RAND, in a report funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, revealed participation in a wellness program for over five years does not produce statistically significant savings (unlike disease management programs, which do).

Advancing Strategy, Assessing Investment

Employers Consider Wellness Programs Most Effective at Cost Cutting

narrow networks

tighter managed care

tiered provider networks

higher employee cost sharing

disease management programs

consumer driven health plans

wellness programs

Is Cost Reduction a Rational Metric?

Platforms are a major investment, so now you must ask the final, logical question: How confident can you be that your investment is sound?

6 2014 Employer Health Benefits Survey, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

SOURCE: Kaiser/HRET Survey of Employer, Sponsored Health Benefits, 2014.

6% 27% 19% 43% 6%

10% 43% 21% 20% 7%

11% 43% 16% 19% 10%

13% 34% 27% 19% 7%

17% 52% 12% 13% 7%

22% 47% 14% 12% 5%

28% 43% 17% 10% 2%


While the RAND report did not discover a meaningful monetary return on investment, the researchers did find participants in wellness programs experience statistically and clinically meaningful improvements in exercise frequency, smoking behavior, and weight control.6

Here’s the point. Investments in employee well-being must be made with the desired return in mind. There’s an array of metrics—beyond cost reduction—that align to softer metrics (“It’s the right thing to do”) and harder ones (improved productivity, reduced turnover and disability claims, etc.). Advancing strategy and assessing investment require knowing, in advance, the metrics critical to success and intently tracking their performance.

Platform visits, use, and satisfaction are important metrics. They form a baseline that validates your continued investment. Over time, the improvement in employee well-being and related company-driven metrics will demonstrate any platform’s essential value.

Other Metrics to Determine Value

Employee MetricsSample metrics of satisfaction, use, and improved well-being • Employee engagement

• Employee participation

• Change in behavior and health risks

• Change in biometric measures

• Reduced stress and depression

Company MetricsSample metrics of safety, productivity, cost, and culture

• Health care utilization

• Disability and workers’ compensation costs

• Productivity and safety

• Turnover

• Absenteeism

• Morale

• Engagement


Buyer Advice, Buyer AdviseWorkplace well-being has vast market potential, drawing substantial interest and investment in what was identified as a $6 billion industry in the 2013 RAND report. New companies are entering, drawn by the desire to solve a thorny social problem, while established companies are pivoting from consumer-facing products to more enterprise-oriented solutions.

With a dizzying number of companies offering online well-being platforms, a thoughtful selection process is in order. This guide was written with that need in mind, and offers advice to buyers and decision-makers.

Now it’s your turn. Join us at www.theuprisingblog.com for a discussion about finding, evaluating, and selecting a well-being platform. On our blog, we invite you to tell us:

• Your must-have and can-do-without features and services

• Lessons learned and costly mistakes avoided

• Categories and questions you think we missedVisit www.theuprisingblog.com and share your experience. Let’s learn together.


Unlike narrowly-focused employee health and engagement solutions, Virgin Pulse is a hub of consumer-focused strategies and innovative tools that set the foundation for a company’s engagement efforts. More than 250 industry leaders representing 1.5M+ employees have selected Virgin Pulse’s programs to reinvigorate their workplace. Learn more at www.virginpulse.com.

She hosts CoHealth Checkup, a monthly radio program on workplace wellness trends and innovations, and is a frequent speaker on health and well-being.

Learn more at www.contextcommunication.com

About Virgin Pulse

About the Author

Virgin Pulse, part of Sir Richard Branson’s famed Virgin Group, helps employers create a workforce with the energy, focus, and drive necessary to fully engage at work and in life. With its award-winning online platform, the company fosters healthy daily habits and sustainable behavior change that help employees thrive at work and across all aspects of life.

Fran Melmed is the founder of context, a communication consulting firm specializing in workplace wellness. Fran’s work with clients including Comcast, Cigna, and IKEA has helped employees and their families make better health care and lifestyle decisions. Fran is also the creator of Hotseat, a workplace wellness tool designed to inject microfitness breaks into the workday.


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