A new era of wellness

2009 Alla tua Salute! awards recognize the next level of wellness program development

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

 PERHAPS THE UNRELENTING COVERAGE of employer-based wellness plans is working.

Four years into presenting our annual salute to healthy employers in the Fox Valley, the concept of wellness plans no longer seems to be an ethereal, feel-good benefit offered by corporations with so much money that they burn piles of $20 bills to fire their boilers during cold northeast Wisconsin winters.

Nor is it a subject – when brought up in conversation about employee benefits – that leaves most listeners dumbfounded with the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights stare.

That was often the case when discussing workplace wellness programs just a half decade ago. But not so much any more.

Workplace wellness programs – as an additional employee benefit and a risk-management practice for a company’s group health insurance plan – have risen to a new level of awareness, performance and expectation in New North management circles. From B2B’s perspective, we’ve witnessed it in the increasing aptitude of nominations we’ve received in the four years we’ve conducted our annual corporate wellness awards. New North B2B’s 2009 Alla tua Salute! Awards, generously sponsored by Fond du Lac-based Agnesian Healthcare, are a testament to the adaptation of workplace wellness programs in the region.

Our three award winners in 2009 – selected by a panel of some of the region’s leading experts in wellness program design – represent excellence in employer-based wellness programming at various stages of the development process. It’s the first year in which we’ve presented three separate awards recognizing excellence at various stages of an employer-based wellness program development.

For this fourth annual award, our panelists selected previous two-time winner Miles Kimball Co. of Oshkosh for our Leadership in Wellness Award, Sadoff & Rudoy Industries of Fond du Lac for our Emerging Success in Wellness Award, and Lutheran Homes of Oshkosh for our Start Up Wellness Program Award. The selection process has become more difficult over the years, our panelists noted, as best practices in wellness programming continue to be elevated by the nominations B2B receives for the award.

“Compared to where we were when we first started this (in 2006), I was impressed with all the nominees,” said Michael Bina, principal partner with IntellectualMarketing, a Green Bay-based communications firm which includes wellness programming and health care tourism among its specialties. “These companies are out there in the wilderness, looking for a route - a way to wellness without a GPS. They’re doing things, trying things and finding success. More importantly, they’re trailblazing for small business owners to take up that path.”

Miles ahead of the pack

OUR 2009 AWARDS MARK the third time in the four years B2B has conducted its Alla tua Salute! Awards that Miles Kimball Co. has been recognized as an outstanding model of an employer-based wellness program. So much so, that our 2009 panelists honored the Oshkosh-based catalog and Internet retailer with a first-ever Leadership in Wellness Award.

“They continue to be a leader in our neck of the woods,” said Dan Morrill, an employee benefits consultant with Servant Insurance in Oshkosh.

Miles Kimball has been offering employees bio-metric health risk assessments for nine years, and during those nine years has compiled measurable group data which demonstrates tremendous improvement in the health of its workforce.

In 2001, only 23 percent of its staff were assessed at being a low health risk, while 58 percent of its population ranked as a medium risk. Fast forward to 2008 and those figures have transposed one another. During its most recent HRAs conducted in late 2008, Miles Kimball had a 62 percent of its workforce fall into the low risk category, while just 25 percent remain in the medium risk category. The remaining 13 percent that fall into the high risk category is considered typical and generally unavoidable in a company of Miles Kimball’s size with 625 fulltime employees.

The shift in workforce health improvement exhibited at Miles Kimball is monumental, Bina said, but shouldn’t necessarily be atypical of an employer that’s practiced health and wellness management as diligently as this company has.

But what’s most impressive about this shift in results is that health risk assessments are mandatory for any Miles Kimball employee enrolled in the company’s health insurance plan, not just an optional choice for the healthiest in the bunch to toot their horn. In addition, HRAs are also mandatory for any spouses of Miles Kimball covered under the company’s health insurance plan.

What’s been the bottom line?

Miles Kimball’s overall health care spending has increased only about 15 percent since 2000, an average increase of about 1.5 percent a year. The national average has been nearly a 15 percent increase in health care spending year over year during the past decade.

“Their successes in impacting employee health risks alone are really quite stunning,” said Dave Brand, a group/employee benefits specialist with Valley Insurance Associates in Oshkosh and Appleton.

Miles Kimball has taken a proactive approach to assessing employee health, intervening where appropriate, and then measuring the progress as well as quantifying the cause and effect of changes they’ve identified, Brand said.

Indeed, though it hasn’t come without persistence, innovative work, and some investment.

For example, the HRA screenings can cost about $50 a pop – or, a poke, as it is with bio-metric tests that screen for cholesterol and blood sugar levels, as well as body mass index and blood pressure. But the results, as indicated early, have more than proven a substantial return on investment for the company. For the individual employees themselves, they not only benefit from better health, but participants who score well on the HRA are eligible to receive discounts on their own share of health insurance premiums. An employee scoring an “excellent” rating in each category of the HRA can receive as much as $30 in health insurance premium credit  for each payroll period, for a total savings of up to $780 a year. An employee and their spouse both hitting that top-level rating can save up to $60 for each payroll period on family health insurance coverage, or more than $1,500 a year.

From a preventative standpoint, Miles Kimball had purchased and installed blood pressure monitors which are available onsite for employees to check their blood pressure regularly. The company’s medical plan also covers the cost of routine physicals, well-care child visits and colorectal screenings. It also covers the full cost of up to four dental cleanings each year. Flu immunizations are provided on site each fall, and employees on the health insurance plan have access to WebMD, a Web service providing health and wellness education.

In addition to these measures, the company offers a variety of fitness opportunities including no-cost memberships to the YMCA and onsite treadmills and stationary bikes. To improve nutrition, Miles Kimball partnered with its vending service to offer healthy food options in its vending machines. The healthy food options are priced lower, subsidized by an small surcharge on the vending items not considered quite as healthy, such as soda, candy bars and snack chips.

Scrapping unhealthy lifestyles

LONGSTANDING STEREOTYPES about metal scrap yards as filthy waste dumps being tended to by burly, overweight and out-of-shape men couldn’t be further from the setting illustrated at Sadoff & Rudoy Industries in Fond du Lac. 

This third generation metals recycling outfit with seven locations – including Oshkosh, Berlin, Green Bay and its corporate headquarters in Fond du Lac – provides an innovative, cutting edge wellness program with outstanding tangible support and participation from employees. Each department begins its shift with a team stretching exercise, including the office staff, which is lead by one of the owners.

With five years of gradual wellness program development under its belt, our panel was impressed with the overwhelming support from ownership and top-level management at Sadoff & Rudoy Industries, garnering it our 2009 Emerging Success in Wellness Award.

“From initiating their Team Welloff (employee wellness committee) to identifying the factors most negatively impacting their plan costs and moving to educate and motivate and reward their plan participants to address them underlines the seriousness with which they treat this,” wrote Brand in an evaluation of Sadoff & Rudoy’s nomination.

Since 2004, Sadoff & Rudoy has been offering an employee assistance program and annual HRAs to its 230 employees. Unlike Miles Kimball, HRAs aren’t mandatory for employees on the company’s health insurance program, partly because some groups at Sadoff are represented by a labor union. Generally it’s the case – our panelists indicated – that tying a health risk assessment to health insurance coverage in a labor contract is a challenging task to accomplish.

Nonetheless, Sadoff does encourage its employees to take the HRA with a $20 award for each participant. Results of the HRAs have been crucial for the employee wellness committee – known as Team Welloff – in appropriately directing wellness resources.

A number of employees registering moderate to high-risk concerns about blood pressure a few years ago prompted the company to purchase seven portable blood pressure monitors – one for each location, said Tonya Smith, human resources coordinator for Sadoff & Rudoy. And the nearly $100 devices aren’t just sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Smith said the company tracks the use of the devices, and indicated a 23 percent increase in the number of employees regularly checking their blood pressure during 2008.

Another issue to stem out of HRA results – low seatbelt use among employees – prompted a simple, yet, effective initiative in late 2008 to encourage employees to improve their healthy behaviors while driving. Random surprise checkpoints when employees entered the parking lot at the beginning of their shifts allowed belted-in employees the chance to receive $25 in cash. It made an impact. Seatbelt use among employees increased from 50 percent in 2007 to roughly 62 percent last year.

Seatbelt campaigns, Morrill stressed, are among the least costly ways an employer of any size can make a substantial impact improving employees’ lifestyles in a relatively short period of time.

“Think about it. One of your employees gets into a serious car accident and isn’t wearing a seatbelt, your company will be facing large insurance claims and that employee might be off of work for a long period of time,” Morrill said. If such an unfortunate incident occurs while the person is wearing a seatbelt, Morrill added, the injuries could be less severe, and corresponding health care costs and lost time on the job could me minimized as well.

Helping to prevent injury on the job, Sadoff last year worked with Fond du Lac-based Agnesian Healthcare on each of the jobs at the company’s Fond du Lac location and developed 3-minute job specific stretching routines for employees to exercise on paid time at the beginning of their shift. As mentioned earlier, the office staff stretch is lead each morning by the vice president and one of the third-generation owners of the company.

“I think what set them apart is having the owners out there on the floor leading the exercise,” said Morrill, who stressed that ownership and upper level management support for wellness activities is critical to their success.

Cleverly branding its wellness program with the tagline “Scrapping Unhealthy Lifestyles,” Sadoff & Rudoy also provides a $500 annual “wellness benefit” to each person on its health insurance plan to use toward preventive care.

Employees firmly know the importance of taking care of themselves, and when they do need to use health care services, it’s been communicated how important it is to use those services wisely, such as staying in network.

“Every dollar spent on health insurance is another dollar we are taking out of our own pockets,” Smith wrote in the nomination for Sadoff & Rudoy.

Off on the right foot

For those employers who have yet to initiate a wellness program, it’s still not too late to impact your company’s health care insurance premiums and the overall health of your staff.

Since entering the wellness arena nearly 18 months ago, Lutheran Homes of Oshkosh impressed our panelists with the careful steps it’s taken to earn support from employees, develop a strong set of metrics right off the bat, and strategically build the program rather than overwhelm employees at its outset. For these reasons, our panelists recognized Lutheran Homes with our 2009 Start Up Wellness Program Award.

Lutheran Homes only formalized its wellness program in 2008, though the nearly 300-employee group of residential care facilities had provided an employee assistance program for more than a decade, said Craig Ubbelohde, president and CEO of Lutheran Homes. The organization has been a long time member of the Oshkosh Area Business Coalition on Health, a local health insurance purchasing pool for large employers.

The company held an off-site retreat in early 2008 to help roll out its wellness program, bringing in a series of speakers to introduce topics such as healthy recipes, exercise and stress management. The retreat, Ubbelohde emphasized, focused strictly on the employees and their own health rather than on the company and the bottom line in its health care budget.

From the outset, Lutheran Homes partnered with Menasha-based Network Health Plan – its long time group health insurer – to test out Network’s emerging Millennium plan, which has since been rolled out in northeast Wisconsin and assigns a corporate wellness specialist and health coach nurse to employer groups. Health risk assessments are a standard tool in the Millennium product, and Lutheran Homes has been conducting HRAs twice a year, though it will likely move toward a once annual routine beginning in 2010, said Molly Henry, human resources coordinator with Lutheran Homes.

HRAs are also offered to spouses of employees at no charge. HRAs aren’t mandatory at Lutheran Homes, which also boasts a union population as part of its workforce, though Ubbelohde stressed there’s no agenda at this point to require any employee to take an HRA.

Lutheran Homes did establish a wellness committee representative of various departments to guide the direction of its program. The committee hosts a monthly health program focusing on a gamut of health and wellness topics, as well as its bi-weekly “No Excuses” luncheon group open to all employees to eat a healthy lunch, share recipes and discuss fitness milestones.

Late last year,  Lutheran Homes established a pedometer program for employees to purchase – and eventually earn full reimbursement – of a high-tech pedometer that downloads on to an accompanying computer program. When the employees hit 60,000 steps, Lutheran Homes reimburses the employee for the cost of the pedometer.

This tactic captured the attention of our panel of judges, who said all too often an employer will launch a pedometer program and give a device to every employee, only to find employees who won’t use it or won’t take care of it.

“We want them to use it, and to respect it for something of their own as if they’ve earned it,” said Henry.

Many employees have felt as if they’ve earned it, far exceeding the 60,000 steps required for reimbursement. In the first few months since the pedometer program began, Henry said some employees have logged nearly a million steps, and have been surprised to learn that they’ve walked 250 miles already since the beginning of 2009.

As part of its enrollment in the Millennium program, a health coach nurse holds scheduled hours at Lutheran Homes once each week to speak with employees about their HRA results, diet and exercise routines, and monitoring of any health risks they identify. Employees can also interface with a self-paced online program to learn more about healthier lifestyles. Employees who do take active steps to improve areas of their lifestyle – such as exercise regimen, for example – earn credit toward a rewards program to earn valuable gift certificates.

As a start up wellness program, Lutheran Homes has established initial benchmarks for the health of its employees by measuring sick days and group composite HRA results. The goal in its critical second and third years will be to cast a wider net.

“Our main focus in the year ahead is to get more participation among employees,” said Ubbelohde.

Honorable mention

In evaluating the nominations, our panelists also recognized both Faith Technologies of Menasha and Azco Inc. of Menasha with honorable mention.

Faith Technologies, formerly known as Town & Country Electric, has developed a robust wellness program to complement its self-insured health care program. The company has offered annual HRAs to employees and their spouses, but only made the HRA tools mandatory beginning in 2009. The 1,400-employee electrical contractor with 15 office locations across the country makes oatmeal available in its break and lunch rooms at no cost to employees, and also includes healthy food choices among its vending options.

Most impressive to our panelists is the fact that Faith Technologies employs its own on-staff wellness specialist, a registered nurse available to work with peer employees and their families to make healthy lifestyle changes and focus on specific risk factors identified in the health risk assessment.

“Having the nurse on staff helps build trust among employees,” said Chris Hanson, president of Hanson Benefits Inc. in Kimberly. “They’re there every day as well.”

Azco Inc. also offers health risk assessments to its 105 employees and their spouses, as well as conducts quarterly employee challenges to encourage a healthier diet and improved exercise regiment.

Our panelists were impressed with the thorough manner in which Azco shared data with all of its employees, including health care overuse, indirect costs affecting health care costs, group HRA results, and quarterly employee assistance program results. The company shares actual numbers when available to provide employees an honest scenario of the health and wellness benefit challenges its ownership and management face.

“We ask our employees to take ownership in the performance of our benefit plan,” noted the nomination for the mechanical contractor. “Azco provides the tools necessary for this to happen.”