Today's employers have a much more paternalistic relationship with employees compared to when I joined the workforce. And, while I believe some Silicon Valley companies have gone overboard with free helicopter rides and concierge services, I commend the trend of companies going beyond traditional health coverage to provide additional perks that help employees optimize many aspects of their lives.
However, these fringe benefits don't come without additional complexities. Beyond the enormity of managing all of these resources, an equally daunting task is educating and engaging employees in the benefits and resources offered to them, such as free flu shots, behavioral health support, and wealth management.
Let's face it: Employee wellness is a waste of time and money if people aren't using the programs and services or don't know how to access them. Generally, employees do not improve the ability of an employee to be a discriminating and active health care consumer, which is key to driving down costs of care. In addition, most employee programs are not systematically solving the inefficiencies and hassles of the health care system.
Recommended For You
So how do we provide real value for employees and help them optimize their health?
First, everyone needs to stop calling it employee wellness. It's detrimental to the cause — wellness is limiting and often has a false end state. What we need to be focusing on is heath optimization, helping individuals achieve their optimal health based on their health status and existing conditions, as well as available benefits and resources.
For example, an asthmatic is not going to summit Mount Everest, but they can get the condition under control and engage in moderate physical activity.
Second, consumers need to be enabled and engaged. They need a centralized hub to manage their available benefits and resources — medical, dental and prescription plans; retirement program; flexible spending account and other financial programs; mental health programs; and even fun, health challenges and activities. This hub would organizes their complex ecosystem of resources into a single, coherent experience that is as functional as it is engaging and rewarding to the end user.
And lastly, employee wellness programs lack a personal, dynamic experience. It is no longer acceptable to look at employees as a homogenous population, but rather as individuals. To create the best picture of an individual, requires the integration of different types of data — not only claims and clinical information, but also consumer data such as lifestyle, education and purchasing information.
Then, analyze all of the data to reveal actionable insights about a consumer's needs, impactablity and receptivity. This allows sponsors to predict employee's behaviors and needs at an individual level, and serve up the most relevant, actionable resources at the right time.
There is a real opportunity for our nation's largest and most influential employers to truly transform how they are optimizing the health of their employees. It starts by transcending wellness programs and leveraging other available data to deliver a truly personalized experience through a unified health and benefits hub that both educates and engages employees.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
