When it comes to a healthy lifestyle, what you read is as important as what you do or eat. Providers of health and wellness services are keenly aware of this, and issue an endless array of communications in an attempt to reach, engage, inform and motivate users. However, most company-sponsored communications, no matter how well designed or user friendly, get tuned out. Successfully engaging employees requires meaningful, relevant and timely communications - information and tools that consumers can use to make better choices.
On average, companies spend $1.50 to $3 PEPM on comprehensive wellness programs, which includes efforts to promote awareness and utilization. Ineffective corporate communication reinforces an unacceptable status quo: Employees remain unaware of their benefits, readership peaks only when the bad or unexpected happens, and by default, the focus remains on treatment, not prevention.
There are a number of reasons why corporate communications fail to be effective. Herein lies an opportunity for you extend your value by offering clients a better way to communicate, connect and engage end users (i.e., employees).
The challenge to support health care consumers in making better choices will be magnified in the future, since employees will likely be given increasing responsibility for the outcome of their health care decisions. So the challenge is to deliver information and tools that:
* Make communications relevant and engagement continuous. Benefits-based communications needs to be a resource that employees turn to regularly - just as they visit their favorite blogs or are drawn to features and profiles in popular magazines. Sporadic readership, or communications that are read when a decision needs to be made or when a crisis arises, will not produce the intended outcome: changing behaviors before symptoms become problems.
* Reach a receptive audience. Creative, consistent and interactive communications focused on health and wellness can connect and engage employees.
* Promote proactive behaviors. Education results in a more informed workforce that understands the interrelationship of wellness with personal productivity and fulfillment. Management can benefit from a corresponding reduction in health care and related costs.
Traditional corporate/HR communications that are used to promote health and wellness are typically dry, static (one-way), and uninvolving; the corporate "imprimatur" only heightens employee resistance. And while some organizations are experimenting with social tools to introduce interactivity, build community and drive utilization, these tools are rarely integrated well into an overarching, seamless communications framework.
Organizations need to figure out ways to initiate timely, relevant and engaging communications; integrate them with the Web and social media to communicate health and wellness information to end users; and create like-minded user communities to facilitate participation and interaction.
The first challenge lies in providing employees with interesting, relevant, topical, lifestyle-oriented coverage modeled after the most successful consumer publications, such as O, Real Simple, People, Vanity Fair and Men's Health. These media outlets, and even Web sites like ESPN.com, embed health information within their lifestyle and entertainment content, which consumers actively seek out.
Imagine a regularly issued e-mail in which celebrities, writers, sports figures, etc., weigh in on their health practices, challenges and success stories. And within these contexts are links to user-directed health assessments, checklists (and scoring), wellness tips and exercises, information and advice on behavioral health, and fun suggestions to promote more active, rounded lifestyles.
These e-mails would include interactive features (such as contests and invitations to submit personal anecdotes), route users to an affiliated health and wellness Twitter page that issues interesting and amusing "tweets" throughout the day, and provide a means for networking and community building.
This innovative approach has the potential to deliver relevant, timely and engaging health and wellness information direct to employee desktops and mobile devices to promote interactivity, build community and drive utilization.
Brokers are in a unique position to align providers with an integrated and exciting communications approach that will underscore the value of health and wellness programs and services, thereby increasing utilization. This will go a long way in enabling you to document an increased ROI in the wellness programs and services you offer.
Reach Epstein, president of BackBone, Inc., a PR, marketing communications and business development firm, at che@backboneinc.com.
