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Legislative Corner: WHIP
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Workforce Health Improvement Program (WHIP) Act
Under current law, employers and employees may be
discouraged from offering or using a health benefit of membership to a
health club. That's because while employees are not taxed for the
benefit of using an in-house workout facility, they are forced to
report the benefit of a membership to an off-site fitness facility as
additional income.
This forces employers to deal with more IRS
paperwork and increases employees' taxes for using their benefits. It also unfairly penalizes small and mid-sized employers who wish to provide a health club benefit to employees, but cannot afford to build an on-site facility. The WHIP Act would resolve this tax inequity.
How can you help level the playing field?
Call, or, send a fax to your congressional representative's office asking for his or her support on Bill HR2106 - The Workforce Health Improvement Act.
Call, or, send a fax to your senators' offices
asking for his or her support on Bill S913 - The Workforce Health
Improvement Act.
Need Help Finding Your Senators and Reps? »
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Health Immersion 2009 (Portland, OR)
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Two Months of Life-Changing Fitness, Friends & Fun!
July 1 - August 29, 2009 in Portland, Oregon
Sponsor your employees and get 10% off.
For
this year's health immersion (formerly boot camp), we'll have two
groups--one that meets Mon/Wed and one that meets Tues/Thurs. The
groups will meet together on Saturdays. Any companies who offer to reimburse a portion of their employees' enrollment will earn their employees 10% off the total fees.  Dates
2009 Health Immersion runs from 7/1-8/29.
Mon & Wed, 6:15-7:30 p.m.
/Sat 10-11 a.m. - or - Tues & Thurs, 6:15-7:30 p.m./Sat 10-11 a.m.
Enrollment ends by June 24th
Location
SW Portland, OR - easily accessible by bike and close to every major roadway (26, 405, 5). Certain indoor activities may meet at other easy-to-reach locations. The Camp Includes
- Pre and post body composition/fitness assessment
- All of our personalized reports
- Seminars on nutrition, cooking, exercise and integrative arts like yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, Budokon, etc.
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A cool group of "campers" and Recess instructors
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Participant-only web portal access & interactive content
- Goodie bags and prizes worth over $200
Cost$250 a month for two months, or, less than the cost of a latte and scone per day for a total life transformation. Reimburse a portion of your employees' fees and they get 10% off the total! More Questions? Email Kaitlin at kaitlin[at]recesswellness.com
We Sell Out Every Year. Reserve Your Spot Now! >>
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Jack of All Trades & Master of None
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Poor focus hampers wellness implementation.
Are you updating your facebook status via Twitter from your iPhone as you apply your make-up or eat your burger on the drive to your next open enrollment meeting? Many Americans feel as though they are good at multitasking and engaging in multiple activities simultaneously leads them to believe they are accomplishing more.
In her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention And The Coming Dark Age, author Maggie Jackson points to a growing body of research studies that seem to suggest the opposite. A flood of stimulation, interruption and fleeting human contact have created a culture of "diffusion, fragmentation."
She points out the consequences of what most of us consider par for the course in our lives and working environments:
Interruption and the knowledge worker:
- Knowledge workers switch tasks every three minutes. And once
interrupted, a worker takes an average 25 minutes to return to their
original task, according to informatics scientist Gloria Mark.
- How often are we interrupted? The average worker gets 156 emails a day, according to the Radicati
research group. And that's just the beginning; instant-messages, phone
calls, faxes and snail mail add to the influx.
Making a national habit of multitasking:
- Sixty-five percent of people eat while they drive.
- Sixty percent of
kids age eight to 18 multitask some or most of the time they're doing
homework.
- Twenty-five percent of restaurant meals are ordered from the car, up from 15 percent from 1988.
- American kids are exposed on average to nearly six hours a day of non-print
media.
- Two-thirds of children under six live in homes that keep the tv
on half or more of the time, an environment linked to
attention-deficiencies.
Time and time again in the world of wellness we see this habitual tendency toward mindless overcommitment, interruption, and multitasking lead to programs that are too diffuse to do much good if the desired outcome is a healthier workforce and reduced health care costs.
Why wellness fragmentation does not equal results
How does ROI for wellness work? It is more of a cost avoidance than an actual savings in most cases. Here is a simple (and maybe a little too simplistic) example to help walk you through the "savings."
Half of your workforce participates in a risk based population health strategy (wellness program) and the other half does not.
For the participating half of the population, whose risk is known, you are able to offer outbound (active) and passive programs that directly impact and address the risks you've identified as prevalent to this group.
Let's say the programs you've implemented are effective, engagement in them is high, and you retain these employees. Over a series of years you should see something happen that is counter to what will have happened with no intervention.
That is to say, this group will not get sick as often as non-participants because your interventions were effective and employees stuck around long enough for you to see results.
The non-participants at your company, as an aggregate, are an unknown entity to you. You have very little data on their risks and, as a group, they will most likely continue to use health care at the same rate as before.
Yet, if your company-wide wellness communications are effective and appealing, your participant group is vocal and influential, and your non-participants stay at your company without developing any major illness then some studies indicate that your wellness program might actually have a halo effect.
That is to say, even non-participants will learn a little more about self care whether they participate or not. Sure, that could slow the rate of health care cost growth in that group, though probably not by a lot.
Both groups' cost trends together is your overall trend. Both may continue to rise, but your participant group's trend over several years will rise more slowly - making your overall costs appear to grow more slowly.
UNLESS. Yes, there is an unless. Unless, your participant group is so small and the growth in the cost of health care is so large that your non-participants' health care usage effectively nullifies any impact you had on participants.
Wellness is not Wii Fit. You need to focus.
As much as we know that on an individual level good health is as simple as: sleep well, eat right, and move more, achieving a successful organizational wellness strategy is as much an art as it is a science. It takes focus, discipline and rigorous measurement to impact behavior, motivate and sustain participation, and to quantify results.
If your program is to be successful then you will need to engage a large chunk of your workforce, stratify their risks, and follow a disciplined series of steps over several years in order to see return on investment. Oh, and do all of this while simultaneously carrying out the core work of your company.
Fight the urge to multi-task
While multi-tasking may be transitioning out of vogue when it comes to work effectiveness, its cousin - work sequencing - can help break large and complex tasks into more manageable pieces.
Plan to succeed by drafting a multi-year strategy with a realistic timeline. Schedule monthly (core team), quarterly (key shareholders and decision makers) and annual reviews (company wide) of a the wellness program before you even begin work. This will hold you accountable for reporting progress toward implementing your strategy and plan.
Build up to maximum efficiency by starting with only a few key program components that will get you the most bang for your buck. Gradually add complexity as your initial program begins to show results.
More often than not, companies initially underestimate how much time it takes to implement a strategic wellness program. They allocate too few resources and take on too many program components to ever really get much traction. As a result, their programs suffer from poor participation due to fragmented management and the overall program shows high attrition. Plan intelligently and sidestep this common trap.
Have the will but lacking the way? Recess can help. » |
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