HSI Lab Meeting Focuses on Corporate Wellness Programs and Employee Engagement

The HSI Lab Meeting Focuses on Corporate Wellness Programs and Employee Engagement
Last October, the MIT Sloan HSI Lab on Employee Population Health held a convening with its researchers and collaborating organizations to dig into the challenges of designing employee wellness programs that work. That is, programs a with high employee participation rate and a measurable benefit accrued to the company.

Corporate Wellness Industry Overview
 

The day started off with an overview of the corporate wellness industry. In sum, there are billions of dollars at stake and the market is expected to increase. Currently, the United States accounts for 40% of the global $42 billion industry, which is expected to grow to more than $100 billion by 2033. The industry can be divided into three market segments:

• Wellness and workplace screening programs
• Disease screening and management
• Mental health support programs

Screening accounts for about half of the market; the other two segments share the remaining half about equally.  Given the potential revenue, companies are eager to enter the industry and employers are interested in offering some of these benefits that employees value.

Workshop Themes
A few themes emerged across panels, speakers, presentations and discussions.

Technology: Technology in and of itself is not a problem solver. Neither is talking up the benefits of AI/ML and new algorithms. Rather, discernment is required to use technology appropriately. Technology should foster the trust, actions and behaviors that lead to better health outcomes. There may be a place for a technology or program that does not lead to be better health; it could be a recruitment tool. However, such a program is unlikely to foster retention.

Personalization: Every session brought up the importance of personalization. One of the industry panelists said, “don’t think of employees as a monolith.” Two companies that gave presentations both focus on ensuring that their programs are tailored to specific employees as much as possible. One adapts lessons learned from the consumer goods industry, in which companies have many more interactions with customers than healthcare does. HSI researchers are collaborating on several research projects with a virtual mental health software provider to discover how to best match supporters and users based on specific characteristics.

Trust: Trust is required on two specific vectors. A user needs to trust both the content of a program as well as the intent of the program’s developer. The information provided needs to be correct and the user needs to trust that their information is safe. Personalization and trust help a program to level-set so it meets users where they are. Users need to be given achievable and actionable goals in order to stay engaged.

Human Interaction: Successful programs don’t solely rely on technology for personalization. Repeatedly, speakers spoke about the necessity of human interaction as a part of the technology platform. Personalization and human interaction together are more likely to inspire trust in the program. This gives the user a chance to develop more of a relationship with the platform, or as one person noted, “a trusted dialog”.

Engagement requires trust. Despite best efforts, however, engagement remains one of the most confounding elements of a successful wellness program. Wellness program providers struggle with both enrollment and retention. Some have found that financial incentives work, but there are also cases where incentives have failed to move potential users.

Making the Business Case
It isn’t hard to make an anecdotal case for why wellness programs are a good company benefit. However, the picture becomes murky when trying to make the business case. Many programs struggle with employee engagement, in both enrollment and retention. Further, there is scant scientific evidence of these programs’ clinical effectiveness and positive return on investment.

Fortunately, rigorous analytics and appropriate interpretation are specialties of HSI researchers. Several research teams collaborating with HSI Lab member companies are applying their skills to the most pressing questions. Providers of these services want to be able to prove that their offerings move the needle on health outcomes. Their potential customers, employers. want their employees to participate and capture the cost savings that may be associated with these programs.