7 Strategies to Transform the Employee Healthcare Experience: HBLC 2018

As Deloitte shared in their 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report, the new leadership role of HR is shifting from that of “Chief Talent Officer” to “Chief Employee Experience Officer.” HR professionals emerge as more strategic leaders in the organizations they serve.

I recently returned from the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference in Las Vegas with hundreds of HR professionals. I love going to conferences because they energize me, give me opportunities to connect with my peers, meet new people, and generate a slew of new ideas I can bring back to my company and our clients. I also had the opportunity to speak at the conference in a lightning round of Ignite sessions, so that was a highlight as well.

Day one of the conference included a panel with several HR professionals who have been innovative with their approaches to employee health care. The panelists included Janet McNichol, HR Director at ASHA; Kristin Reilly, VP of Global People Experience with Walmart; and Dr. Andy Crighton, Chief Medical Officer at Prudential Financial. Carol Harnett – Human Resource Executive benefits columnist, consultant and President of the Council for Disability Awareness – facilitated the panel discussion.

In the past, I’ve found that panels can feel scripted and not as useful as I’d like, but the way this panel was facilitated (including real-time audience questions ttexted to Carol’s personal cell phone!) made for an engaging discussion. The panelists were thoughtfully selected and represented a range of company sizes and industries, which helped keep it interesting as well.

I wanted to share my top seven takeaways from the panel and invite you to consider implementing at least one of these ideas to begin transforming the employee health care experience at your organization.

1.    Destigmatize mental health. As more celebrities are coming forward with stories of their own battles with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety, it gives more of us permission to talk about our own mental health challenges. I dealt with burnout and mono last year and started seeing a therapist over the summer to begin shifting some of my thinking that was adversely impacting my mental, emotional, physical and social health. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, and now I share that story when I go out and talk to companies and their employees. There’s no shame in getting help.

As many HR professionals grapple with rising health care and pharmacy costs, they are looking for solutions and strategies that work. We may not see the underlying mental health struggle employees are facing, only that they eventually manifest in the form of disengagement, cardiovascular disease, and aches and pains. One of the insights shared by the panel is that when people aren’t compliant with taking medication, there is often an underlying mental health issue, such as depression. If you are looking for ways to educate your employees and managers about how to broach the often taboo topic of mental health in the workplace, point them to videos like this one from Bring Change to Mind:

2.    Innovation does not always have to involve technology. As concerns about AI increase and the fear of being displaced by technology increases across most industries, the reality is that the human experience still matters. Kristin from Walmart noted that 90% of their mental health cases are subclinical, meaning they are not severe enough to present definite or readily observable symptoms. To respond to growing concerns about mental health issues in the workplace, Walmart piloted an onsite EAP program at several locations and found that the clinicians were able to close 98% of cases onsite. Imagine the long-term impact of a strategy like that, especially given the inadequate numbers of mental health professionals in the U.S. With high tech comes a continued need for high touch.

3.    Question your doctor. Most people assume that whatever their doctor recommends is safe and necessary, but, as one panelist shared, 40% of people who are told they need a transplant don’t actually need one. Most of us are told to revere physicians so much so that we never question their advice. But physicians are human, too, and they are capable of making mistakes. To facilitate a better conversation between your employees and their health care providers, check out the resources on Choosing Wisely.

4.    Listen to and involve your employees. People only support what they help create, and people tend to dislike when things are done to them rather than with them. They want to be involved in the process and in decisions that directly affect them. Most of the time, benefits decisions are made behind closed doors without incorporating any input from the people whose lives benefits changes will most impact.

Janet McNichol takes a very intentional approach by seeking input from employees about what to include in the health plan. She uses a deliberative group process for designing a health plan that reflects organizational values and prioritizes spending. Janet employs a version of the Choice-Dialogue Process to better inform people about the choices in front of them to avoid volatile opinions, since people are predictably irrational in their decision-making. The process was built on an economic foundation with decision-making techniques to incorporate ethical considerations. Groups of employees were invited to participate in a facilitated workshop. Participants learned about the issues, considered alternatives, expressed their preferences, heard the views of others and debated the tradeoffs. Ultimately, they prioritized healthcare spending and chose what they wanted to be included in the health plan for all employees. The Association is redesigning its’ health plan based on this input. To learn more about the process, reach out to Janet.

What are you doing to involve your people in your decision-making process?

5.    Know before you go to the hospital. Let’s say you live near five hospitals and tend to go to the hospital closest to your home when you need emergency care or a procedure. What if you knew that one hospital was graded “D” and another 15 minutes down the road received a grade of “B+”? Wouldn’t you be more likely to drive the 15 extra minutes to get the better quality, B+ care?

Carol shared a story about being hit by a car while walking across the street in a city that wasn’t her hometown. When the EMS team arrived to help her, she remembered that she had an app on her phone that could point her to the best quality hospitals in the area - the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade score app. You can use this app to make a list of which hospitals you never want to be taken to and which are your top spots in a state of emergency. Share the app with your employees, so they know where to go.

6.    Use value-based insurance design as part of your planning process. Do you know which benefit offerings are considered low value? Do you know which benefits give you the most bang for your buck? The University of Michigan’s Center for Value-Based Insurance Design offers the latest updates and recommendations for providing the most effective benefits to your employees. Learn more about VBID here and in the video below.

7.    People follow people, not a program or a process. I loved this nugget of wisdom from Kristin Reilly. So often we try to “get” our employees to do things we want them to do, which often boils down to nothing more than checking a box so they can get an incentive. What Walmart has learned is that people see what their peers are doing and follow along.

If a program or process is introduced that doesn’t resonate with or isn’t meaningful to employees, they won’t participate. That’s why Walmart started ZP, a series of 21-day challenges focused on improving different health behaviors based on making one better choice each day. I love the simplicity of the approach and that it was built by Walmart associates for Walmart associates (and is now available to anyone who wants to use it!).

Whether we are more intentionally listening to our employees and accounting for their input when making decisions, steering them to tools that can help them save money and make better health care decisions, or bringing attention to and destigmatizing the conversation around mental health in the workplace, we can take action to transform our employees' lives.

What do you think? Which of those seven strategies resonates most with you? Which ones have you already implemented at your organization and with what outcomes? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!

If you'd like to learn more about what we at SIG do to promote employee engagement and smart benefits decisions, visit us here for information about upcoming HR roundtables and webinars. Feel free to private message me as well.

If you haven’t already seen it, I had the opportunity to deliver a 5-minute Ignite talk at the conference. Each presenter had five minutes to cover 20 slides of content with only 15 seconds per slide, and the slides automatically advanced. It was an exciting and energizing experience. I talked about my journey with burnout and shared some lessons learned in the process. If you're looking for a speaker for an upcoming conference or company event, I'd love to chat with you.