On the Intersection of Well-being and Performance

I’ve had the privilege of working for some amazing healthcare companies over the past 15 years. Each has taught me something different about the challenges of positively affecting human health.

 At Free & Clear, I learned that addiction is a complicated equation between physical dependence, hardwired habits, and a lack of psychological safety. Too often, when dealing with addiction, treatment focuses on the biological aspects but misses the coaching or counseling support needed to rewire habits and to provide empathetic connections that support healthier behaviors. This lack of focus on the bio-behavioral-psychological equation makes walking the path to long-term health a much harder one to navigate for most people. 

At Arivale, I learned that, no matter how much health data you have about people, if you don’t touch their hearts, you lose their heads. For most of our members, it was only through personal connection to their Coaches that they found a sustainable path to personal vitality. That connection allowed them to harness the deep health data Arivale collected for its members and to put that data into context with their life goals and aspirations.

When Arivale closed, I knew I wanted to stay connected to these value propositions. As I looked around, I saw several companies that were solving fascinating challenges around new data insights, that were pushing the boundaries of machine learning to scale personalized plans of care, or that were reinventing entire health sectors such as primary care. However, I kept coming back to the value of human connection: we’re simply healthier when we connect with each other in a way that creates a sense of personal accountability.

 When I first met Darren White and Toni Best from Aduro a little over a year ago, they walked me through two very powerful value propositions.

The first is their version of LEAP (listen, engage, activate and predict). By integrating biological signals from Aduro’s Wellmetrics team with the assessments they deliver to their members, including a highly innovative Flourishing Index in partnership with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Aduro effectively “listens” to how each person is feeling, how their behaviors affect their health, and how their bodies react to these behaviors and feelings. By creating novel interactions between Aduro’s Coaches, its content platform, and its members, Aduro engages its members in taking the first step toward a healthier existence and eventually to become fully activated in managing their personal health journeys. As Aduro’s data insights aggregate, predicting population-level insights leads to better program designs for clients that create positive network effects; one asset strengthens the other to exponentially increase the value of the programs.

Aduro’s second value proposition is that, while most well-being programs mostly focus on improving individual biological signals, very few address the reality of the human condition: If we’re feeling financially insecure, we don’t focus on our health. If we’re struggling in our personal relationships, we can’t create more vitality in ourselves. Aduro provides six different paths to health that lead to long-term ROI for its clients by providing well-being in context of our daily lives and then measuring employees’ overall engagement and contributions in the workplace. With support from an Aduro Coach, relevant content, and digital touch points that enhance, not replace, human connection, Aduro’s members navigate these six different dimensions to human health that also address key behavioral and psychological factors affecting their health and work performance.

A year after joining Aduro, I believe this intersection of well-being and work performance remains a compelling narrative.

Now more than ever, employers understand that their employees must be well to do well. As we all instinctively lean into this intersection of well-being and work performance, we should seek solutions that are contextualized to our employees’ behavioral and mental health in addition to their physical well-being. While this is the right thing to do for employees, it’s also good business. For most companies, the competitive barrier of one’s technological capabilities is often short-term, whereas the value of retained human capital remains a long-term competitive advantage.  

The catchphrase for all this is what Aduro calls “Human Performance.” It’s not widely used yet, but it will be. In today’s world, when we’re challenged by demands for social justice, as we fight to remain healthy in the face of a pandemic, and as we ponder how to navigate a battered world economy, none of us should be so shortsighted as to think our employees will successfully manage their personal health as well as their home and work lives without better support. Right now, there’s simply too much stacked against them to go at it alone. It’s time we stand tall and invest in our employees’ Human Performance.