Welcome to Consultant Wire, a first of its kind newsletter powered by Propel where we give you confident answers to complex well-being questions your clients are asking.
Following annual surveys, many leaders will celebrate the success their well-being programming is having - until they see the claims data unchanged (and possibly worse than before). There's a rarely spoken about divergence happening with many organizational well-being programs that must be addressed.
Does getting positive feedback from employees mean the program will lead to healthier living?
This is actually a very common question. Good user feedback tells us employees value the experience. Claims data tells us whether risk has actually migrated.
Those are two different outcomes.
Most well-being programs are built to drive participation and sentiment. Claims improvement only happens when high-risk individuals change behavior long enough to shift biometric risk.
So flat claims despite user satisfaction could be one of three things:
The program hasn’t been in place long enough to show an impact on claims-- that usually takes 18–36 months at meaningful scale.
We’re just not motivating the portion of the population that is going to show the biggest impact on claims mitigation. Remember, 10–20% of members drive the majority of claims. If that cohort isn’t materially improving, claims won’t move — even if the broader population loves the program. OR
And this is most often the case, the program wasn’t engineered specifically for financial impact. As we said, most well-being programs are built to drive participation and sentiment. The participating portion of the population may be satisfied with what the program does, it just isn’t engineered to change behavior the way it needs to for claim’s movement.
If a client runs into this divergence, the first thing to be done is understanding the point of the well-being program. If it is supported by the client’s senior leaders as an “employee happiness” initiative, the claims data shouldn’t be in the conversation.
However, if the program aims to measurably improve healthcare spend and lead employees (and their spouses) to form healthier habits, the program must be structured accordingly.
Key Takeaway
When satisfaction and claims impact diverge, the program may not be designed for noticeable improvements in healthcare spend. User experience is important for adoption, but the end goal of the program must always be in focus.
At Propel, we build programming around the specific end-goals of the client. Because we have been able to work on a wide-variety of designs, we have many insights around program design to meet differing requirements. If you’d like to hear our feedback on a specific goal, set up a call with our team by clicking here.
Unlike most things these days, this was handwritten by a human. If you have recommendations on what we should answer next, feel free to reply with your thoughts.