Challenges:

• Building a corporate culture of health and wellness;
• Revitalizing the company’s existing/outdated wellness program;
• Improving chronic condition management with integrated healthcare services and live counseling;
• Helping employees navigate benefits offerings and services;
• Reducing the employee healthcare cost burden while improving health outcomes; and
• Stymying employee turnover and improving employee engagement.

Solutions:

• The Green Circle Life (GCL) platform designed for employers to derive the most value from their benefits investments;
• Building a culture of health and wellbeing through the use of modern healthcare technology, team competitions and collaboration, integrated wellness rewards, live coaching and chronic condition management; and
• A targeted solution for employees and their family members to encourage meaningful behavioral changes for healthier and productive lifestyles.

Results:

• Increased wellness program participation by fivefold;
• Engaged more employees and their families to lead healthier lives;
• Increased live coaching participation sevenfold for chronic condition management;
• Improved program adherence and use of preventative screenings;
• Greater utilization of all the services and benefits; and
• Reduced overall company healthcare costs.

Challenges

A retail employer of more than 85,000 employees, for many years, utilized a traditional insurer-provided wellness programs, chronic condition management and other HR benefits and services. Even with limited engagement, the employer saw strong results in healthcare cost management, however, HR leadership desired to increase engagement, improve condition management and decrease costs even further.

Realizing the limitations of traditional wellness programs however, the employer elected to pursue a new approach to employee wellness by deploying a customized mobile-centric solution capable of guiding employees and their families to make meaningful behavioral changes to lead healthier lives and manage their chronic conditions. Leadership also saw an opportunity to centralize all benefits into a single mobile app for employees and their families. By centralizing benefits into a single platform, the employer hoped to maximize the use of all available benefits and provide additional value for employees and their families to reduce presenteeism, absenteeism and overall healthcare costs.

To further ensure employees were engaged and utilizing their voluntary benefits, the employer required a partner capable of customizing the solution to align with their unique corporate culture of team collaboration, competition, commitment to customers and employee health and wellness. In doing so, the employer looked to attract new talent, reduce employee turnover and better engage employees and their families with the employer's brand.

Solutions

The retail employer selected Green Circle Life as its health and wellness solution partner to improve employee wellbeing and benefits utilization. With the ability to quickly deliver mobile-centric platforms that provide unique company-specific experiences to employees and their families, the company's GCH Platform easily centralizes all available benefits and services into a single platform. Employees and their family members can then utilize the app to participate in the company's wellness programs, health challenges and organizational structure-based team competitions as well as access wellness rewards, digital coaching and care coordination.

GCH, in working with the employer, created a branded mobile app and web-based portal completely customized to the employer's unique culture. In addition, GCH engaged with the employer's HR benefits consultant and senior leadership team to develop a measurable, quantifiable matrix to track and trend employee engagement. Through the platform, the employer also encouraged line management and store managers to champion the company's culture and push their team members to utilize benefits, earn rewards and participate in the company's wellness programs.

With stores in every state, the company realized it was critical to have multimode communication capabilities within the solution itself. The GCH Platform provided such a gateway with bulletin board, messaging, texting, email, reminders, notifications, document management, literature distribution, health and wellness newsletters and more to enable internal communication teams and management to quickly and easily reach employees.

The GCH Platform also supported clinical aspects of chronic condition management with the use of modern healthcare technology and access to qualified medical professionals. Using GCH Live services, employees and their families communicated with a team of dedicated clinicians and health partners, while using the app to enable remote monitoring which improved overall compliance to treatment plans and protocols for better outcome.

Results

Increased Program Participation Seven-fold
By centralizing all available benefits into an easy-to-access benefits dashboard, employees who were previously unaware of certain benefits were now able to access them quickly on their phone, tablet or desktop computer from anywhere at any time.

The employer focused on providing services and benefits that were targeted specifically to their employees. Using both real-time and detailed historical data, coupled with powerful analytics, specialized programs were developed and delivered directly to relevant employees. For example, the employer recognized that a large population of its employee-base was managing and living with obesity, diabetes or heart-related illness, and promoted programs specifically designed to help employees manage these conditions through the same mobile app that was in use for wellness programs and wellness rewards.

Engaged Employees and Their Families to Lead Healthier Lives
As more than half of the employer’s healthcare costs stemmed from employee family members, the employer realized that family health and wellbeing was critical for cost management. Also, in order to fully engage employees with its wellness program and drive meaningful behavioral change, the employer realized it must incorporate employee family members into its wellness programs.

With the GCH Platform, the employer was able to provide both employees and their families with access to the same centralized mobile app and dashboard. Each employee was able to invite up to four additional family members to use the mobile app or dashboard, and also receive GCH Live coaching, at no additional cost to them or their employer. This engaged the employees and their family with the company's brand and mission to lead healthy, happy lives. Incorporating modern HR and healthcare technologies, the app allows employees and their family members to:

• Store, update and share the entire family's health records and documents in a family Electronic Health Record;
• Track data manually or through connected medical devices and activity trackers, analyze trends, remotely monitor health statuses for all connected users and generate reminders and alerts for medications, immunizations , appointments and more;
• Engage with GCH Live health coaches, nutritionists and other clinical professionals to coordinate care and better understand how to improve their health;
• Participate in care programs to manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, asthma and more; and
• Access education tools and programs to improve the family's physical, mental, emotional, financial and spiritual health.

The GCH Platform also enables family members to share information securely to view each other's progress and condition. This way, employees are able to engage with their work while keeping track of their family's health.

Improved Program Adherence and Use of Preventative Screenings
The employer recognized that a proactive approach to healthcare was necessary to avoid costly medical treatments for employees in the future. This meant the employer not only needed to encourage employees to adopt healthy lifestyles, but also utilize preventative screenings to identify potential conditions early in their development.

The GCH Platform allowed the employer to effectively communicate this goal to employees and facilitate preventative care and wellness screenings all within the same platform. GCH Live coaches, nutritionists and health experts engage with employees and their families to provide guidance on how to improve their overall health and make meaningful behavioral changes to lead healthy lives. This further encouraged employees to participate in screenings by demonstrating an immediate and effective result.

The employer also utilized team challenges, competitions and rewards to further incentivize employees. Senior leadership also played a critical role in engaging line managers to encourage employee participation in these challenges and competitions. This not only helped employees utilize available benefits, but also earn wellness rewards and prizes, while improving their health.

Reduced Overall Company Healthcare Costs
Green Circle Life deployed a dedicated team of GCH Live Health Partners who focused on high-cost high-need employees and their families for condition management which resulted in additional cost savings and health improvements on the part of both employees and their families.

In providing employees and their family members with the holistic wellbeing tools and guidance needed to live physically, financially and emotionally healthier lives, the employer was able to reduce overall healthcare costs and improve overall organizational efficiency and productivity.