Beyond the Average Employee: Corporate Wellness for Special Populations

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HRIQ speaks with Anissa Kurtz, the Director of Benefits for the Children's Place. She will discuss how her corporation has tailored their benefits plan to their employee population, and engrained corporate wellness into the company culture.

Why is it important to pay special attention to underrepresented employees and focus of the unique needs of an employee population?

It is important to pay special attention and focus on the unique needs of underrepresented employees because they are often overlooked in the standard analysis of benefit plan design and strategy.  They may be the minority or the perception may be that they don’t need special attention.  Other times it may be difficult or costly to accommodate their unique needs or they may not be able to advocate for themselves.  In the case of The Children’s Place, the underrepresented employees made up more than 50 percent of the health and disability claims.  The underrepresented employees also were the majority, rather than the minority so it wasn’t just about managing claim dollars but it was also about employee satisfaction and the success of the wellness programs depended on ensuring we met the needs of the underrepresented employees.

How did you go about engraining your wellness programs into the corporate culture?

[It requires] constant and consistent communication and socialization of the program – during the recruitment, pre-hire, orientation and annual enrollment processes as well as on an ongoing basis through the company intranet, wellness site and hard copy promotional materials.

Can you share some best practices for achieving a large range of wellness programs that most fit the needs of your workforce?

1. Organize and plan well in advance.  Wellness planning and implementation cannot be reactive, it must be proactive.  While you can’t know what’s going to happen in the future, it’s important to pay attention to the trends that are happening within your organization and within the industry and anticipate what future needs will be.  You also have to strategize and design far in advance of implementation to ensure that any potential roadblocks to success are realized in advance.  It’s also important to use effective project planning tools to help manage the implementation process.
2. Know your organization’s demographic and, more importantly, the corporate culture – knowing the culture will help you determine what types of programs will be effective as well as sustainable over time.  If you are new and don’t know the culture well, ask someone who does.
3. Obtain senior management buy-in and sponsorship.  This is an absolute must – the program will fail if the senior team is not on-board.
4. Look at past successes and failures and understand what worked and what didn’t and why.
5. Research best practice in the industry or area of wellness you are working in.
6. Communicate and prepare the employees for what’s to come.  Be sure you are giving them enough time to understand and adapt to the new program.  Communication and education should be constant and continuous over a long period of time.
7. Test the program – roll out the program first to a beta or pilot group.
8. Socialize the program – engage a group of employees to be advocates and “spread the word” through the company’s informal network.
9. Create a program budget and determine a return on investment.
10. Make sure that whatever you design and implement actually is needed and will meet the needs of the employees.
11. Keep it simple and easy to use and understand.

What are the steps to assessing and meeting the wellness needs of underrepresented employees?

1. Conduct a needs assessment.
2. Solicit feedback.  Both formally and informally and before and after.  Informally through listening to what employees are saying anecdotally.  Formally through the use of feedback tools like focus groups, surveys, blogs and chat forums.
3. Review reporting and analytics over a historical period of time.  I’m a big proponent of analytics and trend analysis.  There’s always a lot of information in the numbers and sometimes the numbers tell a different story than employee feedback.
4. Benchmark.  Talk to peers, look at industry surveys, talk to your brokers/vendors/consultants and get their point of view.
5. Strategize and design a program.
6. Get senior management approval and preferably a senior level sponsor.
7. Create a project charter and project plan with a corresponding budget.  If appropriate, put together a project team.
8. After you design the program – test the program with a pilot group first to determine any areas of improvement or correction that need to be made prior to implementation.
9. Communicate and educate the employees regarding the program. 

What are some questions a company should ask themselves to make sure their wellness program will fit into their unique corporate culture and resonate with their employees?

1. Is the culture ready for this particular program?  Are the program parameters consistent with the medium and format of other programs already in place?
2. Will the employees engage?  Why or why not?
3. Is there enough of a return on investment to justify the cost?
4. Will it be accessible to enough of the population to be meaningful?
5. Will it meet the needs identified?
6. Is it sustainable over time?

How do you continuously make sure that your wellness programs are consistently aligned with your corporate goals (and benchmark against data such as retention/turnover/performance)?

We ensure our programs are aligned through the use of reporting and analytics.  We also constantly re-evaluate program utilization and effectiveness in relation to overall corporate strategy and goals.  Budget is also always a factor and must be taken into consideration to ensure that there is return on investment and that we are always achieving the highest level of satisfaction and value in relation to the money spent.

Interview conducted by Alexandra Guadagno, Editor for Human Resources iQ.

Contributor:   Anissa Kurtz

Anissa Kurtz is the Director of Benefits for The Children’s Place.

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