data at your fingertips, thanks to shapeup’s corporate wellness infographic. they created this infographic using data from their annual employer wellness survey, which they’ll be reviewing during a free webinar on january 12 at 2pm.

[Source: ShapeUp]

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“i remember how i felt and how i felt helpless to change what i was being teased about. at times i felt…isolated, ashamed and exposed.”

peggy hebard’s talking about being asian. she could just as easily be talking about a health challenge.

take 3:50 to watch and listen.

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zaha hadid z-car

we must turn away from the convenient, the impersonal and the cookie-cutter in workplace wellness
and turn toward the enticing, the coveted and the playful.

we must design packaging that beckons, “open me.”
an experience that suggests, “only a few can have me.”
an object that giggles, “play me.”

when we have done this, we will have made well-being a “product” that conveys status and style.
when we have done this, we will have a product people clamor for.
one they wait in line for.
one that they parade before others.

this is our charge.

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“What’s the trick to making a brand meaningful? Focus on outcomes, not outputs. The criteria, says Haque, are simple: ‘Did this brand make you fitter, wiser, smarter, closer? Did it improve your personal outcomes? Did it improve your community outcomes? Did it pollute the environment? We’re trying to get beyond did this company make a slightly better product to the more resonant, meaningful question: Did this brand actually impact your life in a tangible, lasting, and positive way?’”

read: the brands that survive will be the brands that make life better

this morning i presented on workplace wellness trends at people report’s 2011 best practices conference. i’ll report on the conference later. for now, i want to share the slides. they contain a lot of important data on what’s happening with wellness.

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maybe steve jobs was right. he (in)famously said you can’t design for customers because they don’t know what they want. or if you design for them, they’ll want something new by the time you have your product built.

i’m wondering if there’s something to this, particularly when it comes to health. i was struck by this idea while reading about the brain-dead design of myplate. myplate is the government’s latest visual representation of what we should eat. and it’s pretty simple. it shows you proportionally what you should eat from which category.

but researchers have come out against it, saying myplate needs to include more. more details. more data. more guidance. just more. that’s what the people-on-the-street say in the video below, too.

they say my plate’s “not clear enough.” “maybe more details on charts” would ensure we ate our five fruits and veggies. maybe myplate should offer “numbers, data…how many servings we can have.”

but do we really want more data? we’re not so good with the data we have. those interviewed didn’t know the number of food groups. granted, some of  their recall error is the residue of previous food pyramids, but we’re stumped by too much data. we’re investigating simplifying nutrition labels and energy bills to make it easier, not more complex.

the current myplate is an image i can hold in my mind’s eye and work with. i may eat canned peaches in light syrup—not as good as raw fruit, of course—but i’d be eating fruit, because i know fruit makes up a big part of this plate. would statistics or portion sizes or any other data be necessary to make this requirement clearer?

maybe the government was following in jobs’ venerable footsteps. they decided we don’t know what we want. they just gave it to us. perhaps that’s an approach we should be considering more, not less.

we’ll be talking about giving employees what they need versus what they want during november’s cohealth tweet chat. join us on wednesday, november 16 at noon on twitter.

Untitled from Cliff Kuang on Vimeo.

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related articles:

• dr. marion nestle weighs in on myplate vs. harvard healthy eating plate
• sign, sign, everywhere a sign. do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?
• can your cafeteria receipt change your eating habits?

a roundup of last week’s news that caught my interest.

1. worker costs rise. don’t expect salaries to

the connection between rising health care costs and stagnant wages and job creation is one you won’t frequently find discussed in corporate america’s messaging about health benefits. yet this causal relationship is critical for employees to understand. do your communications touch on it?

“The trouble is, this means employers are paying more for workers without actually paying their workers more. Higher benefit costs eat into profits without directly raising a company’s output in the way hiring more workers would. In fact, this can actually discourage hiring. And the more that companies have to spend on benefits, the less take-home pay goes to workers. This undermines the virtuous cycle of consumer spending and job growth needed to help lower the 9.1% unemployment rate.”

2. premiums, deductibles and cost sharing in employer health plans keep rising

i pulled a number of slides from the kaiser family foundation’s annual survey of employer health benefits for my post on walmart’s rollback. this article reviews the overall findings from this survey.

“But…coverage won’t come cheap, as premiums, deductibles and cost sharing continue to rise, sometimes even more steeply than in previous years. More employers are also moving to high-deductible plans that shift increasing expenses onto their employees, requiring them to pay more before benefits kick in. And companies are making it pricier to insure spouses and children.

“There is a bright spot, however: Employees who participate in the increasing number of company wellness programs can often reduce premium and other cost increases.”

 3. push for health-cost data

“gimme my damn data!” is the e-patient’s cry. e-patients know that having their own health data allows them to more successfully navigate the health care system and manage their care. this article shows how “gimme my damn data” is becoming the employer’s cry too. employers want pricing data available to their employees so their employees, in turn, can become better informed, better equipped health care consumers.

“But Web services that reveal health-care pricing typically have to be built using data that are collected by the health insurers, which are generally the ones processing medical bills for an employer’s workers. Some, such as Aetna Inc. and Cigna Corp., are sharing at least certain information with third-party firms when clients ask them to do so. In other cases, according to benefits consultants, vendors and employers, insurers are declining to let the information be handed over to the outside companies.”

4. investment guidance for employees long overdue

if you’ve managed or written financial communications, then you know most include a line that goes something like this: “X Company does not provide financial advice. be sure to review your personal goals with a financial advisor.” this lack of personal advice left many employees bewildered or among the ranks of nonparticipants. that’s changing, with a new law going into effect december 27.

“That’s what’s changing. Now companies, under the new exemption, can arrange for workers to get specific advice from the firm running their plan as long as the advice is based on a computer model certified as unbiased and as applying generally accepted investment theories, or the adviser is compensated on a ‘level-fee’ basis, meaning the fees do not vary based on investments selected by the plan participant.”

5. incentives & communication drive higher participation for marsh & mclennan companies

cohealth member ray goldberg explains how his company approached the design and launch of their wellness effort, healthy me. he offers many transferable lessons, like this:

“We offered a $150 incentive to colleagues, spouses and domestic partners enrolled in our health plan—but with a twist: To receive the incentive, participants had to complete the health assessment andcall to speak with a health adviser to discuss the results.

“Why did we do it this way? We had two objectives—to capture data on our health risks that didn’t show up in health claims, and to get participants to manage their health risks through coaching. In this approach, it’s easy for the participant to reach the health adviser—much easier than the reverse. And when they make that call, participants are expecting to discuss their health, so we expected they’d be more open to the idea of health coaching.”

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make the tough job of staying informed and in touch a little easier. the work. health. communication e-newsletter connects you to current thinking, community, new products and case studies—mine and others’. you’ll find fresh and expanded content from what’s covered here on the blog. read the october issue for the story (and video) behind zappos’ indoor parcourse. and then subscribe.

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yesterday i published the findings of the edelman health barometer 2011 and specifically called out how we are buying health. we are buying health as consumers. we are buying health as potential talent. we are buying health as investors.

today a new report from the hudson institute lends further credibility to this finding:

“Food and beverage companies with a higher percentage of their sales coming from better-for-you foods and beverages perform better financially, according to a new report produced by the Hudson Institute with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“The report analyzed the sales of 15 major food and beverage companies and found that sales of better-for-you (BFY) products drove more than 70 percent of sales growth from 2007 to 2011. BFY products were defined as no-, low- and reduced-calorie items, such as flavored waters or diet sodas, as well as products that generally are perceived to be healthier, such as yogurts and whole-grain cereals.

“Researchers also found that, compared with companies with lower-than-average sales of BFY items, those that sold a higher percentage of such items:

• showed a 50 percent growth in operating profit, as compared with just over 20 percent growth for the other companies;
• outperformed the S&P 500 Index by 60 points on average, compared with roughly 40 points for the other companies;
• delivered returns to their shareholders that were 15 percentage points higher than those generated by companies with lower sales of BFY items; and
• recorded reputation ratings that were more than 30 percent higher than those of companies with lower sales of BFY items.”

we know employers want employees and their families to make healthier choices. we now know that as employees and consumers we want businesses to do more to help us. that’s one of the key findings from the edelman health barometer 2011, a global study on health behaviors and attitudes. edelman hosted a sneak preview for roughly a dozen health bloggers last week, of which i was one.

it’s this symbiotic health relationship between business and individual, as employee and consumer, that will be of the utmost interest to employers. (they should also look at the data about what motivates us to make healthy changes.) what edelman’s information shows is that an employer’s investment in their employees’ and our general health does more than manage health care costs, absenteeism and productivity. it also affects their competitiveness, brand reputation, pricing strategy, and investor and employer attractiveness.

employers get lower scores on lifestyle

edelman developed a set of questions to explore what or who most impacted our overall health, and whether that impact was positive or negative. respondents routinely cited themselves, their family and friends, and their local community as having a positive impact. things got a little sketchy when it came to their employer. the scale started sliding toward negative impact, particularly when it came to lifestyle in the US and environment and lifestyle globally.

edelman also found that respondents expect businesses to use their strategies, practices and policies to positively affect our public health. what this signals is that as consumers, we’re evaluating companies’ actions in the marketplace, as an employer and as a key influencer in public policy. unsurprisingly, we want companies to come clean about the health of their products. perhaps more surprising, we’ll judge employers according to whether they grant employees the time to take care of their health (82%), support the health of the communities where they operate(72%), or contribute their own or their employees’ expertise to improve public health (72%). we’ll express our dissatisfaction with a business’ strategies or policies with our pocketbook, our CV and our mouths.

the opportunity costs for health

i’ve spoken and written about what i consider to be the seven levers of workplace wellness. the last two levers are environmental and political. they’re the two that get shortest shift these days, but this study should ignite another look. employers who become a health agent and advocate for their citizens (employees) and the world’s will reap positive payback in talent wars, brand management, shareholder investment and market growth. this is a new way of talking about health to employers—a way that cuts beyond managing health care costs and into their deepest life vein.

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