Best practises in wellness in rewards space

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a global leader in IT services, digital and business solutions that partners with its clients to simplify, strengthen and transform their businesses. It believes in providing a multi-faceted exposure across domains and roles to its people that are equipped with a flexibility that allows them to discover their ideal role, and thus helping them achieve their true potential.

Business Challenge 

With the prevailing unpredictable economic conditions and industry becoming more competitive, corporates have been challenged to create a culture of high performance workforce and this is directly impacting the employee wellbeing. Workforce today largely suffers from rising stress, lack of sleep, good nutrition, recreation, and lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, etc. These factors lead to a sedentary lifestyle and are posing challenges for the organization and resulting in multiple issues like demotivated associates, absenteeism, higher health care cost, etc. As a result, the traditional wellness programs or one-size-fits-all models no longer cater to all the requirements of the corporate associates in today’s times. With 80% of the company being Millennials, in the median age of 28, the need to engage them in a collegial way and encourage them to enhance their wellness through a holistic framework was important.

Solution

TCS Fit4life program, a unique global wellness program is designed to directly address this business challenge. It is a movement within the company that helps associates to take out time from their busy schedule and invest some of the time to their own fitness and health. The program is a unique wellness initiative that integrates all the 3 concepts of wellness, team spirit and support to social causes into one. Varied aspects of the program include Fitness, Nutrition, Technology, Events and Charity. 

• Fitness: The company has partnered with a professional fitness training company to train associates and their spouses across its locations to get into a fitness regime, improve their daily lifestyles and inculcate healthy habits. 
  
  
• Nutrition: A professional nutritionist has been brought on board to advise associates on various aspects of nutrition, create awareness on healthy food habits and emphasize on the importance of nutrition for a healthy lifestyle. 
  
  
• Technology: The initiative is supported by an eco-system of online and state of the art IT platform, mobile apps (Android and iOS) and internal and external social platforms to enable the associates to track the performance. 
  
  
• Events: Fit4life Corporate Challenge joins hands with like-minded organizations and corporates to promote physical fitness and well-being amongst associates and instill the need for being healthy in all.
  
  

Impact and Metrics

The benefits of the TCS’s Fit4life initiative have been segregated into quantitative, qualitative and business specific benefits and have been enlisted below:

• Increase in awareness of fitness and wellness – 87% of associates have confirmed that Fit4life has contributed in changing their outlook towards fitness and subsequently their lives.
  
  
• There has been an increase in the participation of associates from 6% to 23% during the last 4 years.
  
  
• There has been a reduction in the sick leave taken by Fit4life volunteers as compared to other associates by 1.75%.
  
  
• Reduced stress or better management of stress has been observed.
  
  
• Control of ailments related to sedentary lifestyle has been seen.
  
  

Results

• Attracting talent from different quarters and with different expertise.
  
  
• Positioning as employer of choice.
  
  
• Spreading the message of wellness among the industry peers, clients and competitors through Fit4life Corporate Challenge event, a 10km corporate run across Indian Cities.
  
  
• Extending the message of wellness to the students of over 500 engineering colleges and campuses through Fit4life Campus Challenge event, a 5km run.
  
  
  

Reliance is India’s largest private sector company with businesses across the energy and materials value chain and a strong presence in the rapidly expanding retail and telecommunication sectors. The company strives to achieve excellence in improving employees’ occupational and personal health and ensure a healthy and productive work environment by minimizing health hazards and providing model facilities.

Business Challenge

With approximately 60% of the company’s workforce working in offices, remaining 40% working in various manufacturing sites, and more than 43% of the workforce aged above 40 — it was crucial for Reliance to have a healthy and engaged workforce for the continued success of the company. The company’s health and wellness initiatives thus needed to be aimed at providing preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and acute response health services. The aim is to create a healthy and productive work environment by minimizing health hazards and providing the employees with state-of-the-art healthcare facilities. By implementing preventive healthcare measures, the company aspires to contribute to the wellbeing, productivity and job satisfaction of its employees.

Solution 

Reliance chose to implement health initiatives through engaging, focused & technology-driven digital interventions. The initiatives resonate with the overarching organizational vision of becoming an ‘employer of choice’. Given the demographics of organization, the company chose to go digital with their interventions. The company introduced various engaging, focused and technology driven digital interventions under the brand R-Swasthya — a health and wellness initiative. R-Swasthya aims to create a culture where employees ‘choose’ to live healthier lifestyles, one which is rewarding not just to the employees but also to their near and dear ones. The company is working towards institutionalizing R-Swasthya as a differentiating practice, committed to creating a strong employee value proposition. It is a signature program of Total Rewards strategy, aimed at not only tangible outcomes but also at delivering intangible benefits that motivate the employees.

Impact

The company selectively launched the interventions at its manufacturing facilities to ensure easy acceptance and to capture timely feedback that helped in improvising the programs. With more visibility and acceptance, they also started getting requirements from businesses to launch targeted interventions such as ‘Chalte Raho’ and ‘Fit Hai Toh Hit Hai’. These targeted, technology-based digital interventions saw a participation rate of 36.7% across 2 manufacturing locations. In just about a few months, employees have reportedly covered a total distance of 0.2 million kilometers, burnt 66 million kcal and walked 763 million steps. The organization is also tracking other quantitative metrics such as estimated BMI drops, number of power walkers, power runners along with employee testimonials that show high motivation and engagement levels.

Some of the peripheral benefits that the intervention delivered were:

• Boosting employee morale
  
  
• Enhancing employer brand
  
  
• Enhancing employee engagement
  
  
• Strengthening the employee value proposition
  
  
• Creating a differentiating employee-friendly practice
  
  
• Creating a culture of health & wellness where employees 'choose' to live healthier lifestyles
  
  
• Good qualitative feedback and a demand for more such initiatives

Some of the interventions that have been implemented are:

• A 21-day walking contest to inculcate the habit of walking among employees.
  
  
• A 3-month-long team-based gamified contest that motivates employees to not only engage in a plethora of physical activities but also tickles their brain-cells through quizzes, trivia and boosts engagement through features such as “Invite a colleague”. 
  
  
• Ensuring annual health check-up compliance in office locations; workshops on emotional well-being in partnership with the medical services team.
  
  
  

Microsoft in India is a 7500 member organization operating out of 10+ locations across India with the employee population ranging from baby boomers to young millennials. 

Business Challenge

Based on an analysis conducted in 2014, the organization identified the following challenges:

• Low utilization of existing benefits
• Low participation with respect to onsite diagnostics, HRA and EAP programs 
• Top 5 health issues were identified under onsite health check & HRA that were lifestyle related issues with “long term” and “silent” health risks

Healthcare costs were rising (by ~43% over 3 years) and claim ratios were also up (from 88% in 2012 to 137% in 2014). There were also increased incidences of employee mortality arising out of lifestyle diseases. It was thus recognized that it’s absolutely critical for the organization to define a Health & Wellness strategy and roadmap. 

Solution 

Microsoft decided to make a disruptive change to its benefits program by designing an umbrella branding for all Health & Wellness offerings – ‘Live Well 365’ that focused on physical and emotional wellness aimed at influencing employees to make healthier choices and infuse a culture of wellness in the organization. The key features of Live Well 365 were the following:

• Gamification and making it social: The aim was to increase awareness for on-site initiatives through gamification. Additionally, implementing wellness initiatives having both online and offline activities that would involve aspects like Leaderboards, intra/inter team communities with the aim to modify behavior. 
  
  
• Making health related content accessible: A dedicated website for wellness programs that can be accessed by the employee’s family so they can understand the benefits that the company is offering and influence employee to make the right choices. 
  
  
• Creating a flexible and inclusive policy framework: Key wellness programs like insurance and EAP are designed not just for the use of the employees but their families too. All wellness programs are customized according to the needs of the employees, for example: 9 different insurance options, customized counseling depending on employee’s needs. 
  
  
• Leveraging Technology: Over the past two to three years, the company moved the focus from having a lot of on-site activities to online initiatives. In place of F2F sessions, they now use webinars that can be accessed via phone or laptop. All communication has been moved online for example, handouts, posters, content that what was previously only available to those physically present can now be accessed digitally by any employee.
  
  
• Leveraging employees: Using data from employees to drive program design. Identifying employee ambassadors and making them lead communicators of the program benefits as well as giving them ownership to lead initiatives, for example employees leading meditation sessions for other employees.
  
  

Impact and Metrics 

• Cost savings: Insurance costs year-on-year have been lower than market price increases (in the most recent renewal, team delivered a 7% cost reduction). Claims ratios have come down from a high of 137% to 111% in close of FY16. Sick leave usage has stayed constant at ~20% total utilization. In the period 2015-16 we have lost no employees to either suicide or lifestyle diseases.
  
  
• Influence and change in employee behavior: Anecdotal data suggest that these programs are having a positive impact on individuals and employees as they have proactively started managing their health.
   
• Increased level of utilization: There was an increased level of utilization and participation in the benefits programs that resulted in employee satisfaction. Some of them included Fitness Reimbursement – from 25% in 2013 to 70% in 2016.
  
  
• Onsite Diagnostics: 38% in 2013 to ~50% in 2016, MS Cares-EAP Services – 2% in 2013 to ~35% registrations in 2016.