It's time to perfect your plan for employee wellness

By Paul V. Shaheen

Don't hope, decide. This is the new mantra law firms, both big and small, are taking when it comes to enhancing the health and wellness of their employees.

Why? Because nowadays there's more to employee health care and employee health plans than just deductibles, co-pays and out of pocket maximums.

In the past, most companies that offered group medical benefits did nothing more than engage in an annual routine: They'd shop for insurance, find the best price and plan they could, explain it to their employees as best they could, then sit back, use the plan, and hope for the best renewal possible.

Unfortunately, with health costs continually on the rise (another nine percent on average increase expected for 2008, per PriceWaterhouseCoopers), firms have come to find this "sit back and hope" strategy is no longer sustainable.

Point blankly, firms are now deciding to do something about their renewals. And we're not just talking about changing plans, or raising deductibles.

True, a firm can try to "outrun a renewal," so to speak, by changing health carrier plans every year or two, but all that brings is confusion, lack of continuity, and loads of paperwork.

Moreover, if your employees aren't healthy, attempting to move to another carrier every year will at some point become unsuccessful.

So what to do? How about working from within?

Rather than seeking different answers from different plans and different carriers, perhaps the best step might be to engage your employees to the virtues and values of better health.

The healthier your employees are, the better chance you'll have of controlling employee benefit costs over the long haul. And there's more to this than JUST lower health care premiums.

Ask yourself, as a law firm, what's your greatest asset? Of course, it's your people, and the knowledge of what you do.

If you were a manufacturer, you'd do everything possible to keep your machinery free of breakdowns and defaults. Should you not approach your employees the same way?

As a COO of a major law firm so eloquently said: "The best and only way for us to provide outstanding customer service is to be sure our associates and staff are in the best health to deliver on our promises."

Secondly, and as a follow up to the previous point, what's the holy grail of lawyers and law firms? From everything I hear, it's productivity.

If that's true, the best way to keep employees productive is to keep them healthy, and that's where engaging your employees to be more health-conscious comes in.

Now you may be thinking: Doesn't my health plan offer annual physicals? If so, shouldn't my employees be taking advantage of this?

Furthermore, why is it my job to make my employees take care of themselves. Isn't that something they should be doing on their own? In theory, that's true. But in practice? That's another story.

Statistics suggest less than 50 percent of the general population have seen doctors for physicals in the past five years. Worse, of those who have seen their doctors, 80 percent of what they're told is forgotten, and of what they remember, half is remembered incorrectly (per the Wellness Council Of America).

What to do about it? Well, if employees won't head for wellness, then bring the wellness to them. Here are just a few ways to do so.

If your firm has at least 15 or more employees, consider offering on-site wellness screenings. Believe it or not, you might be able to do them for free!

Many group health carriers (such as Blue Cross, Humana and United Healthcare) have PPO network vendors who'll not only go out to job sites and perform these screenings, they'll also apply the cost towards your plan's annual wellness benefit.

Further, the results of the screenings are delivered to your employees directly (hence, no privacy issues), and offer easy-to-follow suggestions on how to take action on what the results suggest.

Those results, by the way, can be staggering. Through the first six months of 2007, our firm performed nearly 2,000 screenings and found approximately 25 percent of those tested to have medical conditions (high blood pressure, diabetes) they were previously unaware of.

Moreover, those conditions extrapolated into millions of dollars of unmanaged claims, and literally thousands of unproductive work days. These are the sorts of costs, not to mention revenue leakage, that law firms simply cannot afford.

Fear not however. Even if your firm is small, there's still PLENTY you can do to promote a worksite wellness culture.

• Fill your lunch room with posters promoting the advantages of smoking cessation, good nutrition and such.
• Offer cash incentives (or help pay for) smoking cessation classes, many of which are offered at your local hospital and health clinic.
• Is that lunchroom vending machine full of sugar-filled soda? Make it all bottled water, or make the water free and simply charge more for the soda.

Don't hope, decide. This is just a start; there's much more.

• Most medical carriers offer wellness tools on their respective Web sites. Some provide employees the ability to do on-line wellness screening.
• Offer employee incentives for those who take their annual physicals. For instance, have employees bring you privatized (HIPAA safe) explanation of benefits statements each year, showing proof they've taken their annual wellness physical.

If they do, you can offer incentives, such as paid days off or a reduction in medical premium (it's legal to offer up to a 20 percent reduction in premium for any employee who takes part in an annual physical or worksite wellness program.)

You could even offer small cash incentives, like a $50, $75 or $100 gift card, to anyone who takes an on-line OR on-site screening. Keep the amounts at these thresholds to avoid tax consequences.

As the phrase goes: "Lead with their wallets, and their hearts and minds will follow."

Ask yourself: Are you just hoping to keep your health costs under control, or would you rather decide to try doing something about it?

Some claims are admittedly unavoidable, but a sustained wellness culture can help keep those claims to a minimum. Take charge; don't rely on your insurance carrier or someone else.

Be an agent of change from within. Don't hope, decide.

• • •

Paul Shaheen is vice president in Chicago of the Law Firm Support Practice of the Orland Park-based Horton Group. His timely article was secured by Steven C. Lindberg of the ISBA Committee on Law Office Management and Economics.