Employer health screening programme which would achieve a true integrated wellbeing approach

Our London based client of 800 employees had run a traditional health screening offering for many years. The benefit had been introduced to enhance their comprehensive benefits suite. The screenings were attended locally to their London office and included the usual standard checks.

Over recent years the attendance numbers had started to decline and the general feedback wasn’t all that positive. This was a major concern for the client, with an ageing population and a generally high-risk profile they wanted to ensure any medical concerns were picked up early.

They had started to see a steady increase year on year of income protection claims, many being stress-related income protection claims. With a high turnover of staff within their HR team many employees were not being supported and generally, the only interaction was the request for ‘fit notes’. Prolonged absences were adding more pressure to specific business streams and having detrimental impacts on colleagues.

Whilst health screenings were provided as an enhancement to their employee benefits, we soon realised this was one of the most valuable resources we could use to identify the company’s current and future health risks. The current provision offered very little in the way of collective data which meant we needed to look at the market and find a solution that would allow us to:

• Obtain regular reports that would identify health concerns specific to a particular division
• Encourage employees to attend their screening and appreciate it’s real value
• Ensure all year round engagement rather than the once yearly review

The screening market has started to change, understanding that clients along with members want and need more than just a yearly report providing a raft of complicated stats. Members not only need to understand what the report is actually showing but what the implications are if nothing changes.

Having reviewed various screening providers, the chosen partners were able to offer a solution to all our requirements. Whilst they were able to offer the comprehensive screenings, they also offered a continual engagement tool in the form of an app and coaching support for all year-round engagement.

Once an employee triggered their eligibility, the provider would make contact and schedule them in for a suitable time and location, with many centres UK-wide this made for minimal travel along with minimal disruptions to their working day. Employees would be provided with a pre-screening questionnaire, which also had the functionality to add free text enabling them to highlight general health concerns which wouldn’t have generally been picked up on a standard questionnaire.

As the questionnaires were being delivered to the healthcare professional ahead of the screening, the provider would have the ability to structure the screen to be more personalised to the employee’s needs or worries. Whilst the main general test would be performed, ample time would be allocated to cover these alternative health concerns.

Reports would be delivered to the attendee the same day with any test results to follow. This provided the employees with the opportunity to review the advice whilst the discussions were still fresh in their minds.

As part of the screening, the employee and the healthcare professional would agree on what lifestyle changes were required to improve any health scores or generally to support better wellbeing.  To ensure the employee felt supported they would be contacted at an agreed date to review the changes and ensure the plan was working.

Alongside the coaching, the company had introduced a wellbeing app which allowed not only the screening results to be stored but also a regular interactive tool that provided continual health updates and support with any health goals. The advantage of having the app was that it also allowed colleagues to set challenges amongst themselves, which provided excellent support.

We took the opportunity to relaunch the screening programme along with the new services the employees would have access to, a personalised screen and the interactive app.

Take-up rates improved, employees wanted to be a part of this new offering and enjoy some of the new modern features.  It was now being marketed as a lifestyle support benefit rather than the once-a-year health interrogation which prevented many employees from attending.

During the first few months, we sent a questionnaire to employees to gain feedback on the screens.  The results were extremely positive, employees valued the personalised touch, and the ability to have quality time with the GP on topics they wanted to discuss made all the difference. Many liked the accountability after their screen to make improvements ahead of their coaching calls. Employees felt generally more supported and valued.

The app was also a great success, employees liked the ability to have a ‘go to’ place for all their health lifestyle needs, easily accessible via their phone. We saw a number of inter-division challenges being set and started to see great camaraderie between colleagues.

After the first year we had the opportunity to pull together a comprehensive analysis of the workforce by division, location and age groups. With this detailed review, we could then start to see trends and justification of the current absentee records. This created a starting position to then build a wellbeing strategy, to not only improve the general health of the workforce but also apply specific regimes in areas that needed more focus.

Another year on and we have a company that feels like they have a true handle on the general health of its employees, structured management of absentees and a more engaged and focussed workforce. They simply used the budget already allocated to the screening programme but under the new offering this has resulted in far greater return on investment.