For more than 75 years, Capital BlueCross has served residents and businesses in central Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley as the region’s leading health insurer. Additionally, employers turn to Capital BlueCross to develop, implement, and evaluate worksite wellness programs.
The premise of worksite wellness programs is to apply strategies that promote good health and lower the risk of chronic disease. These programs have the power to lower health care costs, decrease absenteeism, and increase productivity. Capital BlueCross believes that it helps organizations create effective worksite wellness programs by working from the inside out. The organization views its efforts to help employees live healthier as a key component of the employee engagement strategy for business success. The HERO Scorecard has been a valuable tool for the organization’s Wellness Committee and supportive senior management, as they have worked together with employees to build a comprehensive wellness program that garnered top favorability scores in a recent employee engagement survey.
“Just from the nature of our work to improve the health of the community, we have always maintained a focus on the health of our own employees,” says Gina McDonald, senior health coach at Capital BlueCross. “As with most organizations, however, it has been an evolutionary process to build the robust worksite wellness program we have at our company today. Fortunately, we have a senior leadership team that believes in the importance of creating a culture of health and an employee base willing to embrace it.”
Capital BlueCross’ wellness program has grown to provide a comprehensive array of traditional programs and services with high participation, as well as state-of-the-art mobile applications and both digital coaching and face-to-face health coaching. Nutrition-related classes and collaborative efforts with the food service vendor have been wellreceived, as have self-defense classes for the predominantly female workforce. The rewards structure has evolved over time, gradually shifting emphasis to taking action to improve one’s health from participating in awareness campaigns and self-reported activities. Achieving and maintaining high levels of mid-management support are aided by a CEO who regularly highlights the importance of employee wellness at company-wide management meetings.
“Using the HERO scorecard as a benchmark each year has enabled Capital BlueCross to identify areas of strength and areas of augmentation within our programming,” says McDonald. “Now we have quantitative data that support our worksite wellness offerings, changes, and improvements. Simply put, the HERO Scorecard provides us a trusted framework for employee wellness programming and continued improvement. That’s important to Capital BlueCross, because our workforce truly is our most important asset.”
Source: 2014 HERO Scorecard Progress Report
