Knowledge Center

Should this be a surprise? There may be many valid reasons to deploy a wellness program across a broad non-targeted employee population – making employees healthier seems to me to be the least persuasive one… and the clinical outcomes are not the ones I would be interested in. What would I care about — PTO days, retention, productivity and overall job satisfaction. To expect a wellness program to change behavior and clinical outcomes – and reverse all the SDOH and other influences on a person’s behaviors – seems unrealistic.

But it is part of what is being “sold” to employers, by vendors and brokers … and employers contribute to the facade in their RFPs.

I expect these programs when carefully targeted (and cold you do that?) might impact health…but that should not be the goal — and with so many now working at home … much of this (expectations and outcomes) needs to be re-thought. You manage what you measure and in this case I suspect they are measuring the wrong outcomes.