Why wellness programs fail.

• Author: Lewis, Deborah
• Position: Includes related article - Employee Benefits

Too many wellness programs get derailed because companies fail to link them with other benefits and business strategies. Learn how you can avoid making costly mistakes with your plan.

A chemical company discontinues its wellness program when its profits start dropping, reasoning that this "ancillary" benefit is excess overhead. A financial-services firm invests in a costly fitness center; meanwhile, its maternity and cancer costs continue to rise unabated. A consumer-products corporation gives up trying to implement a nationwide wellness program for its operating units, leaving them to operate independent programs of varying quality on their own.

At first blush, wellness programs are a good-news proposition. They help control health-care costs by encouraging employees and their families to adopt healthy lifestyles and detect, prevent and manage illnesses. Health-promotion programs are also great morale boosters they're the undisputed feel-good part of employee-benefits and human-resources programs. Surveys demonstrate that these programs, rumors of their premature demise to the contrary, have grown in number and are increasingly part of the managed-care landscape.

Despite this good news, Corporate America still hasn't ironed out the kinks in its wellness programs. For every program that exists, at least one was begun and abandoned, or else it never got off the ground. Yet many of these programs could have been rescued and put back on track with some practical solutions. Here's what you can do to avoid making the same mistakes with your wellness plan.

First, don't think of your wellness plan as an extraneous benefit that has nothing to do with your company's performance. Wellness programs are still largely unconnected to health-plan strategic planning, design, communications and open enrollment, even though the top 10 causes of death in the United States are related to lifestyle or personal behavior. Benefits managers often view these plans as frills or "gyms for jocks," professing they'll turn their attention to wellness once they solve their medical plans' "real" problems.

As a result, they miss many opportunities to integrate wellness programs into overall strategic-benefits and human-resources planning. Plus, senior management is often reluctant to invest in evaluating wellness programs' impact, which helps perpetuate unrealistic savings expectations. The result is an approach that focuses almost exclusively on sick care instead of well care, and this is true of both indemnity and managed-care plans.

GET SOME AMMUNITION

To overcome these stereotypes, you need some ammunition. Too many executives incorrectly assume the benefits of wellness plans aren't measurable. In fact, numerous cost-impact studies on wellness have been published within the last few years. Many of them demonstrate a return of $2 to $6 for every dollar invested in a work-site wellness program. Make evaluation a priority in your own organization, basing your analysis on written program goals and objectives. That lets you see where you should focus your efforts.

What's the best way to integrate wellness with your other benefits? A growing number of employers do this by reimbursing employees for selected preventive procedures, such as mammograms, flu shots, stress tests and...