Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER AUGUST 2019 NEWS 3 High-cost drugs, disease management among top health concerns for employers Wellness cultures, targeted communications can make a difference: survey BY SARAH DOBSON WHEN IT COMES to work- place health, employers are con- tinuing to struggle with persistent issues such as higher-cost spe- cialty drugs and chronic disease management, but there are a few promising solutions to be had, such as a strong wellness culture, a focus on mental health and more targeted communications, ac- cording to a Sanofi survey. Wellness culture pays off Having a workplace wellness cul- ture can pay dividends, found the survey. For one, 59 per cent of em- ployees with a workplace wellness culture say they are managing their chronic condition or disease very well, compared to 44 per cent of those without this culture. In addition, 61 per cent of those with a wellness culture rate the quality of their health benefit plan as very well, compared to 28 per cent of those without such a culture. And 85 per cent of those with a wellness culture are satis- fied with their job, compared to 62 per cent of those without. "It's more [about] the plan sponsor realizing that it's impor- tant to get their employees mov- ing and healthy from a preventa- tive perspective, not just from a drug coverage perspective," says Andrea Frankel, private payer lead at Sanofi in Toronto. "Cer- tainly, the drugs are important to provide a robust health benefit plan. But also, let's focus on earlier [issues] upstream." Without a workplace wellness culture, a benefits plan is seen as a way for an employee to fix something that's broken, such as a sore back, so it becomes almost reactive and negative, says Ryan Weiss, vice-president of product and experience at Great-West Life in Winnipeg. "If you switch that on its head, a wellness culture then becomes enabling, it becomes proactive, it becomes 'My employer, my or- ganization is investing in me be- fore I get sick, not just paying for things after I get sick.' Obviously, that's a much more positive way to spin it." For most employers, a culture of health starts with looking at the needs of employees "and un- derstanding how those needs can affect the performance of the or- ganization," says Chris Bonnett, principal consultant at H3 Con- sulting in Guelph, Ont. However, smaller employers tend to focus less on wellness, even though they know they should have a healthy work envi- ronment. It's mostly about keep- ing benefit costs low, says Robert Crowder, founder and president of the Benefits Trust in Vaughan, Ont. "In the larger employers setting, where there's a professional HR department… they can use their drug plan to manage chronic dis- ease, and they can use their ben- efit plan to look at mental health and wellness and so on. So, it's a bit of a different beast." Targeted communications When it comes to plan fixes, em- ployers cite "improved coverage options for higher-cost specialty drugs" as most important (39 per cent), followed by more benefits to prevent illness (36 per cent), more benefits to manage chronic disease (34 per cent), improved disability management (25 per cent) and fraud detection or pre- vention (19 per cent). One of the challenges is what to do with the information around all this once employers have it, says Bonnett. "ey're not necessarily clear on what to do with it, how to or- ganize the information, how to set priorities… Some people figure that 'Well, we just need incen- tives, and that'll be enough to get people to look after their own per- sonal health.' And a lot of employ- ers, I think, are still thinking that it's just about personal lifestyle, not about the way they manage, not the way that they lead, not the cultures that they build in their organizations." Enabled by insurers and advi- sors, organizations need to do better, and plan members also need to be more responsible for their own health, and how they use the benefit plan, he says, "knowing that we want that plan to be sustainable in the long term." Sanofi found that 74 per cent of plan sponsors are interested in having benefits providers send targeted personal health informa- tion to plan members. More targeted solutions can also help, with layered claims data and context-based messaging STRONG > pg. 6

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