Cardinus Connect - Issue 16

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Issue 16

Employee behavioral health: an employer imperative Richard Tewksbury Jr. , Co-Founder and President of ADoH Scientific , provides some health insights on how the global pandemic has impacted the employee-employer relationship.

Numeric response breakdown Healthy Working Analytics automatically looks for differences that have not occurred by chance between the classifiers and the numeric responses questions, which include: • Healthy diet • Exercise • Prolonged time sitting • Days absent due to illness or injury • Days lost due to distraction • Days working with injury or illness. • Working productively.

Detailed text results Healthy Working Analytics allows users to provide open text feedback for any question and at the end of the questionnaire they can share general feedback in relation to their well-being and productivity. This provides management with useful context to the overall scores. Measuring productivity Organizations can use Healthy Working Analytics to measure percentage improvements in self- reported productivity as well as productivity changes from a financial perspective. The data provided by Healthy Working Analytics allows organizations to calculate productivity percentage change and payback period for the investment in their well-being initiatives.

Summary With so much global uncertainty, data will be crucial to organizational success in the coming months and years. Healthy Working Analytics can help organizations to make informed decisions about their operations so they can maintain competitiveness and provide a happy, healthy and productive place of work. References Dodge, R., Daly, A.P., Huyton, J. and Sanders, L.D. (2012). The challenge of defining wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, [online] 2(3). Available at: https://www. internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index. php/ijow/article/view/89.

Pre-pandemic employer focus on employee mental and behavioral health The persistent increase in annual employee health benefit plan costs has employers continuing to pay attention, for good reason, to the relationship of mental illness with chronic physical health conditions for high-cost benefit plan members. CDC reports chronic physical and mental health conditions drive 90% of total US health costs. At least two-thirds of individuals with a chronic condition also have one or more mental health comorbidities.

Key takeaways • Today’s leading employers are investing in strategic, personalized support of their employees’emotional well-being and behavioral health to address critical business issues. • The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the urgency, scope, and value of focusing on employee behavioral health to strengthen workforce resilience. • These actions facilitate enhanced employee- employer collaboration, empathy, inclusion, and alliance that employees are looking for. • Employers need new and different employee behavioral health insights and management tools to reach their desired outcomes.

Chronic care management, population health management, and wellness services have grown to multibillion-dollar industries as cost, care quality, and disease prevention solutions for employee health benefit plans. Unfortunately, their results often haven’t met employer expectations. For example, the 2021 average increase in employer health plan costs was 6.3% (Mercer study) , which is the biggest increase in 5+ years and remains 2-3 times higher than average wage increases. A major reason for the lackluster results is their solutions require employees and family members to definitively change individual health behaviors. Population health research and management strategies focus on the determinants of personal health with individual health behaviors being a dominant factor (30%). Employers during the last 5-7 years have been expanding their interests beyond employee mental health to behavioral health. They’re leveraging the advantages of integrated physical & behavioral healthcare delivery – often called whole-person health. Mental health pertains to a person’s psychological state and behavioral health refers to daily practices affecting a person’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

Stephen Bowden BSc (Hons) C.ErgHF MIEHF EurErg , is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) and registered with Centre for Registration of European Ergonomists (CREE). He’s experienced in ergonomics and human factors ensuring an integrated approach between humans, machines and work systems within industrial, office, manufacturing, defence and aerospace.

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