Five mistakes to avoid when measuring ROI of wellness programs

In today’s age of dual-career families and skyrocketing insurance costs, workplace wellness programs are quite commonplace. In fact, according to a survey by Buck Consultants, nearly ¾ of all North American companies have some sort of wellness program. Despite this, the survey reports that only 37% percent of U.S. employers actually measure their program’s effectiveness!

Fortunately, Employee Benefit News highlighted five mistakes to avoid when measuring the ROI of wellness programs. One of these mistakes is focusing on the tried-and-true, rather than the real issues:

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Just because you have employees who smoke does not mean that you have a lot of health costs related to smoking.  If you want your wellness program to actually reduce health costs, you need 
to look at where your costs are coming from.  It’s very easy to count how many smokers your group has.  It takes some skill to measure how much respiratory-related illness [for which] your plan is paying.

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Other mistakes include:

1. Launching a program with fuzzy goals—or worse, no goals at all.
2. Setting goals you cannot measure.
3. Comparing program participants to non-participants.
4. Assuming that health claims data will be too difficult or too sensitive to handle.

The full article can be found on Employee Benefit News.