Concord's Relevant Health Roundtable hosted a panel entitled, "Is All Engagement Meaningful?" In this panel, three industry experts share their thoughts: Kurt Cegielski, Co-founder & SVP of RedBrick Health; Alexa Skinner, Manager of Human Resources at Room & Board; and Joel Spoonheim, Director of Health Promotion at HealthPartners. Read on for the insights from this session.

The Engagement Shift

• The focus of engagement used to be entirely on physical health, but the emphasis shifted to well-being over the years.
• Employers are working to make sure employees show up to work ready to do their very best and be fully engaged, factoring in previously unconsidered elements like stress and financial health.
• It’s better to view your engagement strategy as a competitive advantage than to look at it from a savings perspective. Room & Board has been very successful in creating a culture of wellness by offering benefits that factor in all facets of an individual, which has tremendously lowered their turnover rate in an otherwise high turnover industry.

Casual Engagement Isn’t Enough

• A true culture of wellness starts with leadership. Most employers don’t want to show up as a leader who models well-being, because humans are, unfortunately, quite lazy.
• The old mantra used to be, “Make the healthy choice the easy choice.” It needs to be the easiest choice. By simplifying the playbook within your wellness program and focusing on outcomes you want to drive, you can create lasting change.  For example, volunteering and donating blood are great, but it won’t make your people healthy.
• Most employers’ programs get them casual engagement. While important as a foundation, it doesn’t get results and needs to move towards ongoing engagement to make any real difference.

Habits & Technology

• It’s commonly believed that it takes 8 – 12 weeks to change a habit, but neuroscience is teaching us that it actually takes a yearlong effort or more.
• Technology by itself isn’t enough to improve health outcomes. Once the novelty wears off, people go back to their former ways.
• It’s better to use technology to make a healthy lifestyle the easiest choice. If you’re trying to promote something like telemedicine, put that front and center in your app.

Read Up!

• Well Designed Life. This book is a great resource to learn more about behavior change. Dr. Kyra Bobinet shares useful concepts from decades of studying neuroscience and design thinking.
• Fat But Fit? The Debate Continues. A new study suggests that overweight people are at greater risk for heart problems, even if they’re “metabolically healthy.”