Health & Productivity
We research and investigate a variety of causes of adverse health outcomes occurring from occupational exposures or lifestyle factors. These can all have serious negative impacts on performance. A healthy and competitive workforce is a necessity in today’s business climate.
All these factors can all have serious negative impacts on performance. A healthy and competitive workforce is a necessity in today’s business climate.
Health
• Designing targeted programs (e.g., automated defibrillators, risk factor reduction programs)
• Providing recommendations to companies regarding health benefit policies, best practices, procedures, and communities.
• Assessing status of health programs compared to standards such as the Corporate Health Achievement Award
• Developing emergency preparedness programs (e.g., Ebola, bioterrorism threats, AED programs)
• Developing substance abuse programs (e.g., testing, employee assistance programs)
Productivity
• Designing, conducting, and managing employee health assessments (e.g., benefits, health promotion, absenteeism, presenteeism)
• Recommending approaches to reduce incidents and impacts of workers’ compensation claims
• Developing wellness and prevention programs oriented to workplace needs
• Developing strategies to enhance worker productivity through management of disease conditions
• Providing cost reduction programs regarding long-term disability (e.g., return-to-work programs)
• Developing consultation in support of company medical director needs
Company Health Strategy: Excerpts of Case Example
Lockheed Martin has dozens of company sites across the country, and Yarborough described the method used to select the sites for the various outreach efforts as well as a report card to assess achievement levels for modifiable determinants of health.
The Site Selection Process
In selecting company sites for the launch of initiatives, the first key criterion is being ready. Yarborough referred to this as “persuadability,” or the potential for engaging in healthy actions. Persuadeability scores for each site take into account eight health actions: pedometer use, disease management, flu shot participation, biometrics, preventive examinations, cardiovascular exercise, nutrition, and stress management. Scores are determined using decision trees and regression analyses of de-identified data.5 The second key site criterion is the potential health benefit relative to the average prospective health care cost for each site’s employees. This is a proprietary risk score that comes from the company’s data warehouse vendor, Yarborough said. The score is based on a relative risk model and takes into account age, gender, and medical claims data as well as an analysis of known chronic conditions and acute and new conditions that might occur. Average scores are then plotted on a graph to identify the priority sites for intervention; these are sites that fall into the upper right quadrant in a diagram that maps both persuadability and potential benefits
Site Report Cards
As part of the Lockheed Martin HealthWorks employee health plan, employees and their spouses complete a voluntary and confidential well-being assessment. This health risk appraisal is used to create a personal roadmap to health for the individual. Using de-identified data from these assessment, Yarborough explained, scores were derived for individual behavior, physical environment, social and economic determinants, and health care in order to identify the areas where the company sites should focus attention. Scores were reported as grades (A through F), with the distribution of grades used as an indicator of performance.