Building a Culture of Health

Building a culture of health at any organization can be challenging, but developing a supportive workplace not only stunts escalating health care costs, positive tactics engage employees and guide them to make healthy decisions. A health director from Dow Chemical shared how leadership buy-in and individual accountability thrust her company toward a healthy culture in a webinar presentation yesterday by the Change Agent Workgroup (CAWG) and facilitated by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

"[The health outreach] has to be real," Dr Catherine Baase, global director of health services, The Dow Chemical Company, explained. She said that every initiative needs integrity. "If it's just words on a page, the program isn't delivering value to people."

Every culture of health must be fed from the bottom up, as well as the top down, which is why leadership buy-in is critical, said Baase.

"Start building a business case by [presenting] information that is concrete and credible that illustrates the value proposition to the organization," she advised HR professionals looking to pitch a comprehensive health program to the executive team. Data on how such initiatives will retain employees and attract new talent goes a long way in solidifying leadership support, she said.

A vision of health "needs to be perceived as a priority business asset and has to be recognized as having a big and important impact on the ultimate success of the enterprise. It has to be viewed a critical to the strategy of the organization," said Baase.

However, not all organizations have defined a healthy culture in such strong corporate terms. Only 31% of respondents to Aon Hewitt’s 2012 Health Care Survey have active wellness councils or champion networks that meet regularly, with 13% adding such a group in 2012. This was the most popular health tactic present in over 1,800 individual employer-provided health benefits considered in the survey.