An Investment in Preventative Care

Lead and Learn

Thea Ammon, Senior Benefits & Wellness Administrator

May 20, 2024

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As an associate-focused credit union, OneAZ has long been dedicated to ensuring that the health and well-being of our team members is a top priority. 

With this as our guiding light, our Human Resources team has spent countless hours designing programs that reward and recognize healthy habits. The results of these investments in our associates' wellness are paying off – over the past decade, we’ve had relatively flat claims, even as the number of associates on our team continues to grow. More importantly, our associates understand we genuinely care about their whole being.

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Our efforts have allowed us to maintain low premiums with minimal design changes. Medical wellness rates remain affordable, with an amazing HDHP offering bi-weekly premiums of $5 for individual coverage and $25 for family coverage. For 2024, we had our first major design change to our deductible in over 15 years, and this was only due to ACA requirements.

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Engaging the Team

Colleagues across the HR and wellness administration fields often ask, "How have you done it?" The answer is simple: we started small and continually made incremental changes that added up.

Below are a few highlights of what we find successful for communicating our wellness programs and incorporating them into our overall culture: 

• Onboarding – Spend time informing new hires about your programs. New hires are always eager to dive deep into what you have to offer. Onboarding is a great opportunity for us to build our wellness culture and have each new hire log into our wellness portal.
• Intentional Communication And Placement – Post items near the time clock. Catchy graphics and intriguing phrases often draw attention. Once the attention is created, they talk, others look, and boom… engagement increases.  
• Create Gamification – It is amazing how a friendly competition can take a life of its own.
• Walking Meetings – When leadership and HR start setting an example of how movement impacts wellness, others will follow. All levels can participate and encourage one another.
• Frequent Communication – Our CEO conducts a live webinar-style communication session every month. These are designed to be informative of organizational items. He often mentions wellness and brings in HR for open enrollment items. Make it fun! Nothing like a few impromptu arm raises in the middle of a live recorded conversation to grab attention.
• Engage Ambassadors – Talk to your internal connections. Specifically, the chatterboxes and the influencers. We all have them. Get them onboard, and they will spread the word like wildfire.
• Cross-promote Business Areas – It is amazing how you can work within  the wellness umbrella. Look for opportunities to promote other business area agendas within wellness. For example, Marketing can promotevolunteer events. Wellness provides information regarding how volunteering benefits overall well-being. Add a few wellness budget dollars for random prize drawings to those who volunteer, and engagement is likely to increase with both objectives.
• Share Success Stories - Putting a name and a face to what wellness means is huge. Our wellness portal allows social postings. It is a fantastic way to share tips and tricks for building momentum.
• Walk The Talk – Personally, I lost over 85 pounds - a visually noticeable difference. I have numerous individuals who were motivated by my story and lost weight. Subsequently, we introduced a basic nutrition class. Taking the approach of better eating habits that may or may not be for weight loss.
• Engage, Engage, Engage – Ask yourself: How can you better communicate information? What would grab their attention? What do they want from wellness?

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Invest in Preventative Care

We've all heard the saying, "early detection, early cure" when it comes to a cancer diagnosis, or "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." These maxims hold true when strategizing a wellness program for your team.  

While paying for wellness initiatives is a challenge every benefits team faces, it is easily solved by focusing on preventative healthcare in which you spend money upfront in hopes of preventing disease and, therefore, saving money on expensive healthcare treatments. One might even add to that first axiom: "Early detection, early cure, less expense to the organization."

An example of this in action is OneAZ's efforts with breast cancer screenings by offering Mobile Onsite Mammography (M.O.M.) each year. This service not only helps catch breast cancer early, prolonging lives, but also helps the organization in a number of ways:  

• Lost productivity
  • A simple 15 minutes of paid time for convenience with M.O.M. versus 2-4 hours of lost productivity for an individual to go to an offsite appointment. For those that schedule offsite, taking the time later may not occur or may occur after cancer has progressed to a later stage, resulting in more expenses and lost productivity for the organization.
  • Even with early detection, the number of doctor’s appointments pre, during, and post-treatment is mind-boggling. However, stage 1 and often stage 2 still have more productivity as working through surgery, radiation, and some chemotherapy is very possible with accommodations. With a stage 3 or stage 4 diagnosis, the individual is more likely to take time off work for treatment or may leave work, creating turnover costs.

• FML / disability benefits vary significantly based on the type and stage of cancer. Obviously, disability costs increase with usage and when health conditions are addressed early, this creates cost savings. Sticking with breast cancer as it relates to an actual internal case, consider these variations related to disability costs:
  • 2 weeks for lumpectomy recovery versus 6 weeks following mastectomy surgery and more time needed in the future for reconstruction.
  • The ability to work remotely through radiation vs. needing time off for chemotherapy. Note: the type and frequency of chemotherapy also varies based on the type of cancer and stage, subsequently impacting the individual's ability to work.

• Life insurance – If you have worked with benefits and leaves you most likely have processed a life claim due to someone losing their battle with cancer. Again, early detection may prevent the use of this benefit and change renewal costs.

Back to the Basics

Each organization is unique, and a wellness program and communications will need to be crafted with this in mind. Consider the following easy but fundamental items:

Core Annual Items We Include:

• Independent Wellness Portal – This allows us the freedom to create a more personal program along with vendor support. We currently utilize Sonic Boom Wellness as it has a fantastic gamification portion of wellness and many other facets that engage our workforce. Most medical providers have a free or low-cost portal as an alternative. However, they may not be as robust and will require change if you change your medical provider.
• Stair Wellness – if you have a stairway, add rewards for taking them! Post a QR code at least halfway for points and see what happens. The only word of caution is to ensure there is an understanding of using the handrail (three points of contact), not using cell phones, not racing, etc. We did have a slight increase in worker’s comp.
• Promote Walking on breaks, create walking meetings, and step challenges.
• Onsite Preventative Exams – Find out what free or low-cost services are available in your area. Start with your broker and medical provider to find out more. For us, the cost of onsite mammography is simply the cost of claims.
• Annual Exams – To get more associates on board, we rewarded team members with additional personal time, gift cards, or company swag. While the rewards vary from year to year, our participation outcome was the same – over 98% completed the screenings.

Fun Items Included In the Past:

• Holistic Fair – Go to your local farmers market and find a few vendors to come onsite; combine this with your traditional health vendors; add a few nearby fitness places; slide in a few other vendors your population will love, and a memorable, fun event has just occurred with very little hard dollar costs. Bonus points if they can offer a discount code, waive enrollment fees, etc.
• Onsite Fitness Classes – Find an instructor and offer assorted styles of classes. Over the years, we have had yoga, Zumba, stretching, and now our associates have created their own walking groups and paths.
• Virtual Health Fair – We did this during the pandemic. It was a fun way to gather healthy information.

Dream and Try New Things:

• Determine Your Highest Medical Costs –These are your opportunities for success. What programs would help? How can you make it fun? How can you reward healthy behaviors? Verify you are rewarding the right behaviors and not creating trade-offs.
• Learn from your programs that perform well and dissect those that do not. What do you need to change for next time?
• The sky is the limit. You only need to figure out how to get there.

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Wellness initiatives can enhance your organizational culture, pay for themselves by saving money within health benefit costs, and change the lives of your employees by promoting longevity with quality of life.

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