Lead and Learn
Whitney Gorsegner, Wellness Program Manager
July 30, 2024
Founded in 1919, Garver is an employee-owned, multi-disciplined engineering, planning, architectural, and environmental services firm with over 1,000 employees across the United States. Offering a wide range of services, Garver sits in the top 125 of the Engineering News-Record's prestigious Top 500 Design Firms list and is consistently recognized as a “ best firm to work for” by Zweig.
Garver’s Wellness Program combats rising healthcare costs by offering tools to keep health a focus in the lives of our employees and their families. We also realize that wellness is not simply physical; it’s a way of life. With innovative and comprehensive wellness services to empower employees to take responsibility for their overall well-being, Garver Wellness provides education and support within the entire realm of personal wellness, focusing on a total mind and body approach to living a healthy lifestyle.
Incentivizing Wellness
We are continuously seeking ways to reinforce our award-winning program while maintaining a culture of connectedness and ‘Best + Healthiest Employee Experiences.’ One example is our Wellness Insurance Premium Discount.
Full-time employees can receive over $1,000 in insurance premium cost savings annually for participating in the Wellness Program and being nicotine-free. Individual coverage is $0 (vs. $70 for non-wellness and nicotine usage). Family coverage is $120 bi-weekly (vs. $285 for non-wellness and nicotine usage). While 90% of our competitors raise their health insurance premiums yearly, Garver has not had a health insurance premium increase in over nine years!
Over previous years, full-time employees that have earned this discount have increased substantially each year:
- 2019: 52%
- 2021: 80%
- 2023: 97.8%
How did we do this? And how will we continue to strive for 97%?
We made, and continue to make, providing exceptional compensation and benefits part of our strategic plan while investing in the health and well-being of our people as a strategic piece of our culture.
Qualifying for Incentives
To earn the following year’s Wellness Insurance Premium Discount, employees must complete certain requirements no later than November 30 of the current year. These requirements are:
- Complete a health screening with their primary care physician or LabCorp
- Complete a health questionnaire on their Wellness Portal
- If needed, complete a Reasonable Alternative Standard to manage their health outcomes*
- Spouses on the Garver Health Plan must complete a health screening with their physician or LabCorp
On top of the Wellness Insurance Premium Discount, Garver also provides up to $800 annually in Wellness Rewards dollars. For gym reimbursement, members receive $ 300, and an additional $500 can be earned by completing activities on the Wellness Portal. All dollar amounts are placed in an employee’s Lifestyle Spending Account for health-related items that matter most in their well-being journey. Any medically enrolled spouse on the Garver Health Plan can also earn up to $100 in Wellness Rewards dollars, taking that total dollar amount up to $900.
Effective Communication
Our 97.8% success rate didn’t come from only incentivization. Communication plays a major role in our results. We more than quadrupled our communication strategy in 2023.
- This started with presentations at the beginning of the year where employees could hear about what their Wellness experience would/could look like. The year ended with reminders to complete their requirements during Annual Enrollment presentations.
- Packets containing a Wellness Program overview, current year requirements, and physician screening forms were mailed to employee’s homes in February.
- With the help of our Wellness Portal vendor Asset Health, employees and spouses received monthly eStatements that showed their progress toward earning their discount and/or their Wellness Rewards dollars.
- Leadership support and buy-in are crucial to the success of any initiative. Monthly reports were sent to the Business Line Directors (BLD) of employees who still needed to complete their requirements. Communication from the BLDs to their direct reports showcased top-down leadership, and the importance of taking advantage of this cost-savings benefit.
- Beginning in July, Garver Wellness ran a 6-week competition between offices to see who could earn the ‘Earn It Early’ title and complete their wellness requirements EARLY (July 17 – September 1). Every office that reached 100% of their employees meeting their wellness requirements early could earn bragging rights and a celebratory party (with food and balloons!).
- Our Chief Human Resources Officer sent a targeted email to those who still needed to complete their requirements in September, two months before the deadline. Once again, showcasing top-down leadership and the importance of taking advantage of this cost-saving benefit.
- The Wellness Program Manager sent a targeted email to those who still needed to complete their requirements in November, three weeks before the deadline.
- Social media (@Garver_Wellness), internal newsletters, a countdown on the wellness portal, and wellness portal banners were also used to remind employees to complete their requirements to earn their insurance premium discount.
As a 100+-year-old company, Garver has had plenty of time to develop our culture. A significant part of that culture is encouraging our employees to create relationships with their Primary Care Physician.
Garver Wellness’ goal is to help shift the employee’s relationship with health from one where health is something thought about and ‘practiced’ annually at the doctor’s office, to one where health is practiced daily through small lifestyle habits.
To keep our premiums down and from passing extra costs on to our employees through higher deductibles, we need Garver Nation to be proactive about their health. Healthier employees can help their own bottom line. The more proactive stance and built relationship with a primary care physician, the more likely it will help enhance the employee and their family’s lives, even while reducing future claims costs. We openly encourage and communicate with our employees to utilize their flex time to go to their 100% covered preventative screenings.
According to the CDC, chronic diseases account for 75% of total healthcare costs. They are also the most preventable type of disease. Garver believes a positive relationship between the employee and a primary care physician is a significant way to prevent disease and create true behavior change with actionable steps to halt progression. Many chronic diseases are preventable, and we create our Wellness Program strategic plan and culture to emphasize activities surrounding that message.
The design of the Garver Wellness program continues to evolve as we analyze our health insurance plan utilization for possible action that will result in better care and benefits for our employees (and their families). We will continue to ask the question: Does [insert idea] help provide exceptional compensation and benefits and invest in the health and well-being of our people?
As we look to the future, for example, Garver is looking to enhance the leverage of our Lifestyle Spending Account to provide more innovative benefits by improving our family planning resources and utilizing our dependent care FSA.
Our Wellness program will always look for ways to continue building standardized processes and streamlining efforts so that our people can work AND take care of their well-being. Our employees deserve to have this coexist within their lives. Because we deeply believe this statement, it is how Garver will maintain 97% or above in employees receiving their wellness insurance premium discount in future years.
*While employees do not need to meet the low-risk biometric outcome range to receive the discount; if one or more of their metrics is outside of the low-risk range, they do need to show that they are working toward managing their outcomes and, most importantly, their health. They can do this by either visiting their doctor to discuss their elevated health outcome(s) and upload a signed Health Management Affidavit to their Wellness Portal or they may complete a minimum of four (4) health consultations with Asset Health Coaching Services.
