Nadaleen Singh

Hav­ing an un­healthy work­force in large com­pa­nies can im­pact pro­duc­tiv­i­ty sig­nif­i­cant­ly, re­sult­ing in an up­take of costs amount­ing to mil­lions of dol­lars. It is there­fore im­per­a­tive for large com­pa­nies to bring in­creased aware­ness about health and well­ness habits.

On Mon­day, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try host­ed its health sem­i­nar at the its head­quar­ters, Colum­bus Dri­ve, West­moor­ings, and Busi­ness Guardian spoke to a few busi­ness­es to find out their mod­els for en­cour­ag­ing health aware­ness.

Massy Ltd:

With more than 10,000 em­ploy­ees and their de­pen­dents at­tached to the com­pa­ny's health plan, Aman­da McMil­lan, Massy's group man­ag­er, em­ploy­ee ben­e­fits, said the com­pa­ny's costs con­tin­ue to go high­er and high­er. She added that this meant there was need to look at the da­ta to de­ter­mine what con­tributed to the high­er costs.

"One of the things that we start­ed to do, is look at some da­ta col­lec­tion by work­ing and part­ner­ing with the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies to see what are the sta­tis­tics show­ing. What are you (the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny) see­ing that is alarm­ing to you that we (Massy Ltd) need to be aware of?

"We looked at some of our med­ical records along with med­ical ad­vis­ers, we start­ed to track some pre-em­ploy­ment con­di­tions, peo­ple com­ing in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion. We know what we have, we need to track what is com­ing in.

"From there, we start­ed to form well­ness groups, get well­ness cham­pi­ons, dif­fer­ent peo­ple who had dif­fer­ent pas­sions. Some peo­ple like zum­ba, some peo­ple like spin, nu­tri­tion, yo­ga. What­ev­er is your pas­sion, we formed a well­ness com­mit­tee."

Mc Mil­lan added that a well­ness pro­gramme which worked for one com­pa­ny with­in the group would not al­ways work for an­oth­er com­pa­ny.

"We start­ed to of­fer in­cen­tives, we start­ed to bring peo­ple to­geth­er and have dif­fer­ent types of com­pe­ti­tions. We had a ses­sion where we looked at the cafe­te­ria sup­pli­ers through­out all the or­gan­i­sa­tions in the Massy Group. We brought all of them to­geth­er and we had them at the ho­tel school. There we did some healthy meal plan­ning. It is along that line that we start­ed to col­lect dif­fer­ent da­ta and roll out dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives."

She said get­ting the facts about the med­ical his­to­ry of em­ploy­ees would al­low the com­pa­ny to de­ter­mine why they are pay­ing so much out in med­ical pre­mi­ums. That's the biggest chal­lenge we have right now. I made a plea to in­sur­ance com­pa­nies: don't just come to me every year and tell me that my claims ex­pe­ri­ence is high. Give me some sta­tis­tics, show me some costs, show me what I paid be­fore, show me what I am go­ing to be pay­ing for, show me in the next three years if I don't em­bark on well­ness for di­a­betes or hy­per­ten­sion or can­cer, show me some costs. That's my chal­lenge in get­ting cost fig­ures."

The com­pa­ny has 2,000 re­tirees who are al­so part of the com­pa­ny's health ini­tia­tives which in­cludes med­ical tests and oth­er health-re­lat­ed ini­tia­tives.

AA Laquis Ltd:

Cheryl Mo­hammed, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, said AA Laquis, like any mem­ber of the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty, be­lieves high ab­sen­teeism is an over­all cost to the com­pa­ny. She added that AA Laquis has ex­tend­ed its free health ser­vice to any mem­ber of the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty. The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can make a for­mal re­quest to AA Laquis to have em­ploy­ees test­ed.

Some of the tests in­clude blood pres­sure test­ing and glu­cose test­ing.

"We pro­vide free me­tres for staff use, so if there was a mem­ber of staff who was not feel­ing well, an­oth­er mem­ber of staff could ad­min­is­ter it. It is re­al­ly ed­u­ca­tion cou­pled with some free tools. The brands are ours, it is re­al­ly the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign we want to em­bark up­on. We have reg­is­tered nurs­es that we hire. It is an ex­pense to AA Laquis. We al­so have in-house ed­u­ca­tors and our brand man­agers that would vis­it the com­pa­nies, to get a sense of what is hap­pen­ing in the or­gan­i­sa­tions."

The AA Laquis team that goes out to vis­it com­pa­nies com­prise of five in­clud­ing a nu­tri­tion­ist, and was launched in the fourth quar­ter of last year. Since its in­cep­tion, AA Laquis has vis­it­ed 10 com­pa­nies.

"We want to make it a part of the cal­en­dar of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, not just when they have one-off health fairs but every quar­ter­ly to keep a pulse on the health of their em­ploy­ees."

While not want­i­ng to dis­close how much it costs AA Laquis to pro­vide this health­care free, Mo­hammed said it is the cost of re­sources and equip­ment. It is like any busi­ness, you need to look at your re­turn on in­vest­ment. Based on what you are see­ing to­day, the im­pact on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the over­all rev­enue stream of the com­pa­ny is con­tin­gent on the health of the em­ploy­ees."

At­lantic:

For At­lantic, bring­ing about aware­ness about health and well­ness in­volves cre­at­ing a cul­ture of health and safe­ty, said Na­ji­la Elias-Sam­lals­ingh, At­lantic HSSE (health safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and en­vi­ron­ment) de­part­ment.

"One of the mod­els we have is that our per­for­mance con­tracts from the chief ex­ec­u­tive to every­one else with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion: we have to put our core work ac­tiv­i­ty that we have to do. We have our be­hav­iour­al com­po­nent and one of the ma­jor com­po­nents is what you do in terms of HSSE.

"As em­ploy­ees, we can sign up for health ini­tia­tives, en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives. The per­son would sign up for safe­ty walk down, peo­ple would do en­vi­ron­men­tal work pro­grammes, we do bio-di­ver­si­ty dis­plays for the com­mu­ni­ty, lec­tures, World En­vi­ron­ment Day. Our oc­cu­pa­tion­al health team which is very dy­nam­ic has every­thing from the biggest los­er cam­paign. It is all along the line of check­ing em­ploy­ees along the way, see­ing who will lose the most weight and en­cour­ag­ing it as teams."

Elias-Sam­lals­ingh said em­ploy­ees must put on their per­for­mance con­tract what they have par­tic­i­pat­ed in when it comes to health and well­ness.

"It is part of the em­ploy­ees cul­ture since you are al­so en­cour­aged to take those (good health) prac­tices home."