Article Reviewed by a licensed insurance professional: Sam Meenasian (CA dept of insurance license #0F75955).
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Key Takeaways
- Health apps have gained popularity in workplaces, helping to improve employee wellness and reduce insurance costs.
- Companies increasingly invest in wellness apps to foster healthier employees, resulting in fewer worker’s compensation claims and lower health insurance premiums.
- Successful implementation of health apps requires effective communication, team challenges, and external incentives to drive engagement.
- These apps help track fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle goals, promoting better health and attendance among employees.
- Integrating health apps with insurance plans can form a comprehensive strategy for managing costs and improving employee well-being.
Health and wellness apps have become increasingly accessible and common over the last ten years. Many businesses leverage these apps to help their workforce to be healthy with the goal of keeping their insurance costs down each year.
Nearly 80% of companies across the US have increased funding and spending for their wellness app program in recent years. App-based motivation can be very powerful, and businesses have taken note of the link between gamifying healthy activities and improved employee wellness.
Employee wellness apps can make a big impact on your team’s health and well-being, but they need to be implemented properly to succeed. The more that you know about this smart management opportunity, the more likely it will be that your staff will thrive and you will be able to reduce the cost of your health insurance claims each year.
Wellness Apps And The Workplace
Health and wellness apps cover all of the aspects of your health these days. Your employees can monitor nearly anything that they want to pay attention to as they are working on their well-being.
Fitness and Activity Tracking
This is the most common use of a wellness app. This part of the app counts steps, logs workouts, and might even do things like track your running or walking routes. Apps can foster competition among people who have the app and allow them to make friends with other people with the same wellness goals and needs.
Nutrition/Weight Management
This is another familiar part of the use of an app for your well-being. You can input the nutrition and calories of your meals so that you can manage your weight and track progress. These apps offer a range of perks associated with this functionality that can help promote better eating as well as lost pounds.
Lifestyle and Health Goals Support
Some apps will track your hydration, your sleep, and things like meditation. The integrations for this part of your wellness journey can be customized and utilized in many ways with most tracking apps.
When employers promote these applications, they can see improvements in the health of their workforce for pennies compared to the cost of claims for unhealthy staff members. The cost of insurance is going up and up and up. Saving money on annual claims cost can make all the difference for any kind of company that employs any number of staff members.
One of the other benefits of these apps is that they tend to lead to a more energized workforce that doesn’t need to take sick days or time off nearly as often.
Adding Health Apps to your Employee Wellness Plan
When you set up an employee wellness program, you need to have a few things in mind. Your teams might not actually adopt these applications if you don’t explain their benefits and use them correctly as part of your employee wellness program.
The best way to get started using your wellness app program, is to set up team challenges for your staff. You can allow work teams to compete against one another for perks and rewards, both within the app and outside of it. You should also make sure to encourage and remind staff to sign up for these kinds of activities so that they can learn to use the app and get invested in engaging with it.
You will also have the option to use timely reminders and coaching as part of your wellness program. The app can ping staff members to remind them to walk or log meals. It can also provide workout alerts and diet suggestions if you want to have these functions open to users as you provide chances to engage and get comfortable with the app.
Incentive programs that are external to the app are often needed to get people started on using it for their well-being tracking. You might want to give them credit for specific purchases, bonuses in dollars on their paycheck, or even have them work toward a group party each quarter. The external motivation that you provide to your staff can take any form that works for your staffing needs and your budget.
These apps also gather wellness data that you can share with HR. This can help you figure out if you are moving the needle on the wellness and health of your staff like you hoped that you would. This data is protected and will only be shared with those who are granted access to it. This is an important function if you are looking at keeping insurance premiums under control while also hoping to have engaged and healthy staff show up for work each day.
Communication is Key
Communication is an important factor for the use of these apps in a work wellness program. You will need to explain what the app does and make sure that you are not making it sound like you are just pushing a new agenda on your staff that is related solely to work benefits. People don’t want to be pressured to engage with new applications. They want to be invited to try them out.
You will need to sell people on this kind of application with care so that you don’t make it seem like people will have to give up their jobs if they don’t want to use the app. It needs to seem fun and engaging from the start, or the adoption of this kind of wellness program will be a flop.
The Link Between Insurance and Risk Management Through the Use of Wellness Apps
Fostering wellness within your business has lots of benefits. The biggest benefit for most companies is that a wellness application can actually improve employee health and help you save money on your insurance premiums. It’s expensive to protect your staff’s wellness. You probably could use the thousands of dollars that you are currently paying for claims each year on other business needs.
These are the benefits that you can secure related to your adoption of a wellness app:
1. Fewer Workers’ Comp Claims
Workers’ compensation claims are really expensive. Often, it can be tough to separate the chicken from the egg when it comes to injuries at work. Sometimes a lack of overall health and wellness can lead to on-the-job accidents and injuries. Wellness programs have been shown to decrease workers’ comp claims by as much as 30%.
A lot of the reason that wellness apps control losses of this kind is that staff who are active are less likely to suffer accidents related to repetition and lifting on the job. People who are more self-aware as they are doing physical labor are also far less likely to be injured.
You still have to have workers’ compensation coverage for your staff, but if you utilize it less frequently, the cost of your insurance premiums will decrease. Wellness apps can sometimes also lead to discounts on your workers’ compensation policy costs as well.
2. Reduced Health Insurance Costs
Health insurance is one of the biggest costs that employers have to shoulder these days. Even a few staff members with obesity or diabetes can drive your premiums up significantly. If you can control these kinds of health issues by encouraging healthy eating and daily activity, you can save a lot of money on your insurance coverage.
There is a clear link between poor overall employee health and increased insurance premium costs. You will want to break that cycle, and a wellness app can help you to do it. If you implement this kind of program properly, employee costs and claims can come down exponentially. Health insurance companies often provide discounts for employers who have a wellness program from the moment that it is enacted. You don’t even have to prove that it is working to be able to access these discounts.
3. Improved Attendance
Workers who are out sick can slow down everything every day for your company. If you have even a single staff member out sick, you might fall weeks behind on projects. Wellness programs often improve worker attendance by significant margins, and they encourage well-rested, positive employees showing up to work each day.
When morale is good, it’s easy to run a thriving business. Workers who are encouraged to eat well, get enough sleep, and lose weight often feel much more positive about their jobs as well as their personal goals. Many studies have shown that employee absenteeism will go down as much as 19% when you have a functional and effective wellness program in place at your company. When those people show up every day energized and ready to work, meeting company goals can be a breeze.
4. Retention and Reputation
An overlooked benefit of a quality wellness app tie-in with your health insurance and business operations is that your overall reputation as a company will improve. People want to work for companies that invest in them. They don’t want to feel like another cog in the wheel. When you offer perks like a wellness program, people will tell their friends about how much they enjoy working for your business.
Word-of-mouth and improved industry reputation can help you promote your business in many different ways. A strong wellness record will also improve your rank when independent magazines or websites do studies about which companies are the most enjoyable to work for. This is all free publicity, and a wellness program can help you access these perks with ease.
Adding a Wellness App to Your Insurance Plans
To make the most of your insurance benefits, you need to use both a preventive program and a protection program. The protection program is delivered through your insurance itself. The preventive part of the protocol happens within your wellness app. The two work in tandem to create a risk management strategy that you can count on to reduce your costs for insurance coverage.
Make sure that you educate employees both on their health and on the use of the app. Make sure that they know that the use of the app might allow them to save money on their own healthcare costs each year. Make it clear what the program benefits are when they comply with the program and use it as you intend them to.
You will want to be sure as well that you implement an Employee Assistance Program to help with things like mental healthcare, emergencies, and significant health struggles. The goal is to cover health holistically and to lean into preventive care above all else. You need to be sure that your staff understands these goals and works on them on a daily basis.
Insurance programs can help you to promote these benefits. When you have a quality insurance carrier, you will get benefits that you cannot promote on your own. You need to leverage their support and make sure that you maximize their support. You might be able to get wearables for all of your staff to track their steps. You might be able to secure benefits that save them on their co-pays.
There are lots of ways to track outcomes and make sure that you can satisfy your insurance partner while also utilizing the benefits that they are willing to invest in your program. Working as a team can ensure that your wellness protocol is going to deliver big results for your company.
Your coverage will probably need to be adjusted over time. Be sure that you have a partnership with your insurance carrier that allows you to discuss the changing needs of your business as it grows and changes. This could be increases or decreases in premiums, as well as changes to your wellness program and other insurance coverages.
Your insurance should be the backbone of your employee protection program, but you will want to leverage the perks of wellness apps at the same time to keep your staff on a good trajectory with their health. Your insurance is protection against the unexpected, but your wellness app is protection against the future.
Wellness Apps Are a Smart Investment for Any Business
Small businesses are more technology-focused than ever. You can use all the perks that big businesses have access to in order to make sure that your employees are in great health and are ready to work each day when they show up at the office. Your insurance costs can be controlled by having a wellness plan in place as well. You can motivate your staff to care for themselves better and therefore keep your insurance premiums under control.
A resilient business needs resilient staff working for it. You will be able to secure good outcomes for your business by promoting health and well-being with a wellness app. There are many products out there to choose from these days, and you should have no trouble locating an app that fits the needs of your business and helps your staff to enjoy a healthier, happier work experience.
