Publications
Benfield Business-Health Leadership
Worth Reading
Below is a collection of articles that leaders and aspiring leaders may consider worth reading. You’ll note that the articles align nicely to the leadership model depicted in this issue’s perspective. You may find that some of the articles come from sources not typically within the bounds of your discipline. That’s not an accident, and although we regret that exploring new sources of information may require you to register on new sites or pay for access to full articles, we don’t apologize for it.
Leadership in the human capital arena requires insight that spans traditional corporate silos. Time and money spent to access new information are sound investments. Our objective is to (1) identify truly insightful stuff that you may not otherwise encounter and (2) give you enough information about it and why it matters to enable you to quickly determine whether it’s worth reading.
How to Design Smart Business Experiments
Source: Harvard Business Review, February, 2009
Synopsis: Now more than ever, widely available tools enable managers to design and test different options before making a consequential decision. Harvard Business Review explains how a variety of different companies have successfully used testing and when and why testing is appropriate.
So What? In the interview with Jack Mahoney in this issue, he states: “There is a significant downside to the spiral of VBBD. Many implementers don’t base their decision on data or experience, but on what they have heard externally. I’ve seen some adoption that makes you wonder if the implementers will be able to demonstrate effectiveness.” He also states: The Achilles’ heel of the Pitney model is no control group. Thinking it over again, I’d put in a control group and I’ve encouraged others to do so as they start their programs.”
“How to Design Smart Business Experiments” provides a rationale (and a number of examples) for implementation of experiments within a business. Not all the tools and lessons mentioned have direct applicability to things like benefit design (which has built-in complexities related to “experimentation”). But, if you think about the provision/marketing of programs and services to employees as consumers, the useful insights are bountiful!
This link will take you to a free copy of the article.
Health and Productivity as a Business Strategy: A Multiemployer Study
Source: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Volume 51, Number 4, April 2009
Synopsis: This article explores refinements in the measurement of health-related lost productivity and assesses implications of a full-cost approach to managing health. Using data from 10 participating employers—including Health and Work Performance Questionnaires (over 50,000 respondents) and medical and pharmacy claims (over 1.1 million claims)—researchers applied a variety of models to explore the association between a range of health conditions and worker absence and presenteeism. Findings were consistent with prior research, estimating that health-related productivity costs are, on average, more than twice as great as medical and pharmacy costs.
Moving from the science of statistical analysis to the art of management, the article goes on to describe how employers who participated in the study used results of the analysis to impact their health management strategy. Further, the authors build on the analyses and managerial examples to provide eight insights for employers who are seeking to evolve their health management strategy.
So What? The notion that the full cost of health conditions does not begin and end with so-called “direct” medical and pharmacy costs is not new. And, there is nothing particularly surprising about the overarching conclusion that absence and productivity costs are—on average—more than twice these direct costs. What this article does for health management professionals is to (1) provide fresh conclusions based on sound analytic methods to fortify the health/productivity story, (2) provide condition-specific insights to help guide employers who lack integrated data in prioritizing their intervention targets and (3) reinforce the value of investing in integrated data and analytic support.
In our most recent syndicated research of employer health management trends, we found that during this time of economic uncertainty many employers have “pressed pause” on implementing interventions and benefit designs. However, we observed a continued increase in trend regarding development and use of integrated data to support health management strategic planning and decision-making. Equipped with information, these employers are simply in a better position to manage their investments in policies, programs and benefits to improve workforce health and productivity.
NOTE that I did not say “HEALTH policies, programs and benefits…” because as the next recommended item explains beautifully, there’s more to managing health and productivity than health-focused intervention.
This link will take you to a free abstract of the article.
Make It Matter, Make It Possible, Make It Theirs: A New Strategy for Investing in Worker Human Capital
Source: Health as Human Capital Foundation, August 2008
Synopsis: This paper, and other research-based content from the Health as Human Capital Foundation, represents a sort of counter-balance to type of philosophy and research described in the above article: “Health and Productivity as a Business Strategy.”The case presented in this paper is perhaps best captured by a question highlighted on its first page: “What if—by trying to convince employees to change health habits in hopes of improving business outcomes—we’ve gotten it backwards? What if there are strategies to improve human capital performance that also happen to encourage better health?”
Launching forward from those provocative questions, the paper proceeds to present a primer on human capital, and then suggests a strategy that strives to:
- 1) Make human capital matter by aligning policies and programs to reward employees for being productive.
- 2) Make human capital development possible by removing barriers that discourage personal growth and development.
- 3) Make it human capital theirs (the employees’) by aligning policies and programs to reinforce personal ownership and accountability for human capital protection and development.
So What? This paper is required reading for health management professionals. If your philosophy and strategy for managing health and productivity has grown and matured on a diet of traditional health and productivity literature, you are missing key nutrients for well-rounded thinking about the relationship between health and human capital. I promise that reading this paper will make you uncomfortable, because it will challenge the notion that the path to health and productivity improvement runs straight through health-focused policies and programs.
This paper suggests that employers give their attention first to things like how people are paid, policies that govern absence and disability, and the culture around opportunities for personal/professional development and advancement. The fundamental premise is that employees will protect and nurture the health of their human capital if policies and practices are aligned to reward productivity and potential. That means things like pay for performance, absence and disability policies that don’t reward being away from work more than being at work, and robust training programs and opportunities for advancement, among other things. With these policies and programs aligned, workers are more motivated to protect their health because it simply makes sense for them to do so; and as such, health-focused interventions are much more likely to gain traction and to have their desired impact.
This link will take you to a copy of the article.