Publications | Leader Interviews
Benfield Business-Health Leadership
May 31, 2011
Establishing the Link Between Health and Value Pays Off at The Dow Chemical Company
Over the years, Benfield has relied on Dr. Cathy Baase, Global Director of Health Services at The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), and her team for insights from their innovative health promotion and data measurement strategies. Recently, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Baase, who gave us an inside look at Dow’s health strategy and accomplishments.
Under the leadership of Dr. Baase, Dow has been an innovator in seeking value from health care. But Dr. Baase’s team started small, working with what resources and knowledge they had to compensate for the data and roadmap they didn’t.
Dow has promoted health and safety for almost 100 years. Now, more than 20 years after Dow started to focus directly on workforce health and human performance, the company considers health a core element of its corporate culture. And through experimentation and experience, Dow has acquired critical data and know-how and, most significantly, results.
In this first installment of a two part interview, Dr. Baase shares how Dow moved from planning its health strategy to implementing policies and programs that support a culture of health.
Benfield: What sparked Dow’s health and human performance movement?
Dr. Baase: You could say critical thought patterns launched our strategy.
Early on, we tried to logically map the connection between health and Dow’s economic success. Once we made that connection we started thinking about how to increase value to Dow. Really, we started building a business case.
In the beginning, we had more questions than answers. We recognized there were people among our covered lives who were ill and needed care. Helping those people and optimizing all members’ health was important. We asked ourselves what would achieve the best situation for our covered lives: What portfolio would be best to take those members from illness to health and optimize our goals? What would be the value to Dow? And where were the opportunities to create that value?
We developed a flow diagram (see figure) to work through the health and economic puzzle, entering in the data we had and making assumptions when knowledge gaps existed.
Over time, we have followed the same pattern through generations of our business case. First, establish a vision of what is needed. Then translate the vision into a map of
how to achieve our objectives, make necessary assumptions and, finally, establish a sophisticated plan and timeline to fill in the gaps.
Benfield: In your experience, what are some critical, but often overlooked, requirements of a successful health and productivity strategy?
Dr. Baase: While measurement and culture are extremely important, an employer’s mindset is also key.
Your perspective shifts when you consider the money spent on health as an investment instead of a cost. An investment mindset means you intend to achieve something with your money and you begin to look strategically at what is keeping you from your objective.
At Dow, the investment mindset led us to see that health promotion and programs are not something to do to people, but something to do with them. If we want people engaged, they have to see value in what we offer. It earns trust when the design, language, and purpose of a program have some benefit that the participant can see. And when people believe programs are in their best interest, they are more receptive.
That’s why Dow uses the term “health and human performance.” It reminds us that our programs should take a holistic approach to health: mind, body and spirit all matter. Our programs should deliver value to the individuals we are trying to serve beyond the workplace. The programs are for the good of the individual’s whole life—for the times they’re at home and on the job.
This mindset undergirds all that we do: From design to branding, to communicating our health advocacy model, to how we deliver value to the individual and the organization. We’ve learned that building programs from a human perspective establishes integrity and earns employees’ trust.
Benfield: Dow doesn’t offer any financial incentives, but 90% of employees still complete a health risk assessment (HRA). How does Dow achieve that engagement level?
Dr. Baase: A real “Aha!” moment occurred when we recognized the importance of culture and how it contributes to the ultimate achievement of health. We realized that culture needed to be a core part of our health and human performance strategy and not an incidental component.
Culture is so important; investing in it drives participation. We want participation to be intrinsically motivated and for people to own the responsibility for their health. Paying people can send the message that the employer has the responsibility instead. Incentives aren’t always wrong, but a hazard exists because incentives can unintentionally change the locus of control and create an entitlement mentality and extrinsic motivation.
To encourage employees to complete HRAs, we built off of Dow’s strong occupational health assessment program. For about 100 years, Dow has offered on-site occupational health services with a focus on safety and health protection, so employees were used to receiving exams there. In the mid-80s, we realized that we could use the on-site services to increase the focus on health awareness. We changed the name of the group from Medical to Health Services. It sounds simple, but in actuality the name change represented a significant staff mindset shift.
We mixed HRAs and other health and wellness components into the familiar services employees received on-site. Our goal was to create a high value experience that left employees with the feeling we cared about them both professionally and personally and encouraged them to return. We never really thought about offering incentives, instead we built on the high trust that existed to achieve high engagement.
Benfield: Where has this high trust/high engagement culture of health led you at Dow?
Dr. Baase: We launched the Healthy Workplace Index in 2007 to reinforce the connection between workforce culture, environment and health at our domestic and global worksites.
The Healthy Workplace Index measures the health parameters of a worksite, such as access to healthy food, access to exercise and a tobacco free campus. A site's status on all of the parameters is ranked by its level of achievement and assigned points. The cumulative index score of all individual elements is used to classify worksites as achieving bronze, silver, gold or platinum levels.
The first Healthy Workplace Index round included very doable parameters—policies and attributes we hoped sites already had in place. The program has helped by quantifying how worksites were influencing culture and providing direction on what sites should do next.
The Healthy Workplace Index is voluntary for sites. We’re pleased that it’s been well received. A benefit of the program is that it can have multiple levels. Sites are incorporating parameters into their goals and Dow is raising the level requirements as sites accumulate points.
Next Up: Stay tuned for the second installment of Benfield's interview with Dr. Baase, where she describes how Dow elevated and operationalized its business case for health and human performance.