The non-profit Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI) has released its analysis of the health and productivity management (HPM) practices of 450 U.S. employers indicating that HPM has a positive impact on their health and productivity goals. This analysis is a follow up to an IBI report released earlier this year finding broad adoption of prevention, wellness, disease management and disability-management/return-to-work (RTW) initiatives by employers.

“That employers are sustaining and adding to their HPM programs despite a general lack of empirical data on the outcomes of these efforts suggests the increasing prominence of workforce health as a business strategy,” said Thomas Parry, PhD, president of IBI. “Weight management efforts meet both the medical/pharmacy cost savings goal as well as reducing the lost-productivity costs of ill health, making adoption of weight management a best practice for many employers. Other such best practices help employers achieve multiple goals including savings in medical/pharmacy costs, health-related lost productivity and sick-day/disability absences.”

Additional research findings include:

• HPM practices have a particularly strong, positive impact on employee satisfaction. While employee satisfaction is not a traditional health and productivity outcome, this finding is a significant indicator that a health and productivity program is an important investment for employers interested in attracting and retaining key workers by building a culture of health.
• Several practices have high impact across several outcomes. Six practices – nurse case management, transitional RTW, health risk coaching, on-site providers, participation incentives and weight management – have positive impacts on at least two important health and productivity outcomes and therefore should be considered an essential part of an effective and efficient HPM program.
• No single HPM program area has a lock on high-impact practices. Among the top 10 high-impact practices, four are associated with disability management/return to work, four are related to health promotion and two are associated with disease management.

SOURCE: IBI press release, ibiweb.org, July 20, 2010.