FitFeud Corporate Wellness Blog

Corporate Wellness Conference 2011 Recap: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I attended the Corporate Wellness Conference in Chicago this week, and even though conferences are time-consuming, relatively expensive, and tiring, they can be really valuable. Overall, this was a great experience and was indeed valuable. I learned a lot and met a lot of great people.

What follows is a no holds barred collection of my thoughts, notes, and complaints. The inclusion of "the bad and the ugly" will probably keep this from getting picked up by Corporate Wellness Magazine, but at least you'll get the full unvarnished story.

The use of "the good, the bad, and the ugly" is just an easy writing device, but it belies the true nature of my thoughts. The conference was at least 2/3 good, and I plan on attending (and exhibiting at) next year's conference (so maybe they will pick this up after all). I think this will be reflected by the volume of helpful, positive notes below vs the volume of critiques and complaints.

The Good: Ideas

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement - Everyone agreed that employee engagement is a main challenge and a necessity of any successful corporate wellness program. Of course, what differed were the tactics. Some people made participation in certain things (usually HRA's and biometric screening) mandatory; some went the opposite direction with making everything optional, thus putting the power into the hands of each individual. As with everything, the right tactic came down to the culture and structure of each organization.

Simplicity is key at all levels of a wellness initiative. From the strategic level - Google's entire global health initiative is three points - and at the individual offering level. Reduce the barriers to participation. Make communications easier on yourself. Keep things simple.

What were Google's three global health intitiative points?

• Offer excellent coverage.
• Offer access to quality healthcare.
• Design and develop programs to keep Googler's happy.

Are you smaller than Google? Is your list of strategic goals longer than this? If so, edit it down. It'll help you and your workforce achieve your goals.

Google has a few other helpful drivers that help guide their strategy and programs:

• Involvement
• Visibility
• Convenience
• Remove barriers
• Education
• Choice

Likewise, they focus on practical solutions and impact. What will be the impact on the employee? If you can't answer that materially, don't do the program.

Another tip from Google: Launch and iterate.

1. Experiment and pilot.
2. Measure and analyze results.
3. Incorporate lessons learned into strategy.
4. Repeat.

On the topic of simplicity, I heard this (paraphrased) quote: Tell someone to do five things, and they're likely to do none of them. Tell someone to do one thing, and they're likely to do that thing and one other one.

As a follow on to that, make it easy for people to take the next step. If you're telling them to get a physical, give them the number to their primary care physician or to resources to find one if they don't have one.

Apple's definition of convenience for their flu shots was "10 feet from the person." They had a mobile cart that went around.

Brand your wellness program. Close your eyes and think of Coca-Cola or Apple or John Deere. These brands mean something to you. This same repetition of image and message can work for your wellness program. Come up with a logo and a tagline, just like you have for your company. Go further and come up with a mission statement and strategic imperatives that align with those of your whole organization.

Wellness is not just about physical wellness. Over and over, presenters talked about three main areas of wellness: physical, emotional, and financial.

Getting people involved in their community can be a powerful wellness motivator and multiplier. It makes people feel good. It makes them connected to their community at a deeper level. It helps employees establish roots, which makes it more likely they'll stay in the area. It gives them a sense of purpose and pride in themselves and in their company. Give them opportunities to give back and actively contribute to their communities. Examples are sponsoring and participating in charity walks, food drives, mentoring at local schools, and volunteering.

Biometric screenings are a fire alarm, but fire alarms haven't prevented a single fire. You have to take steps to help people take action based on the screenings, but at a higher level, you have to help people take action to prevent things from showing up on the screenings in the first place. This is the real goal of wellness.

If biometric screenings are unaffordable, reward them for getting an annual physically - and proving to you that they did.

This I found amazing. Google offeres biometric screening, of course, but right away, in the next room, they get their results and go over them with a doctor. Imagine how much more effective and engaging this is versus separating these steps by days or even weeks, as is common. Again, remove barriers to improve both participation and results.

When designing a corporate wellness program, think of a three stage maturity model:

1. Focus on treatment
2. Focus on prevention/management
3. Focus on optimal behavior

Likewise, think of a multi-stage intervention model:

1. Communication
2. Screening
3. Education
4. Programs to foster behavior change

Sending benefits/wellness info to the home as opposed to email is a simple, subtle way to involve spouses and other family members. Address things, "To the spouse of..." Sneaky. Effective.

The Bad: Logistics

Lots of these complaints was not entirely within the control of the conference organizers, and as the spouse of a former event planner and caterer, I know how difficult these sorts of events are to put on. That said, for the sake of completeness and outlining areas for improvement for next year...

The conference was in "Chicago." Why the quotes? Because the conference was really in Schaumburg, which not only is not Chicago, but it's too far away from Chicago for attendees to reasonably take a cab or otherwise go into the city during their visit. Yet, all over the conference materials and website, we were told we were in Chicago. No offense to the people of Schaumburg, but it ain't Chicago. Next year's conference is slated to be in Miami. Hopefully, it's not in "Miami."

Internet access was awful. I did not stay in the hotel connected to the convention center, so maybe there was wi-fi access available to me if I had, but even the cell phone 3g/4g data (and even voice) coverage in and around the convention center was awful. It's 2011. Fast, reliable internet access should be a top priority for any conference organizer. Please test this in the venue selected for 2012.

Not letting attendees into the exhibit hall until after the keynotes on Thursday was, um, stupid. Your exhibitors are paying for access to attendees. Some attendees were maybe not interested in a keynote. Not letting these people into the exhibit hall is a lose-lose situation. I heard both exhibitors and attendees complain about this.

I realize the benefits and economies of scale presented by combining four different conferences into one, but from an attendee perspective it was rather confusing, albeit more so beforehand than actually at the conference. They actually did a good job with on-site signage and organization.

More vexing, though, was that exhibitors were separated into two groups - corporate wellness on one side and medical tourism on the other - and depending on which conference you were registered for, you were only allowed into that side of the exhibit hall. I need someone smarter than me to explain how this is a good thing for attendees and especially for exhibitors.

I will take this opportunity to say that the event staff were extremely and (seemingly) genuinely friendly and went out of their way to be helpful. On one occasion, one of them offered to go downstairs and fetch a conference agenda and bring it all the way back upstairs for me. Great stuff.

The Ugly: Presentations

I spent over a decade in a marketing agency, so I have a pretty high standard when it comes to presentations. I'm also realistic now that I'm in the corporate wellness world that the presentations aren't going to be as good as professional marketers' presentations. But seriously, people, you have to understand that as attendees, we are sitting through upwards of 5-8 presentations a day. Would it kill you to up the enthusiasm a bit? If you talk to your employees about wellness with the level of enthusiasm as you delivered your presentations, it's no wonder you have engagement problems.

I also think the presenters got paid per bullet point in their presentations. Bonus points if they read them verbatim. This is presentation 101, folks. Don't read your slides. The purpose of the slides are to provide structure and help guide the user through the main topics. The reason you're there is to provide us with extra insight and commentary.

"It depends" is not an acceptable answer when you are on an "expert panel." Yes, every situation is unique, but you're supposedly an "expert." Take a representative example and at least talk to one aspect of the person's question.

"That's a tough situation and something you definitely need to look at" is also not an acceptable answer to a very specifically targeted question. In fact, that's not an answer at all, to any question. The example I'm thinking of was when someone asked about some specific advice about HIPAA and they got an answer like this, albeit with a little more filler but no more content.

See you next year...

As I sit in O'Hare airport waiting for my flight back to DC, these are the main points that stick out. If I think of anything else, I'll either update this post or follow-up with others posts down the line. I'd love to hear any thoughts other attendees and exhibitors had. And I look forward to next year...