Leveraging digital platforms to create a healthy organization and drive ROI

How do you know which investments in your employees contribute to a healthy organization and improved ROI? New research from The Josh Bersin Company, reported in “The Definitive Guide to Wellbeing: The Healthy Organization,” defines the most effective steps companies are taking to improve the health of their employees, and thereby, their organizations.

According to the report, “Our research uncovers an important new trend: wellbeing is now an entire organizational system.” Essential components of that system include human-centered leadership and healthy ways of working, safe workplaces, mental wellbeing and easy-to-use digital tools and services. “For corporations, wellness programs are a means to an end … companies want employees to be healthy, of course, but ultimately such investments have to pay off.” 

A key element of wellbeing strategies is effective data collection. This enables organizations to further personalize their health and benefits offerings—leading to improved engagement that drives ROI. Because employers are implementing new systems, which give them access to an increasing volume of data about employee health, it’s critical for employees to know that their information is safe and being used in a responsible manner. Bersin asks, “Does your company have a plan to protect your workers’ data? Do employees know what that plan is?”

Unfortunately, Bersin writes, “Operating in the dark is common when it comes to the health of people, workplaces and the organization itself.” This does not have to be the case. “Digital health platforms such as League and others use the newest and most secure data standards to implement data privacy plans. This simple-to-practice transparency yields big results.”

Transparency starts with privacy and security

League’s platform was designed from the start to comply with health laws (HIPPA, PIPEDA) and privacy standards (SOC 2 Type II, EU GDPR) while aggregating data from multiple systems. These include wearables, health assessments, pulse checks, core-administration systems, claims, EMRs and others. The data is then presented in real-time dashboards that help employers optimize offerings in service of employee health. 

Ethics are everything

Employees need to know that their data is not only secure but being used in a responsible way. The machine learning models that power the personalized features of our infrastructure are designed from an ethical framework to help users become more engaged with their health. League prioritizes transparency when it comes to the questions and suggestions posed to users. That way, users know that personalized data is improving their health and wellness. Over time, those improvements add up to reduce overall healthcare costs through preventive care, early interventions and strategic benefits planning.

Inclusive technology

“Becoming a healthy organization is a goal that is closely aligned with employee experience and diversity,” writes the Bersin team. In order to mitigate bias, League endeavors to actively check for performance biases in machine learning models that may perform differently for certain user populations. Designing for product inclusivity helps ensure that our technology performs effectively on a number of population groups.

As the 64-page Bersin report attests, a healthy workplace has many components. Organizations can get started by considering the League Health OS™, which addresses these essential practices:

• Develop health and wellbeing offerings within the business: use data to ensure your offerings are effective in meeting employee needs
• Ensure wellbeing programs are equitable for all: make offerings relevant and affordable to all employee groups while ensuring privacy and mitigating bias
• Ensure health and benefits tools are simple to find and use: utilize technology with a consumer-grade user experience

The ROI is there: one League customer, a transportation company, saw a productivity savings of $400,000 by connecting employees with effective resources for managing stress. Now, that’s a healthy organization.