Poor focus hampers wellness implementation.
Are you updating your facebook status via Twitter from your iPhone as you apply your make-up or eat your burger on the driveto your next open enrollment meeting? Many Americans feel as though they are good at multitasking and engaging in multiple activities simultaneously leads them to believe they are accomplishing more.
In her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention And The Coming Dark Age, author Maggie Jackson points to a growing body of research studies that seem to suggest the opposite. A flood of stimulation, interruption and fleeting human contact have created a culture of "diffusion, fragmentation."
She points out the consequencesof what most of us consider par for the course in our lives and working environments:
Interruption and the knowledge worker:
- Knowledge workers switch tasks every three minutes. And once interrupted, a worker takes an average 25 minutes to return to their original task, according to informatics scientist Gloria Mark.
- How often are we interrupted? The average worker gets 156 emails a day, according to the Radicati research group. And that's just the beginning; instant-messages, phone calls, faxes and snail mail add to the influx.
Making a national habit of multitasking:
- Sixty-five percent of people eat while they drive.
- Sixty percent of kids age eight to 18 multitask some or most of the time they're doing homework.
- Twenty-five percent of restaurant meals are ordered from the car, up from 15 percent from 1988.
- American kids are exposed on average to nearly six hours a day of non-print media.
- Two-thirds of children under six live in homes that keep the tv on half or more of the time, an environment linked to attention-deficiencies.
Time and time again in the world of wellness we see this habitual tendency toward mindless overcommitment, interruption, and multitasking lead to programs that are too diffuse to do much good if the desired outcome is a healthier workforce and reduced health care costs.
Why wellness fragmentation does not equal results
How does ROI for wellness work? It is more of a cost avoidance than an actual savings in most cases. Here is a simple (and maybe a little too simplistic) example to help walk you through the "savings." 
Half of your workforce participates in a risk based population health strategy (wellness program) and the other half does not.
For the participating half of the population, whose risk is known, you are able to offer outbound (active) and passive programs that directly impact and address the risks you've identified as prevalent to this group.
Let's say the programs you've implemented are effective, engagement in them is high, and you retain these employees. Over a series of years you should see something happen that is counter to what will have happened with no intervention.
That is to say, this group will not get sick as often as non-participants because your interventions were effective and employees stuck around long enough for you to see results.
The non-participants at your company, as an aggregate, are an unknown entity to you. You have very little data on their risks and, as a group, they will most likely continue to use health care at the same rate as before.
Yet, if your company-wide wellness communications are effective and appealing, your participant group is vocal and influential, and your non-participants stay at your company without developing any major illness then some studies indicate that your wellness program might actually have a halo effect.
That is to say, even non-participants will learn a little more about self care whether they participate or not. Sure, that could slow the rate of health care cost growth in that group, though probably not by a lot.
Both groups' cost trends together is your overall trend. Both may continue to rise, but your participant group's trend over several years will rise more slowly - making your overall costs appear to grow more slowly.
UNLESS. Yes, there is an unless. Unless, your participant group is so small and the growth in the cost of health care is so large that your non-participants' health care usage effectively nullifies any impact you had on participants.
Wellness is not Wii Fit. You need to focus.
As much as we know that on an individual level good health is as simple as: sleep well, eat right, and move more, achieving a successful organizational wellness strategy is as much an art as it is a science. It takes focus, discipline and rigorous measurement to impact behavior, motivate and sustain participation, and to quantify results.
If your program is to be successful then you will need to engage a large chunk of your workforce, stratify their risks, and follow a disciplined series of stepsover several years in order to see return on investment. Oh, and do all of this while simultaneously carrying out the core work of your company.
Fight the urge to multi-task
While multi-tasking may be transitioning out of vogue when it comes to work effectiveness, its cousin - work sequencing - can help break large and complex tasks into more manageable pieces.
Plan to succeed by drafting a multi-year strategy with a realistic timeline. Schedule monthly (core team), quarterly (key shareholders and decision makers) and annual reviews (company wide) of a the wellness program before you even begin work. This will hold you accountable for reporting progress toward implementing your strategy and plan.
Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...
Build up to maximum efficiency by starting with only a few key program components that will get you the most bang for your buck. Gradually add complexity as your initial program begins to show results.
More often than not, companies initially underestimate how much time it takes to implement a strategic wellness program. They allocate too few resources and take on too many program components to ever really get much traction. As a result, their programs suffer from poor participation due to fragmented management and the overall program shows high attrition. Plan intelligently and sidestep this common trap.
Great info. This stresses the value of a consultant that can take this on for a company.
Posted by: Joseph R. Byrd | June 08, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Chasing after trends certainly will not create great success in your life. Knowledge sharing, education, and owning the proper tools is the answer. I'll share one tool that I am currently using, "Take the E Out of EGO & GO!," by Donna and Jerry Goven. A book that gives you the tools to create self-awareness, success, and motivation with your business or job.
http://eoutofego.com
Posted by: Melissa | June 10, 2009 at 01:16 PM
I took a moment to check out your blog again and noticed that I had spelled the author's name wrong in my last comment. The correct spelling is Donna and Jerry Govan.
Posted by: Melissa | August 26, 2009 at 11:04 AM