Employee retention, rising health care costs, addressing an aging population, and a desire for employees to be "healthier because they work at Intel" all influenced Intel's decision to create a company sponsored health and wellness program. Based on a vision of developing a culture where employees and their families are healthy, productive, and engaged in living wellness-soriented lifestyles every day, employees are now inspired and motivated to take action toward achieving their best possible health and quality of life.
Intel's Health for Life wellness program includes onsite biometrics, annual health risk assessments, fitness programs, wellness seminars, flu prevention, and personal wellness coaching. This presentation shares how Intel used a process to pilot and deploy an effective global health and wellness program because "it's the right thing to do".
One of our main program components is a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) provided online by a major healthcare provider. Results of the HRA are used to drive health and wellness programs (all data reported to Intel from the HRA is in aggregate form, no individual employee information is given to Intel).
Upon close examination of the aggregate HRA results, we noted that those who participated in the HRA had several missing data points (e.g., blood pressure, blood lipids & glucose results, and body fat percentage) that are important in assessing lifestyle and medical risk factors. Therefore, we did not believe the information we received from the HRA gave an accurate picture of the health risks of our employees.
We therefore had two assumptions:
We did not have accurate results from the HRA; and
Employees are interested in knowing about their health risks.
Our Health for Life program development began with a pilot study at our five main U.S. manufacturing sites. We provided free on-site lab work (fasting cholesterol, triglycerides, and glucose) and biometrics (blood pressure, pulse, weight, height, and body fat percentage) during hours that were convenient for employees. Employees received their lab results a few days later via interoffice mail. An e-mail was then sent to them with a link to the online HRA and directions to enter their lab and biometric data and complete their HRA.
After completing their HRA, employees were scheduled for their 30-minute confidential, one-on-one counseling session with an occupational health registered nurse. These sessions were used to review the employees' results and offer ways to manage their health risks. After the session we e-mailed employees links to additional resources and a link to a survey on the process. Of those who responded to the survey, 96% were satisfied or very satisfied with the pilot. We also asked employees for their comments on how to improve the process and incorporated their suggestions into overall program.
We compared the results of those employees who participated in the pilot study with those who did not participate and saw a statistically significant increase in risk factors of elevated blood pressure, serum lipids, and glucose.
