Enhancements to HBF’s wellness assessments mean WA organisations can now check their employees’ mental and
physical health.
MOST OF US WOULD FEEL PRETTY UNCOMFORTABLE giving someonea ‘health score’. A person’s health is an intensely personal matter and unsolicited advice on how they could
lift their game probably won’t be well received.
But adding an element of competition and some team spirit can change everything.
Benchmarking employee health
Twelve months ago HBF launched the HBF Corporate Wellness Index, giving organisations a health score based on nine health indicators measured in their workforce. These were HBF’s
corporate wellness clients, many of whom we had worked with for many years. We knew these were organisations who cared deeply about the health of their workforce and we hoped they would welcome the chance to see just how healthy their people were.
For HBF this was an exciting initiative. We could see that it would help our clients allocate wellness dollars in ways that addressed the real health needs in their workplaces. And
we were eager to show the difference that workplace wellness programs could make to them over time.
A health ‘Leaderboard’
Tapping into the competitive streak in every CEO, we published the first HBF Corporate Wellness Leaderboard in September 2013, naming the top ten healthiest workplaces based on
the index scores. Our aim was to spark some truly healthy competition (pun intended) between WA organisations.
That first year bragging rights for WA’s healthiest workplace went to the Fremantle Dockers Football Club (the management team not the players) while HBF itself came a respectable fifth place.
Twelve months on, we were delighted to see companies who had featured in the first year’s top ten eagerly awaiting the 2014 results. We even noticed that small rivalries had developed between some clients. One well known Perth utility rang HBF the week before this year’s Leaderboard was published, desperate to know if they’d stayed ahead of the public utility they had outranked in 2013 (they hadn’t!). With more organisations taking part, the field had become noticeably more competitive. So while some organisations, like Perth Airport, managed to climb higher, others were edged out by newcomers who included Fuji Xerox, the Department of Commerce and disability service provider, Rocky Bay. HBF came in at #8, and taking pride of place at the very top of the 2014 Leaderboard was the land surveying company, McMullen Nolan Group.
Refined assessments, better insights
When it was launched last year, HBF’s Corporate Wellness Index, developed from data collected in our wellness assessments, provided new insights for businesses serious about employee wellbeing. Recent enhancements make it an even more valuable tool.
From now on companies who use HBF’s wellness assessment will know how healthy their employees are mentally as well as physically. They will also be able to see differences between the ‘perceived’ and ‘actual’ health of their workforce. The report they receive will even include risk scores for the likelihood of employees developing Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease in the next five years. And HBF will be able to tell clients how many of their employees our corporate wellness team referred to a GP because of high risk scores using these measures.
If this sounds like the kind of information you’d like to have at your fingertips, HBF would love to hear from you. Our hope is that competition for a place in the 2015 HBF Corporate Wellness Leaderboard.
