Decrease healthcare costs: 4 strategies to save $500k+

Budgets are tight, healthcare costs are high, and there’s a lot of pressure for organizations to implement cost-cutting measures and decrease healthcare costs. As a leader in your company, you walk a fine line between doing what’s best to support your employees’ well-being while also ensuring you’re helping your business’ bottom line. What if I told you it’s possible to do both? That you don’t have to choose between the two?

Myth: Well-being programs don’t provide tangible ROI

When starting or leading well-being efforts, many HR leaders are asked “How do Well-Being programs provide tangible results?” “What is the ROI of a digital well-being platform?”

Let’s dismantle the myth that well-being programs do not provide measurable value or ROI. In my recent blog post, I shared that productivity gains for administrative teams (233% more productivity) led to more than $720k of savings. And, for even more examples of how well-being programs provide measurable value and ROI, check out our commissioned study by Forrester. Highlights from the study are below:

• 119% ROI over three years 
• Less than 6 months to see a return on your investment 
• 13% cost savings from better benefits utilization 
• 30% cost savings from avoided administrative burden 
• 176% reduced attrition from better engagement 

Now, let’s switch perspectives and look at the measurable value and ROI of employees instilling healthier habits with a well-being program. 

How healthier habits lead to reduced healthcare costs

We’ve all heard that healthy habits lead to reduced healthcare costs, but how exactly does this happen?

The common answer is through prevention. When you reduce your risk for disease, you’re also reducing the likelihood of having to visit the doctor or emergency room in the first place. And when you do need medical attention, it’s less expensive to treat a disease before it gets worse.

That sounds simple, right? It’s actually a bit more complicated. Employees need to be provided with tools and resources in a way that works for them. Tools and resources need to fit into an employee’s flow of work so that it’s easier to instill these healthy habits.

“As a result of participating in this challenge employees changed a health behavior that they wouldn’t have been able to change without the tools and resources we provided to them from [Limeade].”

Wellness Program Manager from Forrester’s TEI Study

This is just one example from our customer base that Forrester examined more closely in their study. Forrester calculates a $580k – $1.5m reduction in healthcare costs depending on the attribution of the Limeade platform.  

4 strategies to instill healthier habits and decrease healthcare costs

1. Make healthy habits convenient

Find ways to make healthy habits easier to incorporate into daily routines or even into work tools. Nudge employees in Microsoft Teams to instill and reinforce healthier habits.

2. Track and incentivize progress

Keep track of progress and celebrate small victories along the way. Go beyond monetary incentivizes and get creative on rewarding progress on additional levels. This maintains motivation and momentum. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, our industry veterans have a wealth of proven best practices to share with you.

3. Embrace and foster social support

Surround yourself with people who support your healthy habits and who can provide encouragement and motivation. Make it easy to share moments of victories with peers or run creative team activities.  

4. It‘s not a sprint, it’s marathon

Change takes time, and it’s normal to encounter dips in activity and participation. Look at the numbers regularly, ask for feedback, listen carefully and act accordingly. Limeade makes it easy for you, your team and other subject matter experts or champions to communicate, create value and nudge your people.

Start your journey to instilling healthy habits with Limeade

Let us know, what questions you face. We are happy to support you with hard facts from hundreds of successful well-being programs and millions of users. The Limeade solution offers insights and analytics by design and allows you to clearly prove the value your program adds to the health of your employees and to the health of your business.