Employee Engagement Impact on Health Plans

By: Eric Bricker, MD

The Gallup Poll for 2022 found that 33% of employees were engaged at work… meaning they were enthusiastic and applied ‘elbow grease’ to their jobs.  

Historically, Gallup reported that about 50% of employees were ‘non-engaged’… meaning they were ‘checked out’ and ‘just going through the motions.’  

Additionally, Gallup previously reported that about 20% of employees were ‘disengaged’… meaning they were actively working against the interest of their employer–i.e. they were trying to subvert their employer’s activities.  

How this relates to employee health plans 

Employer health and wellness programs are chronically plagued by LOW UTILIZATION. Non-engaged and disengaged employees will most likely contribute to this LOW UTILIZATION.  

According to Gallup, the main cause of non-engaged and disengaged employees is their direct manager.  

Health plan programs and digital health companies WILL NOT ‘fix’ the poor manager-employee relations at a company.  

Therefore, it is crucial that a health plan align itself directly with the employees’ self-interest.  Regardless of whether an employee is engaged, non-engaged, or disengaged, they will be interested in themselves and their families.   

As such, health plans can align with this self-interest through plan designs that directly tie employee out-of-pocket costs to desired behaviors. Health plans can align with choosing higher-value doctors and sites of care through copay differentials.  Health plans can set lower-dollar copays for high-value providers and higher-dollar copays for low-value providers. 

Contact SimplePay Health to find out how. 

 

 

Sources: 

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx?utm_source=google&amp%3Butm_medium=cpc&amp%3Butm_campaign=gallup_access_branded&amp%3Butm_term=&amp%3Bgclid=Cj0KCQjw54iXBhCXARIsADWpsG-dvSXXa2CHuDpQAysF3ES20y1fYBEQb3EycTtImjIUtnsDfi7I5lYaAsPtEALw_wcB&thank-you-report-form=1 https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mo-employee-engagement-gallup-poll-20130617-story.html https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/issue-brief/trends-in-workplace-wellness-programs-and-evolving-federal-standards/  

 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2730614  

 

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/328460/why-managers-need-leadership-development.aspx 

One thought on “Employee Engagement Impact on Health Plans

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *