January 2021 Wellness Webinar

Let’s start with our most exciting change. The Employee Wellness program will now utilize a third-party platform to facilitate many components of our program. We will refer to this platform as your Employee Wellness account moving forward. You will be accessing the following program components through your Employee Wellness account:

• Bonus Program
• Rewards Program
• Released Wellness Time
• Various Presentations
• Monthly Challenges

Since we have moved many parts of our program to this third party platform, these components need to be updated to better match the platform capabilities. While some of these changes may be drastic, we believe making these changes are necessary to provide better service to you. Spouses will have free access to their own accounts, but employees will need to invite them to participate.

With the purchase of this new platform and the continued pandemic, the following changes will be made to the Bonus Program:

• Participants will now complete Personal Health Assessment, instead of a Health Risk Assessment.
• Participants will be able to provide a blood lipid screening from a physician or complete online coursework. The coursework option will continue even when the Employee Wellness office is back to conducting blood lipid screenings.
• Participants will need to complete a health activity along with completing the first two requirements. This health activity could be completing an annual physical, a blood pressure or blood glucose log, or participating in a 2-week challenge.
• To ensure the financial longevity of the Bonus Program, the bonus amount has been changed to $300.
  • Individuals will earn the full $300 amount in one payment. This payment will be added to the employee paycheck the pay period after and the individual qualifies.
  • For those who are currently earning monthly bonus payments, the one-time bonus payment will be applied once the monthly stipends have ended.
  • Participants will be able to complete all Bonus Program requirements anytime throughout the calendar year. This means participants will no longer need to wait for a renewal timeframe to start the renewal process. Participants may also wait or take as much time as needed to complete qualifying steps.
• In order to earn the $300 bonus, participants must complete the PHA, a blood lipid screening or online coursework, and a health activity.
  • Participants will not need to start meeting specific health criteria until they have two years’ worth of blood lipid screenings on file. At this point, participants will need to meet 4 of 6 health criteria or show a 3-5% improvement from year to year.
  • Alternative standards will still be available such as completing blood work with your physician, completing the TLC online coursework, or participating in the WellCats Health Improvement program.
• Participants can track their Bonus Program status in their Employee Wellness account.

The Rewards program will also undergo major changes.

• Participants will now earn points for completing health activities. Points will range from 5-15 points based on the time commitment and importance of the activity.
• Participants will need to track the activities they completed preferably monthly, but no longer than 60 days after the event has passed.
• Many qualifying activities will be recorded and auto-approved through the Employee Wellness account. These include watching wellness webinars, participating in monthly challenges, and exercise logs.
• The Rewards program will be paid out only once a year, instead of once a semester. Participants will have from Jan 1- Dec 31 to earn points. Payments will be made during the first pay period of the following year.
• Employees can still earn up to $200 through the Rewards program. However, activities will not be paid out at $20 per submitted activity. Employees will earn points per activity. Payment levels will occur at 50 points, 100 points, 150 points, and 200 points. Payout amounts will be determined by the number of points that were earned at the end of the calendar year.

Released Wellness Time:

Documents for the Released Wellness Time policy will be maintained in the employee wellness accounts. These documents will be located under the Rewards program tab, under the Releases Wellness Time category. Providing staff with easy access to the forms and a quick way to upload the completed forms will provide a much smoother process. Staff and supervisors will no longer have access to the Wellness Journal, so both parties will need to determine how they would like to record and monitor wellness time. Documents for the Released Wellness Time policy will need to be completed each year.

If 2020 has taught us anything, Employee Wellness has learned that employees appreciate being able to view our presentations when the time works best for them. Our Lunch & Learn presentations will now be called Wellness Webinars. All webinars will be added on a monthly basis to the new platform. Participants will be able to view most webinars at their leisure and complete a quick questionnaire to earn credit. Past presentations will be uploaded to Bridge for those who would like to revisit the materials.

Monthly Challenges will now be called Campaigns and Mini-Campaigns. Participants can register for, interact with, and complete campaigns within their Employee Wellness account. Participants will need to complete at least 80% of the campaign to earn credit.

The final large change for this year is that spouses will be able to participate in more of the Employee Wellness program. They will be able to access many components of the wellness program through their Employee Wellness account. Employees will need to invite their spouse to participate. This will occur at two times. Once an employee completes the personal health assessment, they will be prompted to invite their spouse. The second time will occur when an employee registers for a campaign. Spouses will now be able to participate in the Rewards program. They will be able to earn prizes, but not cash at this point. Employee Wellness understands that making healthy changes can be hard. This could be made easier when spouses and families are involved.