Health Technology: Boosting Engagement – Reducing Presenteeism

That pesty presenteeism – that nasty cloud over productivity –  like smog over a metropolis…….health technology, waking people up to their health……

Unlike absenteeism, presenteeism is more insidious. You know when employees don’t show up for work, but we don’t know when—or how much—illness or a medical condition is  hindering someone’s performance…we only detect sub par quality or  productivity. Researchers have found that less time is lost from people staying home than from them showing up but not performing at full capacity.

The National Institute of Health refers to presenteeism as a public health hazard.

According to the National Health Survey the average working adult American experiences an average of two episodes of medical symptoms a month or twenty-four a year.  Duration of episodes vary. The majority of the time people choose to go to work rather than stay at home. 42% of respondents say they go to work exhausted or feeling ill regularly.

Getting people engaged in their health successfully is a critical component of reducing presenteeism. Enter health technology…..to infinity and beyond!

Remember Charlie Brown’s teacher? Are we doing this with health & wellness programs?

Harvard: Health-related work losses are estimated to cost US employers more than $260 billion each year, and may cost some companies more than direct medical expenditures.

American Productivity Audit— Calculated the total cost of presenteeism in the United States to be more than $150 billion per year.  Studies confirm that presenteeism is far more costly than illness-related absenteeism or disability.  On-the-job productivity loss resulting from depression and pain was roughly three times greater than the absence-related productivity loss attributed to these conditions. That is, less time was actually lost from people staying home than  showing up but not performing.

 Gallup–  70 % of U.S. employees are not showing up to work fully committed to deliver their best performance. Adding insult to injury, 52 percent of those workers are basically sleepwalking through their day, and 18 percent of them are busy acting out their unhappiness.

Health Technology…The move from Informative  ➪ Informalive

Finally, we have the ability to get people engaged in  wellness, thanks to health technology. We all agree we need to get people more into wellness, taking charge of their health – managing existing conditions and preventing illness.

I know I have quoted the CDC on this many times before, so please forgive the repetition.

80% of chronic illnesses are lifestyle induced…..

But people are tired of being lectured, everyone thinks they are too busy…whatever the reason. Health technology engages people, often fascinates people, and here is some data, explaining why interactive learning is far superior to the traditional “lecture based” or reading based learning.

National Academy of Sciences–  Undergraduate students in classes with traditional stand-and-deliver lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that use more stimulating, so-called active learning methods.
The meta-analysis  concluded that teaching approaches that turned students into active participants rather than passive listeners reduced failure rates and boosted scores on exams by almost one-half a standard deviation.

Interactive learning in the workplace….

• 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video
• 54% of senior executives share work related videos with colleagues weekly
• 4x as many customer would rather watch a video about a product than read about it
• YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of all people on the internet
• 48% of marketers plan to add YouTube to their content strategy in the next yea
•  People spend on average 2.6x more time on pages with video than without

When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

Getting Employees Interactive with Health Technology…….Make it pleasure, not pain!

TEC Technology Enabled  Care: A collective term for telecare, telehealth, telemedicine, digital health  TEC unites health technology, digital, media and mobile telecommunications and has become a cornerstone of health technology and wellness solutions addressing many of the challenges facing the health and social services allowing access to everyone, affordability, privacy…. A good, thorough wellness platform will encompass all of these services, provide cohesion and act as a triage for corporate health as well as employee health.

The aim of TEC is to improve people’s ability to self-manage their health and wellbeing, alert healthcare professionals to potentially unhealthy changes  in health, wellness compliance  and support medication adherence.

Digital Health Platforms: Health Technology with endless possibilities…Happily earning the trust of 6 million viewers per month

Wearable Technology.……health technology Extraordinaire! Creating health, incentivize, reward, wellness programs all in one. Not all wearable technology are worth the faith or $$. Only choose wearable devices that present actual biometrics – NOT calculated data based on averages.

Nothing has gotten people off the couch like wearable technology.

Interactive corporate health programs…what a wonderful way to affordably  make the world a happier, healthier place. Ask us about our digital health platform and our wearable technology program – where wellness programs are included!

Informative  ➪ Informalive

Shira@BestInCorporateHealth.com

Chief Health Enthusiast – Best In Corporate Health

• Shira is regularly consulted by Naturopaths, oncologists, health coaches on cancer exercise and exercise adherence.
• Has assembled over 20 health and fitness professionals with varying specialties to bring to corporate wellness programs
• Platforms include: Speaking, One-one/group health coaching, Retreats, Course development for in house delivery, Metrics to measure success available, Partners always included
• Now offering live interactive webinars, just as if each participant has a personal health coach – making corporate wellness programs affordable to all.
• Shira has been interviewed & published in hundreds of resources over the last 12 years:

Articles featured in:  European Registry of Exercise Professionals, The National Post, Investment Executive Magazine, Directory of Greater Toronto, Canadian Leukemia & Lymphoma Association, Prostate Cancer Canada, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, Anytime Fitness, Today’s Black Woman, Today’s Seniors, Medical Fitness Network, FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered), Willow (Breast & Hereditary Cancer Support),Myeloma Canada, Cancer Exercise Training Institute, Urban Poling for Breast Cancer, ROW – Recovery on Water for Breast Cancer, Sirius XM Doctor Radio