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Episode 7 – Right Direction

Congratulations to episode seven’s gift card giveaway winner, Crystal Davis of Diebold Nixdorf.

Marcas Miles (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to the Employers Health HR Benecast, your monthly source for clarity on health benefit trends and strategies. I’m your host, Marcas Miles. To start this month’s podcast, I’d like to remind you to listen for the keyword in each episode.

Each month, a lucky listener is eligible to win a $50 Visa gift card simply by submitting a keyword from this podcast. The June winner, happy to announce, is Pam Stephenson of Ashley Ward. She correctly submitted the keyword, which was accelerate, related to our product benefits accelerator, so that makes a lot of sense, and congratulations, Pam.

I’ll give you the code word for this month’s drawing at some point during this recording, so please be sure to listen closely. As always, we encourage you to submit questions regarding HR, benefits, and value of membership in an employer-led coalition. You can do so by completing the field on the landing page or clicking the link titled Submit Your Questions Here.

Pretty simple.

And be sure to tune in next month to hear the answers to your questions. So, any questions that you have, we would love to entertain those and be able to provide some clarity.

Likely, if you have a question or are thinking something, others, your peers, other members of Employers Health are probably thinking and wondering some of the same things. I’d like to take a moment just to acknowledge our annual supporters. That would be CVS Health, OptumRx, and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

In addition to being valued vendors and partners, those organizations support events like our annual conferences, our biannual magazine, and this podcast. So, we do appreciate their continued relationship and support of all of you, Employers Health members. So, I get asked a lot about Right Direction, and rightfully so, that is the initiative that addresses depression in the workplace.

I am happy to have co-created that and lead that on a national basis with Claire Miller, who most recently is at the Center for Workplace Mental Health, a program of the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, and have had the opportunity since launching in May 2013 to work alongside Claire. Sadly, she is leaving the APA for a really great gig elsewhere, which maybe we’ll talk about in the future. So, I thank her for her continued work over the years, and I’m sure that she’ll continue to play some role in the initiative.

However, I just wanted to provide some stats and just some insight into Right Direction. Again, no surprise, it’s very near and dear to me. I spend a lot of my time on it, and many of you listening have entertained the initiative or have been part of rollout efforts for a long time.

Like I mentioned, we launched in 2013, so we celebrated the fourth anniversary of the initiative back in May, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds, really, of employers across the United States who have taken the steps to address what is an important, very sensitive, in some cases, topic that really I’ve seen the tide turn in the years that I’ve been working on this, really in a positive way. So, so many employers are making this part of their strategic efforts over the coming years or really making a commitment to address mental health and depression specifically, and I’m so happy that that is the case. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and we recognize that, but when we’re looking at the statistics just to the Right Direction website, which is rightdirectionforme.com, there is an employer portal there where all of the absolutely free resources can be accessed for any employer.

You don’t have to be a member of Employers Health. There are no specific stipulations, but we’ve had, just to the site in general, about 40,000 unique visitors, which is really cool over the time, and that would be a mix of anyone to the main site, including employers, but also the employees that you’re directing there, media, anyone else interested in the initiative.

When we look specifically at the Employer Materials Library, and that’s where employers can go to access the materials that are available to roll out the initiative, about 4,000, actually it’s as of today 4,196 unique users, which are all different, have downloaded 19,000 resources from that site, and that is so incredible to me to think that that many posters or newsletter content or PowerPoint presentations have been downloaded and hopefully shared with employees and made part of efforts in rolling out this initiative.

One thing that’s always been a little challenging for me is that with all of those unique users, we really can’t know for sure who has utilized the initiative and which companies are working on this subject matter, but nonetheless, I know the ones that I’ve worked with one-on-one, which is many, and it still is great to see that that so many employers are using the initiative. We are about to launch, I think it will be our third year, an annual circle-back survey to anyone who has gained access to that materials library and ask them about their efforts with Right Direction, if they’re using the initiative, how long, what are the results looking like, if they’re not, why not, and so you may be on that list to receive that survey and we would love to hear back from you just so that we can better understand how we can support how it’s being used and how things are changing. There are so many stories that I could tell you firsthand from employers that I work with or have talked to about this initiative, and one in particular that rolled out in the last six months that I visited with a number of times tells about how the employees really started opening up and talking about issues that they might be facing or family members might be facing, and it’s something that was really never talked about before, but by hanging posters, by putting information in e-newsletters, by making it to the forefront that it’s okay to not be okay sometimes, that there’s help in place, we want you to get help as an employee, we offer things like an EAP program that you can access, you can access on behalf of a family member, and they have just been telling me just how emotional at times, but how the dialogue, how the culture is shifting, and that people are really able to open up and not be so, feel so stigmatized to seeking help or whatever needs they might have.

In that particular instance, the founder of the company, which is a really well-known company, even got involved and really has been very public about the fact that she and her husband support all of the help-seeking, all of the well-being of employees, and so it’s really great to see that, and without an initiative like Right Direction, that probably wouldn’t have happened, and if you’ve seen it, you know that it’s very different or very unlike any other depression or mental health campaign that you may have seen before, so I encourage you, if you haven’t looked at it, to look at it, to consider rolling it out. I can help 100% in supporting your efforts and figure out the best way to roll that out, and when there are some great observances coming up that you could anchor to, one is open enrollment. I’m sure you’ll be showcasing or reminding folks about your EAP, but you can take it a step further and incorporate some of the Right Direction materials so that people really understand that it is okay to get help, that you do support them, that you are providing resources for them to seek help and to not feel like they can’t, and then October 10th is World Mental Health Day.

That’s another great observance, or in October, that you could anchor to to roll out the Right Direction initiative, and just a few statistics. There are so many reasons why you should address this topic. Obviously, kind of, it’s the right thing to do would be one of them, but beyond that, you know, addressing productivity at the workplace is huge.

(8:42)

Curbing absenteeism, curbing presenteeism with people getting help. We know that 86% of the time, people that are seeking treatment for depression get better, and they report that their cognitive skills, the things that they need to be successful and productive at work have significantly improved. What we know is that the World Health Organization recently released some, I would say, disheartening statistics in that depression is now the leading cause of disability and ill health worldwide.

It’s number one, and they had that on track to become number one by the year 2020, and on March 30th, 2017, they announced that it had now risen to the top as number one. So, that’s a very significant thing to think about. Those are just a couple of reasons.

There are so many statistics and things that I can share that you probably have heard me share that really could impact or, I guess, encourage you to address this topic. So, that’ll be all I’ll talk about Right Direction for now. However, anytime you would like to have me speak with you, your peers, your leadership, your employees about Right Direction and how you can roll that out as an employer and what you might gain from that, that would be awesome.

I would be happy to do that and share examples of what other employers are doing, how they’re doing it, what their success, both quantitative and qualitative, look like. So, I hope that you will reach out. You can contact me directly or you can work through your Employers Health account manager or contact that you have here with our organization.

So, we are committed to providing learning and networking opportunities to our membership, and I’ll just highlight a couple of upcoming opportunities that you are welcome to join us. On August 30th, we are producing for the second year in a row, back by popular demand, if you will, the Employer Health and Wealth Workshop. Now, in our second year, we’ve designed it pretty much around the same format as last year because we got some really good feedback from that, and it’s designed to increase benefits professionals’ knowledge of recent changes in employee benefits and applicable laws, rules, and regulations.

So, not the most entertaining topic, but certainly very important. That’ll be August 30th in Columbus, Ohio. The location is the Hilton Columbus at Polaris, and the time is 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., and I won’t go through all of the speakers, but I’ll touch on a couple of the presentation topics.

You can find all of the information relative to the speakers, the topics, the venue, the registration, everything on our website at employershealthco.com, and you’ll be able to find more information, but some of the presentation topics include the ACA, in light of pending changes. ACA, the only constant is change. Governmental audit of employee benefit plans, avoidance, survival, and management skills.

Hold your breath, a deep dive into the Family and Medical Leave Act. We’ll do a wellness program checkup. Is your wellness program compliant? We all want to be compliant.

And then finally, the presentation you would hear is, just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. ERISA, fiduciary exposure in uncertain times. So, some really stellar speakers lined up.

We hope you’ll join us, and again, you can register for that workshop and others on our event page of our website at employershealthco.com. It would be pretty obvious there to find that, so we hope you will, and don’t forget to follow us on our social media LinkedIn and Twitter. We also have a Facebook page, and we provide constant updates and information and resources and things like that through those channels.

So, please be sure to submit your questions so that I can answer them in upcoming editions of this Employers Health Benecast.

Also, if you would like to be considered for the $50 Visa gift card, which who would not want to, the code word is strategic, strategic. Please submit that along with your name and email address using the link on the landing page. That will conclude this month’s Benecast.

Thank you again for taking the time to listen, but more importantly, thank you for your continued membership and interest in Employers Health. And don’t forget to submit those questions so that I can answer them in upcoming editions.

In this podcast

Marcas Miles

Employers Health | Vice President, Industry Relations

Marcas Miles serves as vice president, industry relations at Employers Health, where he oversees efforts to strengthen connections with clients, partners and stakeholders.

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