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Vitamin maker builds responsible culture
by Editorial Staff
| July 1, 2008 |
Payroll deduction has proven to be a powerful employee motivational tool in meeting health and wellness goals at Nature’s Sunshine Products Inc., a Provo, Utah-based manufacturer of herbal and vitamin supplements with 500 full-timers and 75 part-timers. Employees enjoy the convenience and affordability of paying for a discounted membership to their nearest Gold’s Gym, which is $18 a month. But there’s also a built-in incentive to show up for a workout: They can earn a $1 credit up to $12 applied to the following month’s payroll deduction. “We were trying to think of a way not to just subsidize memberships, but actually encourage people to utilize the facilities by giving them a credit when they go,” explains Christine Frazier, the company’s manager of insurance benefits and wellness. On the voluntary benefits side, options include group life insurance, long-term disability, legal services, homeowners and auto insurance policies. “We want to offer benefits that will be valued by our employees and help them focus on their work, as well as help us attract, retain and motivate talent,” she says. But the emphasis is clearly on health promotion, which isn’t surprising given the nature of employees’ work. Those who fill out a health-risk evaluation and agree to screenings to detect elevated levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose or blood pressure, enjoy free access to a lifestyle coach, up to four hours of paid time off every six months and premium-free coverage as part of a self-insured medical plan. Under the firm’s most popular option, employees pay out of pocket for each doctor visit until they reach their $500 annual deductible. This shared-responsibility approach serves to hold employees more accountable for their behavior, which Frazier says also makes them more knowledgeable. It also has generated tremendous results. The company’s health insurance costs have increased less than 2% a year, with about $5.5 million in savings reported since 2003 based on a close tracking of health claim dollars and 10% health trend assumption. Nature’s Sunshine Products earned the top honor for most improved company and landed on a list of the nation’s healthiest companies in an annual awards competition involving more than 1,000 employers sponsored by the firm’s health evaluation provider, Interactive Health Solutions. The results were based on an aggregated lipid profile score in 2007 that was 61% better than the previous year’s result. “We believe that chronic disease is preventable,” Frazier says, noting that lifestyle changes can prevent up to 75% of such conditions nationwide.
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