Building Workforce Resilience: A Product of Investing in the Health and Wellbeing of Employees

Getting with the program

“We believe DarioHealth’s digital health solutions – in addition to the consulting, support and expertise we provide – will make a difference in key metrics around chronic conditions.”

Joey Raheb, Senior Vice President, National Leader Growth & Client Engagement, Health Solutions, Aon

“It’s the idea of applying, in an integrated way, multi-condition support for the most common conditions people have and addressing the underlying behaviors of those so people can form the habits they need.”

Omar Manejwala, MD, Chief Medical Officer, DarioHealth

When Aon sits down with clients, the conversation always comes down to two things: managing the business costs of chronic health conditions and how to best to help those employees that suffer from them. A recently announced partnership with DarioHealth is “the best marriage of the two,” says Joey Raheb, Senior Vice President, National Leader Growth & Client Engagement, Health Solutions at Aon.

“We’ve found an organization that, like ourselves, puts their money where their mouth is. We believe DarioHealth’s digital health solutions – in addition to the consulting, support and expertise we provide – will make a difference in key metrics around chronic conditions.”

A three-pronged approach to resilience

Aon’s campaign around the resilient workforce focuses on how employers can build employee resiliency, and when it comes to chronic care conditions, three factors in that discussion resonate most: encouraging health positive behaviors, protecting physical health and embracing inclusivity. Leveraging solutions such as those offered by DarioHealth serves as a component of an organization’s broader resiliency plan and deals directly with employees whose overall wellbeing is negatively impacted by the management of their condition. Dealing with diabetes or hypertension, for example, affects employees’ ability to be resilient in their daily lives, Raheb says, and it’s unrealistic for an organization to expect them to come to work and be fully present and productive.

Raheb sees close up the impact of chronic care conditions on organizations: he regularly works with large national clients who have these common health issues rank among the top three of their highest medical costs. It’s driven home to him the value in catching health issues before they hit the chronic care point, and better managing conditions already in a chronic state, as ways to help control the ever-escalating costs that stand in the way of sustainable plans. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and “we constantly tell clients we have to hit at the root of the problem because there's only so much going at the markets can help solve,” he says.

“You can go from Insurance Company A to Insurance Company B, but the claims don't change ­– you have to get at the underlying cause. What’s paramount in the partnership we have with DarioHealth is that the solution being presented will empower employers to support their employees by providing them with the tools necessary to affect change in their daily lives.”

Getting with – and sticking to – the program

People suffering from chronic conditions require comprehensive and proactive digital health solutions, and for better engagement the solution needs to deliver a dynamic personalization to each user –­ and that’s where DarioHealth’s technology is on the leading edge.

“What's needed is something that's not one size fits all, but one size fits one,” says Omar Manejwala, MD, Chief Medical Officer at DarioHealth. “It’s the idea of applying, in an integrated way, multi-condition support for the most common conditions people have and addressing the underlying behaviors of those so people can form the habits they need.”

Most employee benefit programs cover the medication and supplies needed to manage a chronic care condition, but very few – particularly in Canada – are designed to deal with those conditions in a way that creates effective behavioral change in treating the diagnosis. And education, while important, also falls short: people know they’re not supposed to eat the pie, they don’t need education around why they shouldn’t, but the problem is they eat it anyway, Manejwala says.

DarioHealth’s holistic and flexible solutions are rooted in almost a decade of innovation. Fostering meaningful engagement, they boast an 80% retention rate after one year and maximize an organization’s investment by delivering concrete, proven results that last. DarioHealth’s solutions harness the power of artificial intelligence and the science of behavior change to empower people to take control of their health. Recognizing that everyone deals with their conditions differently, data-driven, adaptive personalization works to understand the pitfalls an individual might fall into, such as not testing regularly or eating at the wrong time, and motivates them to make sustainable changes. Personalization goes hand-in-hand with inclusivity, Manejwala notes, because if something doesn’t fit or speak to a person as an individual, they aren’t going to feel included.

“At the core of inclusivity is me, the person, how I am as an individual,” he says. “At the end of the day, everybody should be able to identify and feel as though they really belong – that's key.”

Consider the low-hanging fruit

At the end of the day, the partnership between Aon and DarioHealth comes down to one foundational truth: a focus on resiliency helps drive better business outcomes. Aon’s resiliency studies show wellbeing investments generate return on investment through lower turnover, increased company profit and higher customer satisfaction scores – metrics that prove it’s a business truth. Although every organization is going through its own journey and faces an array of different challenges, when you think about the issues plaguing most Canadian employers today, chronic conditions are at the top of that list. Mental health comorbidity associated with chronic care conditions are high – 35-40% of total disability claims are related to mental health and that number can grow if you include secondary and tertiary diagnoses, Raheb notes – it’s indisputably an area of importance that organizations can’t afford to ignore.

“When you’re thinking about driving resiliency, you’ve got to think about the low hanging fruit,” says Raheb. “And to me, managing chronic care conditions hits on those three key items that build a resilient workforce: protecting physical health, encouraging health-positive behaviors, and driving inclusivity in the organization. This is a smart business decision, in addition to making sure you're taking care of your employees.”

^{About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE: AON) exists to shape decisions for the better — to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. Our colleagues provide our clients in over 120 countries with advice and solutions that give them the clarity and confidence to make better decisions to protect and grow their business.}

^{About Dario Health
With tens of thousands of active users worldwide and proven clinical outcomes, DarioHealth is a global digital therapeutics solution leader revolutionizing the way people manage their chronic conditions. Built for and around the user, Dario has created individualized solutions that combine best practices in digital technologies, analytics, hardware, and personal coaching that gently instruct, encourage, and inspire users to self-manage their health day to day.}

^{Credit - This article originally appeared in HRD Magazine, April issue}