Sprigley » Blog Archive » Dilbert as Health and Wellness Prophet

Fresh off keynoting a conference for large employers, and keynoting another much larger one in a couple of months, here’s a couple of thoughts.

Employers are really getting into the health game. But despite a good deal of discussion about innovation, cool products and great experiences, they are largely do the same stuff health plans and disease management companies have been doing. They are, however, hoping it will work better if they deliver it themselves or at least position it to their employees that way (gluing vendors together themselves or hiring someone to do it for them and place their company label on everything).

Employers are trying different things on the financial end and meeting a wide range of reactions from their employees. But in terms of wowing their employees with a fantastic experience or delivering a killer product there’s really not too much there and the user experience typically offers little to excite folks.

So what does Sprigley have to say, and more importantly show, employers who want to help their employees to lead happier, healthier lives?

First off, a bit of context.

For those that don’t know, in the US employers have typically paid or contributed to their employees’ health insurance.

Yes, at first glance, that’s kind of weird. When you think about it, virtually every other 1-st world country provides health care as a basic government service or else folks pay for private policies (think auto-insurance or life-insurance) or some combination of the both (send your kids to public school or pay for private).

Obviously, this makes things kind of complex as your employer really isn’t in the business of managing all the stuff for your insurance or even your health.

Most recently, some really smart employers have started getting into wellness programs with the idea of helping their employees avoid getting sick in the first place, and avoid using insurance for expensive sickness-related things.

While that’s cool, it’s still the employer managing a bunch of stuff. It’s like asking your plumber to also decorate your house and balance your checkbook. Or expecting your dentist to help choose your auto insurance and clean out your gutters. This is an awful lot to ask and it goes without saying, doesn’t tend to work so well.

In fact, by the time criticism starts making it into the Dilbert comic strip (see picture above) it’s all but recognized by the mainstream.

Okay - so what to do?

Well we went through this about 25 years ago with something called a “pension” (that’s pronounced “pen-shun” - for Gen-X-ers like us go ask your parents about it or check out the wikipedia entry).

Basically, with these things called “pensions,” an employer would take care of their employees’ retirement funds.

Just like with health and well-being, employers weren’t really in the business of doing that and it created a host of complicated issues.

So, with the help of some tax law stuff, they moved to 401ks, funds that individuals own, manage, control and that follow them when they move from job to job.

Yes, that placed more responsibility on individuals, and there were some growing pains, but a whole industry of trusted-third parties, some of whom build some very cool tools, popped up to help employers and individuals manage stuff.

That’s kind of where Sprigley fits in.

As we’re moving more towards individual responsibility, Sprigley does three things:

1) We give individuals a kick-ass experience that meets people where they’re at and keeps them engaged.

2) We give individuals real value for interacting with us — so we can move them from external incentives to intrinsic rewards like the personalized recommendations they get from their financial brokers or from www.Amazon.com.

3) We help individuals acquire the skills they need to navigate the new responsibility that’s being placed upon them.