Thomas M. Chamberlain, PharmD Founder and CEOAlthough open enrollment was successful, the program has low employee participation and receives a lackluster response from its employees, rendering it a failure.
Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common. Many benefit programs fall short of their goals, mainly because of employees’ lack of knowledge and engagement.
With employees being busier than ever and juggling numerous responsibilities in their professional and personal lives, engaging them and improving their participation in employee benefit programs is often one of the most challenging tasks for businesses.
How can businesses connect with employees and motivate them to take advantage of all the resources available to them?
EdLogics, a digital health communications company based in Virginia Beach, has successfully helped companies address that challenge by providing a highly engaging health literacy solution that companies can integrate into their employee benefits program.
Through interactive health games, multimedia educational programs, innovative gamification strategies, and rewards for educational achievement, the EdLogics Platform™ delivers a personalized user experience that effectively educates employees and their family members about common and costly health conditions and the benefits resources that are available to them. The EdLogics Platform has been designed to make learning fun and engaging, improve health literacy, and empower individuals to take greater responsibility for managing their health.
“The EdLogics Platform has the unique ability to promote awareness and adoption of employee benefit programs and resources through improved health literacy and customized promotional campaigns,” says Seth Serxner, PhD, MPH, and Chief Health Officer at EdLogics.
Why is Health Literacy So Important?
Several studies have shown that individuals with low health literacy have overall worse health outcomes, resulting in higher healthcare costs. Health literacy is one of the strongest predictors of an individual’s health status, and the cost of low health literacy to the U.S. economy is as high as $238 billion annually. Roughly 90 million Americans are at risk for preventable health problems because they have difficulty understanding health information, and people with low health literacy are more likely to visit an emergency room, have more hospital stays, adhere less to treatment plans, and have higher mortality rates. Improving health literacy could save the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars annually — and, more importantly, many lives.
From an employer’s perspective, improving the health literacy of its employees leads to greater utilization of preventative care services, wellness programs, and other employee benefits, resulting in healthier behaviors, fewer chronic diseases, improved absenteeism and presenteeism, and higher employee productivity.
Historically, health literacy has been overlooked as a key health strategy. But a recent resurgence in the importance of health literacy has occurred due to its immense benefits in enhancing health equity and employee productivity. Employers who invest in health literacy improvement programs are more likely to build a culture of health within their organizations, reinforce and support the investments they are making in their employee benefits, attract and retain better employees, and improve the company’s bottom line.
Individuals with higher health literacy make better healthcare decisions and are more likely to follow their doctor’s treatment plan, take their medications correctly, and make better use of their company’s benefits program.
Taking Health Literacy to the Next Level
The EdLogics Platform’s innovative educational strategies and unique engagement capabilities are designed to help employers improve health outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and build a more resilient and productive workforce by engaging and motivating employees to learn about important health issues and become better healthcare decision-makers.
The EdLogics Platform provides a broad array of engaging, consumer-friendly, multimedia educational programs that simplify complicated health information, enabling employees with a variety of learning styles and reading abilities to understand their role in preventing disease and managing their health. The EdLogics Platform offers one of the largest collections of trustworthy, evidence-based health information on a variety of topics, including:
● Chronic conditions, common health problems, and cancers
● Mental health, addiction, and substance use disorder
● Pregnancy, maternal health, childbirth, and newborn care
● Understanding health insurance and navigating the healthcare system
● Prevention and wellness
● Drug information through a virtual pharmacist
EdLogics takes health literacy to the next level by introducing Health Literacy 2.0. Unlike traditional educational programs that have low engagement and little impact on health behaviors, EdLogics has been successful in improving health literacy and changing consumer behavior through highly engaging educational strategies, innovative communication solutions, and robust data analytics and personalization capabilities.
Engagement & Education Strategies
EdLogics takes a scientific approach to education by focusing on the root issues of behavior modification: knowledge, skill building,
increased confidence, and creating the foundation for new habits. Key engagement and education strategies include:
● Cognitive and micro-learning principles, including repetitive delivery and continued reinforcement of key teaching point, enhance knowledge retention and the user experience.
● Innovative gamification strategies — including points, badges, leaderboards, scavenger hunts, challenges, competition, teamwork, Health GPA, and other approaches — keep users engaged and motivated to learn.
● Multimedia educational programs help simplify complex health information, making it easier to understand and retain information.
● Creative incentive design strategies lead to high employee engagement with minimal financial incentives.
● Unique game-based learning capabilities engage users by making learning about health and navigating the healthcare system easy, fun, and interactive.
● A data-driven recommendation engine enhances the user experience by delivering personalized educational content and learning resources based on user demographics, personal preferences, and clinical attributes.
● An interactive, customized dashboard promotes daily, weekly, and monthly activities and allows users to track their progress, leading to an enhanced consumer experience and sustained participation and engagement.
● Advanced data analytics and customized reporting provide critical insights into which health topics are of greatest interest to employees and dependents, identify knowledge gaps, and provide client-specific market research data.
“The EdLogics Platform has made learning about health lots of fun! I visit the site almost every day and have learned so much on a variety of different topics. Between the daily scratch-off questions, weekly workouts, monthly challenges, and playing the different games, there’s so much to do. And you can even win cash prizes! I think all of our employees will find EdLogics to be a great resource. I’m hooked!” said an EdLogics user.
A Digital Front Door to Employee Benefits and Resources
Cross-promotion capabilities through a suite of highly customizable promotional resources that leverage health games, emails, banners, notifications, and resource pages can support open enrollment and drive awareness of employee benefits and other available programs, services, and resources.
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The EdLogics Platform has the unique ability to promote awareness and adoption of employee benefit programs and resources through improved health literacy and customized promotional campaigns.
Customized game-based content can be leveraged to support education on any topic, including unique benefit plan designs and how to use employee benefits offerings such as telemedicine, employee assistance programs (EAPs), mental health resources, health savings accounts (HSAs), and more.
One of EdLogics’ clients has been using The EdLogics Platform for many years to address the lack of awareness about employee benefits, promote utilization of their diabetes disease management and telemedicine vendors, and improve the health literacy of their employees. EdLogics has successfully increased their employees’ utilization of telemedicine visits by 31%, resulting in cost savings of approximately $41,000 per month. While switching between pharmacy benefits management companies, this same client utilized EdLogics to educate its members on the transition and the new services available to them, reducing the administrative burden and operational impact from employee questions related to this change in vendors.
Seamless Integration and Easy Implementation
The EdLogics Platform can seamlessly integrate with other programs and is easy to implement with minimal impact on HR and wellness teams.
“The platform was easy to implement. The EdLogics team walked us through the setup process step by step and made everything simple and effortless for us. They have been wonderful to work with, and the response from our employees has been very positive,” says Christy Rudisill, TowneBank Wellness Program Director.
While improving health literacy can seem like a daunting task for employers to make an investment in, it is clear that the return will speak for itself. Having healthier, more productive employees will ultimately create a culture where health is prioritized.
Learn more about EDLOGICS please contact- demo@edlogics.com
