Going global with health and wellbeing analytics

Abstract

Purpose

Medtronic needed a comprehensive, integrated, measurable and global approach to employee wellness. Its primary focus was putting the critical factors of prevention and early detection at the forefront of its employee health rewards. The ability to monitor and measure health and wellbeing across the organization was also vital in giving Medtronic key insight, through analytics, into the impact that employee health had on the business. This paper aims to examine this approach.

Design/methodology/approach

Medtronic's Total Health global employee wellness brand focused on investing in health rather than the cost of treatment and improving employee health through behavior change. Seeing that the web was critical to delivery and collection of information in this environment it sought an online health and wellbeing platform with the capability to be deployed globally.

Findings

Initial health assessments conducted through the online platform have provided essential baseline data to understand overall global health trends as well as territory specific differences and priorities. Medtronic has been able to establish an average employee health score. Digging deeper it has noted priority health indicators for global employees based on the number who are recorded to be “at risk” in each case.

Originality/value

Successful use of analytics and web‐based tools has helped Medtronic accelerate towards its vision of personalized, consistent wellbeing support for all employees. It now has greater insight into their health status to define the right strategy, and the tools to drive targeted initiatives where they are needed.

Citation

Barron, G. (2013), "Going global with health and wellbeing analytics", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 5-9. https://doi.org/10.1108/14754391311282423