For executives, key employees, and professionals the concept of wellness programs within their work environment is a bit of an anomaly. With the electronics that we have available to us today, there really isn’t an end to the work day. We are tethered to our smart phones almost 24/7 and we receive emails day and night. In this work environment, the idea of work-life balance becomes attenuated by the ongoing different demands of our work. Even when we are on “vacation,” most of the people with whom we do business have continuing expectations of our availability.
In this environment, where lines between our personal lives and our business lives have been blurred so completely, the need for the workplace to become holistic has increased dramatically. The idea of having yoga classes, cooking classes, stress management seminars, and weight-loss initiatives indicate how employers are attempting to add a measure of life balance into the workplace. These advances in bringing corporate wellness into the mainstream are evidence of corporate America recognizing the added demands they are placing on their skilled workforce and executives. As the United States has moved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, the ability to leave your work at the workplace has disappeared.
In a Fortune magazine article by Holly Leibowitz Rossi, she quotes Jason Lange, a team lead for workplace health programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who states, “Your wellness program should be embedded into everything your organization does. It’s just as important as sales and marketing. It’s just as important as research and development. It’s just as important as customer service.” The reality is, as the speed of innovative change accelerates in American society, the workplace demands on key decision-makers leaves very little time either in the workplace or outside of the workplace for the life quality opportunities of family, exercise, reading and study; forgotten is the idea of quiet time. Thus, the need to embed both wellness programs and health care management programs become essential to the quality of life of the drivers of your enterprise.
In this world of excessive demands and time constraints, what gets deferred and in many cases denied by corporate America’s key employees beyond the requisite insurance is their actual healthcare and the need for it to be organized, maintained, and monitored on a regular basis. We have a tendency to defer that which is not readily apparent to us as being critical until it becomes critical. At that point, our ability to avoid the serious health issue ends. When we get to the “What do I do now?” moment of a healthcare diagnosis or event is when we discover that all of the healthcare insurance we have only deals with our well-being from a financial perspective. Health insurance really is a financial document intended to avoid adverse consequences to us financially by having the third party insurance company or our corporation’s self-insurance plan there to cover the expenses. Yet, at that same moment, we discover we are out there alone to make critical healthcare decisions without the expertise we have in other areas of our lives. Suddenly, we are required to make decisions on such questions as – Who is the best provider? Where is the best center of excellence? How do I access those facilities are decisions we are required to make? Our choice is to either find that expertise who can lead us through the healthcare maze or to seek to manage the process ourselves with the immense and necessary commitment to the time required.
We at Curus recognized this void in the healthcare delivery process and developed our company and its processes and procedures to proactively assure that the “What do I do now” moment would be answered or even better avoided altogether. As we proactively assess and evaluate, we seek to avoid those critical decision points by providing the ultimate wellness program before there is an issue as well as if one occurs. As we gain an understanding of our members’ business pressures and lifestyles, we are able to provide input that will defer or avoid crisis situations. For our team at Curus, your wellness is the ultimate goal.
Note from CEO, Mark Schlussel
Wellness- the theme of this month’s article conjures up very different thoughts as we age. The seasons of life very much mirror the seasons of the year. As fall is upon us, it is a time to reflect on the value of good health and our need to invest the time, effort and discipline to maintain that good health. In each phase of our life, the choices we need to make to maintain our good health differ. At Curus, we believe that your concierge health coach should redefine wellness for each of our members depending upon the season of their life.
