Case study

Going global with health and wellbeing analytics
By Gen Barron, Global Wellness Consultant - Medtronic
As published in Strategic HR Review Magazine, Vol 12, No 1, January 2013, pp 5-9.

Abstract
Purpose

Design/methodology/ approach

Medtronic needed a comprehensive, integrated, measurable and global approach to employee wellness.
It’s primary focus was putting the critical factors of prevention and early detection at the forefront of its employee health rewards.

Medtronic’s Total Health global employee wellness brand focused on investing in health rather than the cost of treatment and improving employee health through behaviour 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.

The ability to monitor and measure health and wellbeing across the organisation was also vital in giving Medtronic key insight, through analytics, into the impact that employee health had on the business.

Findings

Implications…

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 our global employees based on the number who are recorded to be
‘at risk’ in each case.

Successful use of analytics and web based tools has helped Medtronic accelerate towards its vision of personalised, 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.

We realised that people needed