Communication boosts employee use of preventive healthcare services

 

It has long been known that preventive healthcare is more than just a label. The right care when you’re well can prevent far more costly care when you contract an illness that could have been prevented. Offering preventive healthcare services also contributes to employee engagement and retention. Still, too few companies make significant investments in preventive care for employees. GlaxoSmithKline is one that does.

Under the label Partnership for Prevention (P4P), GSK offers some 40 services around the world. Simply providing the benefits isn’t worth much, though, if employees don’t know about them. Even awareness is often not enough to inspire people to act. GSK’s communicators split its communication effort into three logical phases: Pre-launch, Launch, and Embed & Grow. It’s that last category that tipped the scales for the judges of the 2018 Healthcare PR and Marketing Awards, who chose GSK as the winner in the Internal Communications category.

With goals of achieving global results – despite different cultures and programs from country to country – and sustaining a culture of preventive care, the team delivered ongoing messages to employees, working directly with local management teams, building an awareness of the importance of preventive care and reminding employees to use the services. The continuing, multi-channel approach paid off.

One employee with GSK Kenya, for example, told the team she didn’t know a vaccine was available to prevent cervical cancer. That kind of feedback was typical as the program has delivered nearly 114,000 individual services to more than 100,000 employees since its launch. An independent study also found the program is affecting absenteeism, health and disability plan costs, and engagement, among other things. 

Congratulations to the team at GlaxoSmithKline.