Organization: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
Agency: Katcher Vaughn & Bailey Public Relations
Timeframe: August 2008 to November
With the healthcare industry in a state of flux thanks to the still-pending healthcare reform bill, businesses and lawmakers are continuing to search for solutions to the rising costs of healthcare. Within the industry, wellness and personal health accountability have emerged as top concerns.
Using this as a peg, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST), the state’s largest health insurer, wanted its employee health benefits options to reflect wellness offerings that define health insurance today. Revamping its 2009 health plans to offer wellness programs as a key component, BCBST then called upon its employees to embrace a “Culture of Wellness.”
The program featured higher levels of personal health accountability than its previous options, offering substantial programs and personal incentives for employees.
Unfortunately, all was not smooth sailing. The organization faced numerous challenges communicating the significant changes in its benefits offerings to its diverse base of 5,400 employees, spanning six Tennessee cities and one in New Jersey. Some of these snarls included the fact that these were the first new health plan choices in recent years; employees now needed to be educated about the cost benefits of enrolling in one of the two Consumer Directed Health Plan (CDHP) options; and it was now mandatory that employees participate in the Open Enrollment (OE) process.
Although BCBST had senior management buy-in prior to the inception of the program, the team knew it had to communicate to employees that this OE program was different from anything they had experienced before.
“[At BCBST] open enrollment did not always require the employee to take action,” explains Roy Vaughn, BCBST’s director of corporate communications. “If employees wanted to stay with the same plan, they did not require action. In this case, we had multiple options available; it was important for us to help employees understand the changes that were part of the total benefit design and how it would affect their circumstances. It provided more education than typically we had to employ in the past.”
Although the OE program would not launch until November 2008, BlueCross tasked local PR firm Katcher Vaughn & Bailey Public Relations (KVBPR) to start developing an internal communications plan in August 2008.
According to Heather Schablik, account supervisor for KVBPR, the agency got involved in the effort thanks to their long-established working relationship with BlueCross BlueShield. “They knew that the OE 2009 would be coming up and would require a lot [of PR components],” she says. “They called on us to bring our expertise to it.”
The collaboration between agency and client was seamless, says Schablik, who worked at BCBST for from late September through October 2008 during the initiative along with another KVBPR staffer in order to immerse themselves into the project. “Because we were there on site, it allowed us to be part of the internal meetings,” says Schablik. “This made it easy for us to have that desk-side chat we needed to have. It really was a team experience.”
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| Examples of collateral pieces that Nashville PR firm Katcher Vaughn & Bailey Public Relations developed for client BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee for their “Culture of Wellness”/OE internal communications program. Photo courtesy of KVBPR |
As BCBST’s internal communications staff worked in tandem with KVBPR on putting together an internal OE communications program, they framed the following key goals:
• Increase employee awareness of the Culture of Wellness;
• Develop a model benefits communications template for employees; and encourage employee participation in personal health accountability;
• Move at least 15% of employees into the CDHP;
• Achieve 35% participation in wellness initiatives; and
• Increase employee registration for BlueAccess (external Internet site for members) to more than 60%
The program targeted approximately 5,400 BCBST employees and 500 retirees who were eligible for the company’s health benefits. The project budget was $100,000. Schablik says much of that was used for video production, development of collateral materials, such as leaflets and brochures and the agency’s professional fees.
The initiative also involved different departments working together, planning and implementing a massive communications program while juggling day-to-day responsibilities.
TEAR DOWN THAT WALL
Although the employee communications was the main department involved in the program, BCBST’s Vaughn notes that human resources, marketing, sales and account management were also involved.
“In the past, people from HR would work on the OE or some concerted effort and they would develop their own ideas and then ‘throw it over the wall’ to the employee communications team, who would then ‘throw it back over the wall,’” he says. “Here there was no wall.” To meet the program’s goals, it was essential that these silos be banished and everyone involved be aligned and have consistent messaging throughout.
Complicating matters was that the OE required an extensive approval process within a very tight timeframe. Making sure everyone involved in the effort was in the loop when it came to approval became another challenge.
“OE wasn’t really top of mind [for all the departments] like it was for the employee communications area,” explains Schablik. “Because of the number of people who were involved in the program and the tight timeframe, we didn’t have the luxury of having people approve following a few weeks [of review]. It had to be done in a few hours.”
DEDICATED RESOURCES
On the agency side, Schablik says three people (including herself) worked on the initiative with two people embedded at BCBST from the final week of September 2008 to the final week of October 2008. “We would alternate our schedule—one of us would be there from Monday through Wednesday and the other Wednesday through Friday. We were essentially there as a full-time employee.” Schablik estimates they (both combined) were on-site close to 50 hours a week.
On the client side, Vaughn says there were six people in the employee communications department who had a role in the execution of the program at any given time.
“We did have one full-time employee communications manager dedicated to planning the rollout and through the implementation of the program,” he says. “That employee dedicated somewhere from 30 to 50 hours per week for the project. That was for two months—from September through November.”
DIGITAL FOCUS
To work on hammering out the key messages for the Culture of Wellness program, an employee committee representing internal communications, marketing, account management and human resources met weekly to develop and implement a communications plan that reached the goals and objectives, while KBVPR were tasked with writing the communications pieces. “We did a lot of the day-to-day on the ground implementation of the work, which included managing the process as a whole, because the employee communications department had this initiative and other things to do as well,” notes Schablik.
The team focused on executing a digital media campaign that included postings on the corporate intranet site, the BCBST external site and a customized OE site. The other principal strategy focused on a collateral program of brochures and handouts that supported the key messages and the online activities.
With nearly 80% of the employee base under 50 years old, the team leveraged digital tools to reach the core audience. Examples of their work included:
• Drafting and posting 17 articles outlining the benefit plans, enrollment process and the Culture of Wellness;
• Creating and posting online profiles of employees who had made lifestyle changes;
• Writing scripts and working with a video company to produce six videos to explain the 2009 open enrollment benefits;
• Produced four videocasts of senior management discussing the 2009 OE; and
• Worked with an internal graphic design team to create seven interactive electronic brochures.
Management also got heavily involved in the communications outreach. To spread the key messages of the program, e-mails from BlueCross BlueShield higher-ups were sent to employees, providing the how-to of OE and covering high-level messaging. Also, three different presentations outlining benefit options were created specifically for employee workshops.
HEALTHY OUTCOME
BCBST met and exceeded all objectives for the 2009 OE initiative:
• BCBST almost tripled enrollment in the Consumer Directed Health Plan, with 26% of employees opting for the plan;
• 78% of employees have participated in health assessments, the gateway to BCBST wellness programs; and
• Following OE, 66% of employees were registered on BlueAccess—an increase of more than 10%.
And the annual OE follow-up survey found that:
• 90% of employees felt the OE materials provided them with the necessary information to make their decision; and
• 83% felt the communications effectively explained the differences in the health plan options.
A key takeaway for Vaughn while working on this project: Never to see it in terms of finality. “We should never stop thinking about the next iteration of it,” he says. “We made a good start on the Culture of Wellness, but a culture is more than a campaign; it’s something that’s ongoing.” PRN
CONTACT:
Heather Schablik, [email protected]; Roy Vaughn, [email protected]