Wellness programs – improving accessibility
Seeking a wellness program solution for employees?
Are you responsible for staff wellbeing programs in your organisation?
Have you considered a mobile app rather than a web-based program solution? When choosing a wellness solution, accessibility is paramount.
According to Maayan Cohen, CEO at Hello Heart, a provider of a mobile solution for hypertension and heart risk, mobile apps for wellness and disease management take accessibility for employees to the next level. They help employers avoid discrimination challenges, but, even more importantly, they ensure employers maximize employee enrollment, engagement rates and – most likely – the bottom line too.
Tools like Hello Heart, Retrofit, Omada, Doctor on Demand and others enable employees to enroll and participate in wellness programs using only their mobile phone. Cohen explained three surprising reasons why these new mobile therapeutics improve wellness program accessibility.
HR Executives often choose programs based on false information, Cohen explains, and one of the biggest myths is that web-based programs offer the most accessible platform to employees.
“Mobile platforms are dismissed due to the false belief that employees of lower socioeconomic status will be unable to access them,” she says. The myth-busting fact is that programs running on a web platform are actually less accessible than mobile solutions. Why? Because fewer people have access to a computer at home than mobile phones, especially among minority groups and low-income households.
Current statistics from the US reveal minority employees and those with low income and education levels are particularly likely to be smartphone-dependent, meaning they do not have internet access at home and have few options for getting online other than their cell phone.
Read more of this article by Tom Starner from HR Dive …