Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Wellness of Individuals:
Spotlight on Verizon
Communications
Overview
The culture of health that continues to unfold
across Verizons large and widespread workforce
is the result of a strategic initiative designed to
improve health and control costs for the
companys more than 700,000 employees,
retirees, and dependents. The companys
comprehensive approach to health and wellness
effectively combines benefits, incentives,
support, and health services to help employees
more easily access the right care at the right
time in the right location. Results show that the
strategy is working.
In addition to providing comprehensive health
benefits (on which the company spent nearly
$3.2 billion in 2013), Verizons strategy involves
engaging and empowering employees, retirees,
and their families to proactively manage and
improve their health. The strategy emphasizes
preventive care and early detection, condition
management, maternity care management,
and promoting healthy lifestyles with a focus on
healthy eating, exercise, tobacco cessation,
emotional health, and work/life balance. Fortyfive onsite Verizon Health and Wellness Centers,
staffed by trained professionals who are Verizon
employees, promote the importance of healthy
lifestyle habits through physical activity, nutrition
counseling seminars, and more.
Lessons Learned
Verizons workforce is geographically dispersed
across 49 states, and scaling programs to
cover hundreds of locations can be difficult.
Also, Verizon employs a number of shift
workers and a large number of employees
who work independently. Both can create
challenges with widespread adoption.
To overcome these challenges, Verizon launched
a new online portal in November 2012 to provide
an easily accessible, one-stop gateway for
health and wellness resources. To drive traffic to
the site, the company implemented a
push/pull communications strategy, including a
Wellness Now e-magazine. With the launch of
the e-magazine, web page views increased
nearly five-fold in only one months time.