ConAgra Foods

Health & Wellness Program

Description

ConAgra Foods is a retail, food service and food ingredient company that has more than 40 different brands and serves consumer grocery retailers, restaurants and other foodservice establishments. ConAgra first introduced the Wellness Committee in December 1990, as part of a new initiative to help employees take control of their own health and fitness needs. In 2004-2005, ConAgra expanded on this original initiative by implementing worksite health screens at all of its facilities.

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Challenge

The challenge was to help employees take control of their own health and fitness needs.

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Solution

Program objectives include engaging employees in their own health decisions to reduce risk and provide baseline health measurements; improving individual well-being that leads to organizational benefits of increased morale, higher productivity, reduced absenteeism and lower healthcare costs; maintaining and enhancing the productivity of employees by helping them manage their health, fitness and work-life balance; and finally, creating a financial management tool for employee healthcare costs.

ConAgra has incorporated numerous wellness programs into their workplace at no cost to participants. These programs include:

• Preventive health screenings including annual biometric health screenings, complete prostate exams and mammograms, lipid profiles, immunizations and fitness testing.
• Customized health risk appraisals (HRA) offered semi-annually to allow for maximum behavior modification throughout the year.
• Health fairs held semi-annually and include a lipid profile (cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglyceride levels), blood pressure, height/weight and body fat testing, gait analysis and nutritional counseling. Participants receive results and interpretation of results immediately so that they can take action to improve their health.
• Fitness facilities and incentives gives all employees access to worksite fitness facilities and creates an incentives structure where participants record their activity in a web-based program and receive incentives to reward their efforts.
• Healthcare workshops/communication provide luncheon sessions, support groups, information sessions, and group email broadcasts to allow for extended information-gathering and repeated reinforcement on a topic.
• Incentive program encourages employees to create a healthier lifestyle. Employees have the opportunity to receive awards for participation and yearly monetary rewards for satisfactory or better screening results.
• Disease management helps control and monitor at-risk population, especially those with acute and chronic diseases.
• Healthy lifestyle bonus: Yearly tiered monetary rewards based on exercise adherence, body composition and lipid profile values.
• Smoking cessation aids and classes

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Outcomes

• Based on the average cost/benefit ratio, it is estimated that gross savings in 2001 were approximately $730,000.
• 48% of eligible employees completed the HRA in 2002.
• It is estimated that ConAgra Foods is likely to have saved approximately $20,000 to $25,000 in healthcare costs by detecting early cancer cases through their cancer screening program.
• Evaluation of the program determined that the potential to realize a cost savings return of between $5 and $9 for every dollar spent on the program is clearly achievable.
• The total direct cost of the program in 2001 was $243,321, which is equal to a cost of $113.06 per eligible ConAgra employee for the year. In comparison to other corporate health promotion programs, this cost represents modest per-person expenditures for a multi-level, activity-based health promotion program.

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Additional Information

The solution was implemented in a retail, food service and food ingredient company with 25,000 employees

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 ***For further information, please visit, www.conagrafoods.com

Published: January 26, 2009