Wellness – there’s an App for that

By |2018-11-03T15:22:11+00:00October 11th, 2017|

Much of what we are discussing this week centers around technology in HR, because we hope to start conversations and open up dialogue about the tools at our fingertips at this year’s HR Tech Conference #HRTechConf in Vegas. But when you take a minute to think about how much technology influences your day to day life, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that technology, AI, and apps for everything are infiltrating the way we work too. The human resources side of business has always been influenced by people, and was created in an effort to organize and protect the people in your company. Now, we have an app for performance management, an app for training and development, and an app for team communication tools. So why not an app for wellness policies?

Kaiser Permanente Health Plan and Cigna Health, two of the largest healthcare conglomerates on the West Coast, both utilize wellness apps to help patients with appointment scheduling, reminders for well check-ups, and the ability to communicate with your doctor via email or instant messaging. Health programs and wellness plans such as weight loss, weight management, smoking cessation, and much more can be found within the apps. Other companies offer video and phone chat options with doctors via MDLive or Amwell. Like with so many of the other technology tools we’ve talked about this week, finding the right fit for your company culture, and aligning your tools with your organizational goals will lead to ease of use for employees, and increased time available for your HR team, management, and corporate leadership by eliminating their involvement in answering employee benefit questions that can easily be handled via a wellness app.