The Human View - The Value of Now

By Mark Head, HR Tech Suite

Suppose you had been told in 2001 what your health plan costs would be today? Would you have believed it?

In 2001, average health plan costs were about $4,600 per employee. This year, that average could top $7,000. Your health plan is spending almost $2,500 more on treatment than it used to, and next year it will spend another $700 - $800.

S'posin'

If you had known then what you know now, would you have done the same things? Will you do the same things again this year? What would your company be experiencing today if it had begun a health promotion program three years ago?

Suppose you had diagnosed the situation and prescribed a company-wide wellness program. Suppose you had targeted simple elements like stress management, exercise and diet. Suppose you had instituted simple measures, that you had offered meaningful rewards and incentives, and that most of your people had gotten on board.

Should you have invested $300? $400? $500 per employee on wellness, on prevention, on early detection, and on encouraging self-care and personal responsibility? Against the $2,000 - $2,500 you invested in after-the-fact medical costs?

Hindsight is even better than lasik

No matter how carefully we choose the words to describe what it feels like to jump in a lake, the only way for any human on the planet to really know what it feels like is to take the plunge themselves. Or, as Ray Bradbury might have mixed the metaphor, “First, you jump off the cliff. You build your wings on the way down.”

We can't start - today - with the benefit of hindsight from three years hence. If we want to reach tomorrow's destination, we have to embark in the Now. We have to acknowledge that we cannot know what tomorrow will bring, and that we can choose only in the Now to move towards our goals, our dreams, our highest aspirations.

Delays can be costly. Think of how much energy is expended in trying to achieve “perfect timing.” With health, however, it is never too late, and it is never too soon; there is only, always, and forever, the Now.

Better to advocate health than to fight sickness

How we choose in the Now is our very life. As Annie Dillard reminded us, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

“Too soon” and “too late” are constructs that only exist in our perception of time as a linear function: past, present, and future. Of course, human existence is a linear experience of past, present, and future. But we do not live in the past, nor do we live in the future; we only live Now. We can only choose Now.

When it comes to health – if it comes – why would tomorrow be a better time to start getting healthier than today? If we believe that getting healthier is a good thing - if we believe that healthier people produce more, in less time, with more joy - then how soon do we want to start towards that brighter future? What aspect of Now says to “wait until the ROI can be proven in advance?” How often do current results differ from past forecasts?

Reasons vs. excuses

As this column continues to highlight, companies are their people. If people often seem paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong move, why should we be surprised that companies fear the same thing? Human beings create human communities, and human businesses; companies mirror people.

In almost every instance of delay, some aspect of fear is at work. Fear that we might not succeed. Fear that we will succeed but won’t be able to maintain it. Fear that we might spend too much money.

We all remember Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind: “Oh, I can’t think about that today; I’ll have to think about it tomorrow.” Some of us hold to an ever higher standard: “Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till the day after tomorrow.”

All of this would be fine if we weren’t dealing with core aspects of our human experience: work and health. These days, health plan costs can equal or exceed reportable earnings per share. Making like an ostrich, and hoping that the same old tactics will somehow work this year, is to buy in to fear. Worse, it is to perpetuate human experiences that debilitate us - as individuals, and as companies.

No rose-colored glasses

There is a way towards health, and that path is not necessarily primrose. To begin, expand or turbocharge a workplace wellness initiative is to take an incalculable risk. Yet, just because results may be difficult to measure (in conventional terms, or in advance) doesn’t mean they can’t be measured. Surely it doesn’t mean that it's not even worth it to try.

We can measure health plan utilization and costs. We can measure absenteeism. We can measure turnover. We can measure workers compensation events and costs, and we can measure disability costs.

Even if we insure these risks, we can measure the cost to transfer the risk (insurance premiums). We can measure, we can evaluate the results, we can redesign, and we can keep moving. The important thing is to periodically recalibrate to “target.”

Onward and upward

If we are in Dallas and we want to go to San Diego, we can’t start in Phoenix. We must begin where we are, and like a pilot or a ship captain, we must regularly correct to course. A thermostat doesn’t keep the temperature at exactly 72 degrees; it keeps it at about 72 degrees.

Our free will is our capacity to choose in the Now. Our destinies are the result of our past choices, which we experience in our current Nows. We can indeed shape our destinies, but only by shaping our Nows.

The Now is cusp; the Now is power; the Now is life. What value will you place upon your own, personal, Now?

The last word

Either wellness is the right thing to do for your company and your people, or it’s not. If it’s not the right thing to do, what is?

Wellness is better than sickness. That’s America's challenge, and that’s our solution. What’s yours?

©2004 Mark D. Head. All Rights Reserved.

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