PBN Healthiest Employers Awards 2024
500-1,499 EMPLOYEES #1. Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island
CEO (or equivalent): Peter Marino, CEO and president
Number of employees: 668
WELLNESS WORKS AT Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island. Literally.
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Through a Virgin Pulse Inc. program called Wellness Works, the Smithfield-based health insurer rewards its employees for conducting healthy behaviors. Such behaviors they’re lauded for include achieving daily step goals, tracking sleep and attending monthly education sessions on physical, mental, emotional and financial health.
Neighborhood employees who participate can customize the program to their personal lifestyle goals and use it to cultivate healthy habits that work for them.
“You can make it what you want it to be,” said Nicole Voller, senior manager of total rewards. “You can track things like sleep, water intake and weight, but you can also go to monthly webinars that focus on all the pillars: physical health, emotional health, mental health and financial health.”
Through Wellness Works, Neighborhood employees earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards. This past year, the participating employees – approximately 75% of the whole company – collectively earned $44,000 in gift cards.
Sheri Booker, senior learning and development coordinator, has used the gift cards she’s earned over the years to buy a paddle board, a ski jacket and ski helmet, an Apple watch, and a hammock for her backyard.
“I like to buy things that are wellness-related because it motivates me to keep up my healthy habits and try new things,” Booker said.
Booker has taken advantage of other wellness initiatives at Neighborhood, such as its walking path and access to the Calm app, which was also recently embedded into the company’s Microsoft Teams system.
“I occasionally used the Calm app when it was outside of Teams, but I really love that it’s now part of our Teams app,” Booker said. “I get a daily message in my Teams, I have it set up for first thing in the morning. As I begin to open up my programs and start work, I listen to it, and I practice my breathing, and I find it really changes my mindset for the day.”
Employees also have access to an on-site fitness center, a serenity space and a Bevi machine that serves flavored still and sparkling water. Even beyond the wellness program and its rewards, Neighborhood is committed to making its workplace the best it can be for its employees.
With a belief that employees benefit from having a well-rounded education, Neighborhood has a tuition assistance and reimbursement program focused on accessibility and equity in continuing education. Instead of paying out tuition assistance only after a course is completed or a passing grade is submitted, Neighborhood pays the cost up front, alleviating the economic pressure on employees to have to pay and then wait several months to be reimbursed.
Each calendar year, Neighborhood employees can use up to $5,250 in tuition assistance, and employees become eligible after six months of work.
Since this policy redesign, use of the program has almost tripled from 18 participants in 2022 to 50 participants in 2023. For Black and Latino participants, the use has quadrupled.
There’s also an employee assistance program with legal services available that Booker called “easy … the contacts were extremely helpful and nice.”
All these benefits come together to make Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island a healthy workplace, like the pieces of its wellness program come together to make healthy individuals.
“If someone learns to add a vegetable to their lunch plate every day, they might eventually walk on the walking path and then maybe they’ll use Calm to stay focused and feel more productive at their desk,” Voller said. “And that all adds up to a healthy individual.”
The goal, Voller says, is to help their community be healthier by focusing on employees first, with an emphasis that physical health affects mental health as much as mental health affects physical health.
“It’s about small steps that in the end will make a big difference,” Voller said.
A HEALTHY THOUGHT: ‘It’s about small steps that in the end will make a big difference.’
NICOLE VOLLER, Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island senior manager of total rewards
