Healthiest Employees: 2,000-4,999 Employees | #1. CBIZ Inc.
CEO (or equivalent): Jerome P. Grisko, CEO and president
Number of employees: 4,630
CBIZ Inc., the Cleveland publicly traded professional services company, launched its wellness program in 2001, seven years before the Society of Human Resources Management first surveyed U.S.-based companies on the issue. Recognizing that financial stress impacts people’s health, the CBIZ Well-being Program transitioned recently from emphasizing physical health to including financial health as well, Director of Compensation and Benefits Deborah Sherman said.
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A company-paid prescription benefit program offers enrolled employees less-expensive prescription options, and an online personalized tool assesses an individual’s financial status. With 30 percent and 20 percent participation in these programs, respectively, within the first 30 days of the 2018 launch, Sherman said, “In my world, that’s huge. I’m thrilled.”
Calling the financial-assessment tool “a big hit,” said Sonia Stingo, CBIZ’s director of operations for New England. “In my previous life, I was a wealth adviser. To have these tools available to employees is really wonderful. [It’s] something that most people don’t usually get insight into unless they hire their own personal adviser.”
CBIZ adopted a total well-being perspective with five pillars: purpose, social, financial, community and physical. Attracting up to 75 percent of its insured population, the company-funded program offers on-site clinical health screenings, blood drives, lunch and learn sessions, health fairs, sports teams, walks and runs that support local charities.
With nearly 5,000 employees scattered across more than 100 offices, including the Providence office with some 70 employees, communicating well-being is CBIZ’s greatest challenge, said Sherman. A marketing brochure that fully describes the five pillars, each with its own unique icon, that was issued with each employee’s annual benefits statement, brought “a huge uptick in feedback; the icons especially captured people’s attention,” she said.
Wanting to motivate employees to address their well-being, CBIZ invited them to describe what matters most. The barrage of notes and photos – of employees with their grandchildren or pets – opened the door for conversations about obesity, said Sherman, and the website’s homepage weekly featured a different employee’s story and picture. “When you identify what matters most to you in your life, you can more easily see a path to getting healthier.”
During the busy tax season, the Providence team hosts a mini-golf tournament in the office, and the CBIZ Road Warriors, runners from the Boston and Providence offices, is growing larger, said the Boston-based Stingo in a phone interview. Fulfilling the community pillar, the Providence team is committed to supporting local charities, including serving food at Amos House, reading to toddlers at Children’s Friend, sponsoring a book drive and participating in an Earth Day cleanup. Staff mentoring programs, regular social hours for staff from both offices and a corporatewide, streamlined flexible work policy all contribute to well-being, said Stingo.
With more than 38 percent of its insured population diagnosed obese, CBIZ offers nutritional online and telephone coaching, and nutritional counseling for any insured who seeks it, as well as value pricing for prescriptions for its diabetic clients. Other initiatives include healthy vending-machine options, smoking-cessation support, employee and education assistance programs and, recently, a program helping employees find caregivers for children and/or elderly relatives, as reducing stress is vital to overall well-being.
More than 50 percent of CBIZ’s insureds are compliant in wellness exams and breast cancer screenings, dramatically outperforming the norms. Its corporate health partner, Optum, found recently that CBIZ has better health scores than its book of business in 12 categories, including body-mass index percentages, high blood pressure, glucose readings and cholesterol levels.
A healthy thought:
‘When you identify what matters most … you can more easily see a path to getting healthier.’
Deborah Sherman, Director of compensation and benefits, CBIZ Inc.
