How healthcare analytics help organizations prioritize employee wellbeing

Published June 13, 2023 | 4 min read

Healthcare analytics Employers Benefits design

Merative

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For over five years, DTE Energy has relied on data-driven decisions to keep employee health and wellness at the forefront of everything they do.

Three years ago, most employers had to close their office doors and figure out how to manage their employees' personal and professional needs remotely. Today, many employers are still operating in hybrid or remote models and are relying on healthcare analytics tools to keep a pulse on their population health from afar. Fortunately, organizations like DTE Energy have been managing large, diverse, and “deskless” employees for decades and have plenty of best practices to share.

We recently had the privilege of presenting at the Business Group on Health Annual Conference with DTE. The focus of the session was on leveraging data to achieve a culture of health (CoH) and wellbeing for your employees and dependent populations.

Build a Culture of Health

DTE is a best-in-class example of keeping employee health and wellness as the top priority and for instilling a true Culture of Health. While it’s known that healthy employees do directly impact business health, companies that embrace a CoH believe in implementing these wellbeing programs simply because it's the right thing to do.

DTE shared that infusing wellbeing into their culture has always been extremely important to senior leadership and that executives have made a conscious effort to lead by example and openly prioritize their own health and wellness to inspire others. That initial buy-in and transparency from leadership sparked an organization-wide movement and has continued to grow and flourish for over five years. So, what was their secret to success? The answers were right in front of them, buried in their employee health data.

“Your health is what I worry about the most, because without you we are nothing.”

– Jerry Norcia, Chairman and CEO, DTE Energy

Build a blueprint with data

The DTE team understands that a data-driven approach is crucial to create a best-in-class CoH. They curated a robust data warehouse and worked with the Merative™ Health Insights team to build a custom dashboard system to synthesize that data to obtain insights that drive action. DTE walked us through the five-year evolution and shared best practices and lessons learned, here were the top takeaways and how DTE solved for them:

Prioritize with purpose

Start by establishing top goals and how you plan to measure against them. DTE had established five leading and lagging indicators to help measure things like maturity levels, effectiveness, efficiency, and status. DTE also conducted a gap analysis to identify where there is opportunity for improvement and identified different programs and tactics to solve those problems.

Sequence matters

It’s impossible to do everything at once. Create an action plan and start with the low hanging fruit. For years, DTE moved with intention and strategy as they gradually grew different programs and tactics, backed by data. The team continuously used data to guide decisions and next steps to ensure they were providing value to employees and their families.

Cast a big net

We live in a world that relies on data, and it can be overwhelming to process all the different sources and formats. As you establish a stronger data and analytics foundation, you unlock a whole new world of insights. DTE Energy has found a lot of value in working with numerous data types because they gain a fuller picture of their population health, helping identify gaps to provide more meaningful benefits for employees.

Conclusion

The Health and Wellbeing team at DTE Energy is proud of the progress they’ve made and will continue to rely on employer analytics to support decision-making. When reflecting on the last five years, the team credits much of their success to leadership’s influence and unwavering support, competitions and communications to drive engagement, and identifying metrics and actionable goals ahead of time to move with strategy and intention. We look forward to continuing helping organizations like DTE Energy use data to direct, determine, and drive results.

“Metrics are vital to our effort; they help us engage stakeholders, create and sustain momentum, assess needs and encourage action. Most importantly, it impacts the lives of the DTE family”

– Karen Personett, Manager Health & Wellbeing, DTE Energy

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