Connected Care can be Fun too!
I recently read an article where a leading digital health integration platform Validic, is now collaborating with personal wearables maker Polar (and there are so many of them now) in providing an integrated corporate wellness platform. This is great news. Not because a breakthrough in technology now make this possible, not because two ecosystem players are finally exchanging data, and not even because they have discovered an application area of digital health that has some unmet need and a growing pain.
It is great news, because we finally have someone willing to pay! Yes, the corporates are willing to now shell out some of their very closely guarded HR budgets and allocate it to Employee Wellness. Why? Because there is a bang in the buck. Because now we may have a stakeholder who is cognizant of a simple truth - employees are assets that when kept "well" offer a better return on investment. It is well aligned with a growing pain - rising costs of insurance and of course, the growing curse of lifestyle diseases.
A new paradigm is emerging where the human resource function goes beyond mere administrative functioning and skills and competency building. It is time now for the Chief Human resources Officer to wonder if keeping his flock healthy and happy is as important as training and development.
So we are going to see more office walkathons and interdepartmental activity challenges and the great prize at the end - The Wellest Employee of the Year
