The wellness industry is moving toward creating well-being indices similar to a consumer-price index or Dow Jones indices.

Some wellness experts believe that U.S. employers eventually will have access to daily and monthly well-being indices that capture and forecast, through statistically valid numbers, the physical, psychological and social health of the American workforce.

This could create, for example, a possible scenario in which 21st-century executives will tell bankers that their company deserves a higher line of credit than its competitors, given that the organization has a higher well-being index score, demonstrating that it's more productive and likely has lower heath care costs.

"The degree [to which] HR can achieve cost and operational gains is relevant to a business case for more favorable loan terms," says Bob Braddick, a partner in Mercer's private equity and M&A consulting group. "HR groups that can articulate a clear strategy and deliver greater liquidity that contributes to cash flow and servicing debt will position their enterprise to likely have an advantage with lenders, given capital constraints and competition."

Currently, well-being indices and similar indicators represent random survey data that gauge workers' health status, attitudes on wellness and workplace health programs.

The collected data helps employers to make the link between wellness and corporate performance, and allows them to benchmark their wellness programs against their goals and peers.

Also, consider that the economic stimulus law allocates about $19 billion to health information technology, which will streamline accessing aggregate medical data on the nation's population.

As communities begin to link their health care system networks and exchange data, health and wellness researchers will be able to aggregate larger data sets, such as lab results and diagnoses, says Fred Goldstein, president and COO of US Preventive Medicine.

The well-being indices have the ability to morph into numerical indicators that statistically capture - by analyzing and measuring robust data from various sources - the state of health and well-being of the American workforce, according to some wellness experts. Such indices will have the potential to influence other corporate decisions.

Wall Street gaze

Healthways, a health management firm, teamed up with Gallup, the polling outfit, to create a well-being index that represents survey data examining the direct and indirect key drivers of wellness and health issues that affect Americans.

The index captures a random sample of people's well-being at the close of every day by gauging how places where people work and the communities in which they live affect their well-being. Nearly 1,000 adults are interviewed every day. The index also hopes to shed light on how those factors impact the financial health of corporations and communities.

"As the data becomes deeper, and we understand more about it, I can honestly see the day where we might pick stock in a company based, in part, on how that company scores on this index," John Harris, senior vice president and chief wellness office at Healthways, told attendees at the 4th Annual Employer Health and Human Capital Congress. The three-day event, held in Washington, D.C., focused on health care benefits and corporate performance.

"If you are in the low ranking, then the organization is not going in the right direction in terms of their productivity and people," he added.

So far, Wall Street investors are not factoring in corporate well-being indices as part of their investment strategies. "That said, a well-being index is the kind of data that you need out there, because there so many variables tied to wellness and corporate performance that you cannot narrow it down to one thing," Harris affirmed.

"Some executives and investors are saying this wellness idea is just too complicated, and that we really cannot make out the correlation between a healthier workforce and the bottom line. A well-being index may start to undo some misconceptions about measuring ROI on wellness and health improvement programs," Harris said.

Harris cited former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Julie Gerberding: "Imagine what it would be like if your community knew what its health index was like, and you knew that the neighboring community had a better health index. Well, that would become an issue for the mayor, civic leaders. Soon, things will start to happen, and health in that community will change."

Getting benefits pros on board

Harris, a 30-plus-year veteran of the wellness industry, recalled a meeting with an employer who wanted to open up new locations, but was having a hard time measuring the effectiveness of wellness initiatives. The employer eventually decided to study the obesity statistics in various communities, hoping to build plants where the obesity rates are low.

The employer saw obesity as a big factor in health care costs. "But when you think about it, that's an inexact science because the company is only using one indicator," Harris said.

Since 2000, the Principal Financial Group has rolled out a quarterly well-being index that identifies and tracks changes in the workplaces of small and midsize businesses, focusing on health insurance, wellness programs and retirement plans.

With this index, HR/benefits executives are able to communicate from a position of strength, because they have current information, says Dan Houston, president of retirement and investor services at Principal Financial Group. "In the future, we see the index capturing wellness outcomes and profiling subgroups within an employee population, thus combing the survey data with health outcomes," Houston says.

The company once considered redesigning the index to mirror an economic index, providing a single-digit indicator, but concluded such an index may not serve its purpose as a tool to help small and midsize employers.

In today's society, "everyone wants to get everything down to a sound bite, but the real work comes down to ingesting the data, so that you can provide meaningful and actionable steps," says Houston.

An index, in and of itself, is not as powerful as our summary analysis that augments the index, which can provide an in-depth look into health and wellness policies," he adds. "You don't want the index to turn into some sort of misery index."

Going forward

Thomas Parry, president of The Integrated Benefits Institute, a California-based organization that focuses on health and productivity in the corporate sector, says, "The next step in this discussion is how a change on a well-being index will affect the bottom line of the business. That is to say, if our employees get healthier, does that translate into a more profitable company?"

"One challenge confronted by people who manage health programs and health benefits, especially during this economic climate, is to show why a healthier workforce is an important business strategy," Parry continues. "Well-being indices can connect benefits to corporate performance. If we continue to keep benefits in the benefits silo, it's always going to be seen as just one more place to cut costs."

Parry further explains that a well-being index can bring health and wellness onto the balance sheet as a way for senior executives to understand the value of human capital as a corporate asset. "If Wall Street starts to value the employee health status of a corporation, then that has the potential to change how corporate American operates," he adds.

The industry is still in the early stages when it comes to a well-being index that captures a single number that represents multiple measures everyone can understand and relate to, says LuAnn Heinen, health vice president at the National Business Group and director of its Institute on the Costs and Health Effects of Obesity.

Yet rolling up, on a daily basis, national health and wellness data into one valid indicator is a great concept, because everyone who works in benefits and wellness wants to reach the C-suite, and anything that helps put employee health on the radar is a good thing, Heinen asserts.

"When you think about employers and their ability to measure the effectiveness of today's work environment, they really don't have many sophisticated tools," says Shelly Wolff, a consultant in the health and productivity group at Watson Wyatt. She encourages concepts that will get "us out of our old framework of thinking about measuring employees' effectiveness only through the lens of health."