The Health Assessment

In 2008 our company instituted a new policy: every employee would have to go a health assessment to determine if they were going to have to pay a premium on their health insurance. The first year was a base year, but as long as the employee showed upward progress or scored above a certain amount, they were given the "subsidizied" amount.



The health assessment our company gives consists of a blood test (for cholesterol, glucose levels, nicotine, etc), weight (which, I'm pretty sure is calibrated incorrectly), height, and waist size. The first year went off pretty swimmingly, and even included company-paid counceling if you needed to improve your health in any way.



Then the sentiment around the office changed. Smokers realized they were being set up to fail the exam based on the points accrued for nicotine. Spouses who wanted to be on the health plan had to be tested starting in 2009, which many felt was too invasive. And, rumors abound that Human Resources was getting a hold of the test results which would have been in direct violation of the confidentiality agreement we signed when testing began.



Now, many employees try to find any way around the testing. Some have their doctors write notes. Others go on their spouses plans which are less intrusive. And a select few decided it was worth paying the extra money not to have their company perform tests on them.



This is a big issue. Companies need to make sure this type of process is a trustworthy one. If the information is shared, it not only violates laws and the agreements that employees entered into, but also creates friction between HR/management and employees. With soaring healthcare costs, many companies are looking for fair ways to reduce costs and this seems like a good one on the face. But unless a company can get voluntary buy-in from the employees, it's a system that is doomed to fail.



-Andrew

The Most Stressful Jobs (and other links)

Here on this Wednesday, as I get my health assessment done, I wanted to share a few links:

-From CNBC, we have America's most stressful jobs. Certainly quite a few on there that none of us would want to have. And, as Human Resources, some good jobs to know that fellow employees might be quite stressed at.

-11 Points gives us a top 11 list of famous people who were in the totally wrong career at age 30 showing all of us that career switches are possible.

-Although many of us cannot relate, Vault has some advice on how Tiger Woods' experience can help your career.

-Lastly, from Mike D. Merrill Blog, a new feature from LinkedIn which lets you follow company profiles.

Back tomorrow with some more great links (and maybe a thought or two from my health assessment)

Getting Rid of the Performance Review

I wrote earlier this week about changing the performance review scale, but the Wall Street Journal via Yahoo! Finance has an even better idea: eliminate performance reviews completely (H/T Sarah). The article's opening is a great call to arms:

It's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery.

This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.

And yet few people do anything to kill it. Well, it's time they did.

Just because everyone hates it, though, doesn't mean it should go. The ability to evaluate employees keeps everyone honest--including the reviewer, the reviewed, Human Resources, and upper management. Everyone hates it because it isn't fun to judge other people but like Valentine's Day reminds us once a year to say "I love you" when we should be doing it every day, performance reviews reminds us once a year that we should be giving constructive criticism, even though we should be doing that all the time as well. The key is to do it in a way that achieves a maximum comfort level for everyone involved and gets to a positive result.