By Derek Yach
The position of Chief Health Officer has recently been identified as critical to ensure strengthened leadership in an organizations health and wellness efforts. So why the focus on the term health instead of medical?
In the past few years there has been an explosion and evolution of corporate titles which reflect the new challenges faced by corporate America from sustainability and greater supply chain transparency to data/privacy and the need to be clear both to internal staff and external partners that they are elevating and taking these issues seriously. But health remains absent.
Naming a Chief Sustainability Officer, a Chief Privacy Officer or a Chief Innovation Officer makes it loud and clear that these are issues you take seriously as a companyif those titles come with actual responsibility, decision-making ability and, ideally, a direct reporting line to the Chief Executive Officer.
(Other companies use such titles to show how innovative or creative they are, such as Google with their Chief Internet Evangelist Officer or Kodak with their Chief Listening Officer.)
Issues such as data privacy and sustainability are no longer fringe topics left to pioneers or trail blazers. They are essential to the core way of doing business, and companies need to recognize how important it is to do what is right both for the business and for society as a whole. This concept is the fundamental tenet of shared value as defined by Michael Porter.
So what about companies greatest asset, their people?
Traditionally, HR departments are in charge of managing talent and benefits, and companies sometimes have a Chief Medical Officer who addresses medical needs of employees, ranging from occupational safety and health to managing healthcare costs. With the growing costs of health care, forward thinking companies such as IBM, Dow Chemicaland Johnson & Johnson have added workplace wellness programsfocused on health promotion and chronic disease preventionto the CMO role.
This is a great start, but not enough.
The position of Chief Health Officer has been identified as critical to ensure strengthened leadership in healt. So why the focus on the term health instead of medical, and what even makes a good CHO?
For the CHO to be successful, its important that responsibilities not be compartmentalized, and for the role to focus on health as it relates to three key areas: employees, products and services, and interactions with communities (the latter typically being part of a corporate foundations mandate).
In a nutshell, companies should take a more integrated approach as this role emergesin much that same way weve seen the responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officer evolve.
Given that health care costs are often the greatest expense for an employer outside of payroll, its critical that the CHO have a seat at the table for executive decision-making. The role of the CHO is guided primarily by sound evidence, science, and ethics. While it may raise the potential for conflict with a companys profit and loss in the short term, ultimately the presence of a CHO within executive decision-making bodies of companies raises the potential for employee health; healthier products; and more effective prevention services to be addressed proactively and through often tough considerations of short term versus long term business interests.
The cost implications for employers, employees and society (seen through Medicarecosts that are rising faster than inflation, growing 68 percent since 2002) have forced a long overdue debate and we urge businesses to embrace the sense of urgency when it comes to using the power of prevention to bend future cost curves.
By collaborating across sectors and along common interest lines, employers from the private and public sectors can help curb their costs and keep both their and national competitiveness high, increasing our collective resilience which will help tackle other challenges on the horizon, from data/privacy to aging employees. But those are two whole other stories.
Derek Yach is the chief health officer at Vitality.
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