Champion International Corporation 
Health & Family Services
Focusing on the whole person

Program Description

Health Care and the Bottom Line

Employee health care currently costs American businesses a staggering $236 billion annually, or roughly $3,800 per employee per year. As those costs continue to escalate, many companies have come to realize that effective health care management has a direct bearing on the bottom line, often making the difference between profit and loss.

At Champion International Corporation, we are committed to providing our employees with high-quality health care. At the same time, we recognize that health care management must be integrated with our overall business objectives, focusing on our bottom line in an effort to increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, and lower overall costs. Our Health & Family Services organization is responsible for developing and administering services that help reduce health care costs and improve productivity. It has met this challenge with a customer-driven approach that has earned Champion widespread recognition as an innovator in employee health. In 1994, Champion received the Health Project's prestigious C. Everett Koop Award for our efforts in promoting employee health while also containing costs. More recently, Champion's commitment to a healthy work force was recognized by both Fortune magazine and Working Woman magazine.

In 1981, when we decided to take a new approach to employee health, we were not looking for accolades. Like many companies, we were searching for ways to become more competitive by making the most of our human resources. One of the ways we thought we could achieve that goal was by initiating a health care system that emphasized prevention.

Promoting Wellness

In 1981, we launched a company-wide wellness campaign that encouraged employees to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors. This effort included education about the value of exercise and good nutrition and the risks associated with smoking. To further promote wellness, we installed fitness centers at some of our locations. Before long, increasing numbers of Champion employees were participating in regular health and fitness programs.

To increase participation, in 1984 we organized health and fitness activities for employees and their families under the banner "Champions for Life." In 1988, a study of health risk data and medical insurance claims at our paper mill in Canton, North Carolina, revealed that Canton employees who had taken part in our health and fitness programs spent an average of 30% less on medical claims than non-participants. Having established a clear link between health and fitness activities and lower health care costs, the Canton study led us to refine and expand our wellness programs. We took a closer look at all the issues that could affect job performance and determined that we needed to broaden our concept of wellness to include mental and emotional health as well as physical well-being. In short, we began to recognize that each employee is a whole person who brings much more than job skills to work every day. We also began to understand that our efforts at wellness promotion could only succeed by taking the needs of the whole person into account.

Seeing the Whole Person: An Integrated Approach

With a diverse work force of nearly 25,000 employees at multiple locations in the U.S. and abroad, we recognize that our employees often face issues that could distract them from their work - or even affect their health - unless help can be found. Dual-career families and single parents, for example, may have difficult child-care issues to resolve, while other families face the growing burden of caring for elderly parents. Nor can we turn our back on employees who need help to overcome depression or substance abuse. To the extent that these issues affect job performance, they also affect Champion's ability to meet its business objectives. It is in the interest of the company and our work force, therefore, to provide employees and their families with help in dealing with any problems that could affect their work.

Formerly, these types of issues were the responsibility of our Employee Assistance Program which operated independently of Health Services. That arrangement, however, not only fostered duplication of effort, it often left employees confused about where to turn for help. Accordingly, in 1994, both groups were united under the Health & Family Services banner. To reflect a greater emphasis on family issues, the Employee Assistance Program became known as Employee and Family Assistance (EFA).

Bringing both groups together has enabled us to provide employees with services that focus on their total health wile also affording greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The shared expertise of Health Services and Employee and Family Assistance has yielded additional benefits. When an employee has a problem, it often involves a combination of issues which can best be handled by both groups joining forces to provide an integrated solution. An employee who has been disabled, for example, may require more than physical therapy in order to return to a state of wellness. He or she may also need treatment for depression. Family members may require counseling in order to take part in the rehabilitation. Our integrated approach enables us to better serve the needs of the whole person while protecting his or her privacy and confidentiality.

Education and Preventive Care

Recent studies show that every dollar invested in preventive care save as much as six dollars in insurance costs. If adopting a healthy lifestyle eliminates the risk of a heart attack for just one employee, for example, it can save as much as $60,000 to $100,000 in medical bills. Similarly, if prenatal care prevents low birth weight in just one infant, it could save up to $100,000 in intensive care costs and spare the employee and his or her family a great deal of emotional stress.

At Champion, preventive care is the primary focus of our health promotion efforts. And we believe that education and early intervention are together the most effective form of preventive care. Accordingly, Health & Family Services devotes much of its time to education on a wide range of subjects. We regularly provide literature and workshops on such subjects as cholesterol management, how to avoid back injuries, and how to balance work and personal life. We also provide education on marriage and family issues, prenatal care and child care, alcohol and substance abuse, depression, and elder care, among many other issues.

Our emphasis on quality is reflected in our Health & Family Services staff members, each of whom has an advanced degree or is currently working toward one. The professionalism of our Health & Family Services personnel not only enables them to keep abreast of the latest advances in their fields, it also lends credibility to our wellness program and ensures greater employee buy-in. Employees who want to lower their cholesterol or body-fat levels, for example, appreciate the opportunity to consult with a registered dietitian who can custom-design a diet program for them. And they are more likely to follow through with the program. Similarly, an employee who requires physical rehabilitation is likely to make a quicker recovery by following the advice of the physical therapists and exercise physiologists who staff our facilities.

While preventive care has been the main thrust of our wellness activities since 1981, it gained even greater emphasis in 1993, when we launched our Preventive Care plan. The Plan consists of three elements: adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors; undergoing routine preventive care procedures, such as blood pressure tests, mammograms, and flu immunizations; and periodic consultations with a personal physician or primary care provider. To maximize employee participation, we make it as easy as possible for them to get the appropriate tests, screenings, and immunizations, either on-site or at nearby locations off-site with carefully screened health care providers. By ensuring that employees who participate in the preventive care program given only the appropriate procedures for their age, gender, and family history - and by negotiating favorable rates with the providers - the cost to the employee and to Champion is greatly reduced.

Collaborators in Wellness

One of the guiding principles of our wellness campaign has been that employees must share the responsibility for their own health care. For our part, Champion has pledged to provide our employees with high-quality health care at affordable prices. Health & Family Services personnel work closely with employee representatives at each location to develop products and services that meet their specific needs - and follow up with periodic surveys to ensure customer satisfaction. Additionally, they conduct regular evaluations at each location so that programs can be changed to meet evolving needs.

That same spirit of collaboration extends to our relationships with outside vendors and care providers with whom we have partnership agreements. Having established that "cookie-cutter" solutions and off-the-shelf services will not meet our needs, we work closely with our vendors to design the programs and services that will best meet the diverse needs of employees of all our locations. Once we have agreed on the services and the costs, we draw up a contract that clearly specifies all the terms of the agreement. After the contract is in place, we conduct quarterly quality reviews to make sure that all the terms are met and to discuss any changes or refinements that might be appropriate.

This close collaboration with our employees and our vendors has enabled Champion to maintain consistent quality of cost effectiveness, and to better anticipate and respond to changing needs.

Focusing on Goals 

The most critical decision for any organization involves setting goals. For Health & Family Services, those goals have always been clear: To keep Champion employees healthy and, when they become ill or disabled, to help them return to health as quickly as possible. The rationale is simple: Healthy employees have fewer medical bills, they are more productive, and they have lower rates of absenteeism. In short, healthy employees also have a healthy effect on Champion's business objectives, Health & Family Services has stayed focused on its goals. And by all important measurements, its focus has yielded results: Medical care costs have been steadily reduced, productivity continues to rise, and absenteeism is sharply lower. But while the goals remain constant, the services continue to change to better meet evolving employee needs. Health & Family Services owes much of its success to its willingness to initiate change by remaining customer-driven and emphasizing results rather than programs. Champion's Health & Family Services organization is proving that "doing the right thing" is not only possible, in terms of managing corporate health care, it's imperative.

Program Narrative

Health and Family Services' strategic intent is to optimize employee health and performance. Our total health approach is centered on keeping employees healthy, working and focused on their work. The approach: focuses on the physical and psychosocial health of the employee and his/her family; and delivers initiatives which fall along a continuum of care including prevention, early intervention, disability management and "return to health". These initiatives are strategically aligned with Champion's business objectives locally and company-wide.

A comprehensive array of services is delivered to our customers with the objectives of heightening awareness, facilitating behavior change and furthering a healthier, more productive work culture. Specific services include: preventive care, ergonomics, supervisory training, work/family, targeted interventions for those at risk, physical therapy and work conditioning.

Our activities are driven by business needs. Retrospectively, medical and workers' compensation claims and injury and accident rates are analyzed to determine our goals and strategies. Additionally, demographics, health trends, risk data and cultural readiness are used to prospectively determine our action steps.

Champion funds Health & Family Services on corporate and local levels. We hire highly credentialed health professionals with excellent communication and business skills which enable them to fully integrate their activities into the operations. Our professionals partner with and manage many vendors and contract service providers who are trained to deliver the Champion philosophy while carrying out their services. Our strong focus on quality and continuous improvement helps us to further a culture which focuses on the human side of business.