More Fortune 500 Employers Select Keas Platform to Create Culture of Health and Engagement for Employees in 2014

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2014) - Keas (www.keas.com), the market leader in corporate health, continues to demonstrate its growth and market expertise, reporting 300 percent year-after-year growth and covering two million Americans and counting. Today the company announced the expansion of its Fortune 500 customer base and a significantly enhanced platform that provides individualized health programs for employees based on biometric and Health Risk Assessment (HRA) analysis. The company also released data that sheds further insight into how employers can best engage Millennials in today's workforce.

Keas is poised to help corporate America achieve ACA compliance and create a healthier and more engaged workforce, ultimately becoming the lynchpin enabling Fortune 500 and 1000 companies to tie employer health and benefits design together. By building Keas' health and engagement platform into their benefits structures, U.S. employers are taking a critical first step towards transforming the business of health reform and incentive management.

Several Fortune 500, Fortune Global 500, and Fortune 1000 companies, or company subsidiaries are Keas customers, and are dedicated to creating a culture of health at work. Long-time customers include BAE Systems, The Cheesecake Factory, Pfizer, Reed Elsevier, salesforce.com, and Successfactors Inc. New Keas customers include American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Safeway, Target and Wix.

Target has implemented Keas' health and engagement platform to further integrate its well-being and benefits programs. Team members will use Keas to set well-being goals and manage progress toward them, and may receive rewards for doing so. Keas will be offered to all team members, not just those who are enrolled in a Target health plan, as part of the company's commitment to ensuring an inclusive culture of health and well-being throughout the organization.

Improvement Programs for Employees

Keas is introducing enhancements to its award-winning, patented 360/365 platform that incorporates employee biometric, health risk assessment (HRA) and quantifiable self data to create personalized programs for individuals based on their current health risks. The new capabilities elevate the Keas 360/365 Platform, which addresses the entire health picture including nutrition, fitness, and mind/body.

The Keas platform can integrate with an employer's health risk assessment (HRA) and biometric screening vendors of choice, making it the ideal health program for companies that want to empower employees to achieve quantifiable self improvement. The move allows employees to elevate their health improvement efforts beyond taking one-time action upon receiving health data -- instead, they are given both education and tools to make healthy habits part of everyday life. The benefits the new platform provides for employees are:

• Personalized content specific to individual employee health needs. Quizzes, challenges, weekly goal setting, healthy breaks and more will be tailored to address high risk issues such as BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, pre-diabetes, etc.

• The ability for employees to integrate the data from their quantifiable self devices (such as FitBits) into Keas and receive actionable advice or feedback on how to achieve their daily fitness goals

• A longitudinal health profile that gives employees a basic overview of their individual well-being and health risks, providing them with a visual representation of how they are improving their health over time

• Practical, valuable knowledge that teaches users how to set weekly goals and objectives that will have a positive impact on their health, no matter where an individual is in their personal health journey

• A fun, social and supportive environment for employees to improve their health while building camaraderie in the workplace
  
  

"Health isn't just about policy. Meaningful health is about ensuring everyone has tools they can use to improve their life on a daily basis. Based on conversations that I've had with employers across the nation, most companies offer outdated models of health and wellness programs and struggle to track, report and aggregate resulting data in a meaningful way," said Josh Stevens, CEO of Keas. "Keas' goal is to remedy these issues and drive targeted, personalized outcomes that result in higher employee productivity and lower healthcare costs for employers and employees."

Are Millennials the Next Great Health Generation?

Millennials will make up roughly 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020 but, according to a recent study from Aon Hewitt, they are the most difficult to keep engaged. As technology trendsetters and early adopters in their own right, this generation has the potential to serve as ambassadors for creating a culture of health in the workplace if employers engage with them in a way that resonates. For example, the Keas Millennial Workforce survey shows:

• Millennials are most excited about, and currently active in, the quantified self movement (46 percent)

• More than half (54 percent) are likely to buy a body-analyzing device that measures weight, body fat, blood pressure, etc.

• 4 in 10 are currently using apps/devices to lose weight

• They are more likely to track their sleep cycles and water intake than any other generation

• Nearly one third (31 percent) believe that genetics/DNA tests are valuable tools to gain a better understanding of their health
  
  

While Millennials may likely be the most savvy when it comes to monitoring their health and tracking their progress towards health goals, employers will find that this group needs monetary motivation to transition this enthusiasm to the workplace. Of this group, 55 percent said it would take a cash incentive to convince them to participate in corporate health programs at work, and 38 percent (more than any other generation) want their employers to provide them with cash-based incentives to improve their health.

An infographic detailing the survey data can be found here.

Keas Millennial Workforce Survey:
The Keas Millennial Workforce Survey is a subset of data from Keas' Health Trends 2014 survey. The survey findings provides a view of Millennial employee attitudes toward health in 2014 by examining resolutions for the New Year, opinions of health in the workplace, and quantified self technology. Keas' Health Trends 2014 survey polled 491 respondents across the United States that are participating in the employer-offered Keas health program, via an online survey between November 26 and December 8, 2013. The margin of error is +/- 4.47 percentage points.

About Keas
Keas is the leading health and engagement platform in the workplace. Keas promotes healthy behaviors and teamwork with an interactive application platform that delivers relevant, personalized content to hundreds of thousands of employees. Keas has a proven track record of supporting corporate HR in increasing retention, productivity, teamwork, collaboration and competitiveness. By rewarding people for achieving simple exercise and nutrition goals, employee health is improved and overall healthcare costs are decreased. Founded in 2008 by Adam Bosworth, Keas is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information or a demo, visit www.keas.com. Follow Keas on Twitter at @Keas and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/keas.