Frequently Asked Questions

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Healthways Well-Being Assessment Employer FAQs

Healthways and Gallup partnered in 2008 to lead the world in understanding the key correlations between people's well-being and their social, emotional and physical health. Together they created the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ (WBI), the voice of the people and the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure what Americans' believe constitutes a good life. For the next 25 years, the WBI will take the daily measure of well-being to help guide and support workable, best-in-class solutions for a healthier nation.


What is the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index?

  • Providing an ongoing, real-time view of the nation's well-being, the WBI is the largest and most comprehensive collection of well-being data ever assembled with 1,000 telephonic surveys completed across the U.S. every day.
  • The WBI measures the daily pulse of America, collecting and correlating (1) Life Evaluation, (2) Emotional Health, (3) Physical Health, (4) Healthy Behavior, (5) Work Environment and (6) Basic Access to needs food, shelter and safety.
  • The WBI is a long-term 25-year initiative, applying the assessment engagement and research insights of Gallup – the most respected polling organization in the world, along with decades of behavior changing health management expertise of Healthways.

The Well-Being Survey measures well-being and the six domains that contribute to the overall result, including:

  • Life Evaluation
  • Emotional Health
  • Physical Health
  • Healthy Behavior
  • Work Environment
  • Basic Access (food, shelter, safety, etc.)

What is the relationship between Healthways and Gallup?

Healthways and Gallup have joined forces to lead the world in understanding the key factors that affect overall health and well-being, and what can be done to improve them. Through an exclusive strategic 25-year partnership, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ Survey will take the daily pulse of the nation's individual and collective well-being, and provide workable solutions for a healthier world.


What do Healthways and Gallup do?

Healthways' world-class interventions help healthy people maintain their successful path, empower the at-risk to change risky behaviors, and support the chronically ill in managing their conditions. With proven, comprehensive solutions, Healthways is capable of coordinating and managing the health of individuals no matter where they fall on the health continuum. By delivering the right support to the right person at the right time, Healthways provides personalized support for individuals and valuable returns for an organization's investment.

Gallup provides market research and consulting services for Fortune 500 clients. With more than 70 years of experience in the study of human behavior, it's the largest polling organization in the world, producing the World Poll – a 100-year effort that annually measures the emotional, physical and financial well-being of citizens in more than 130 countries.


Who developed the Well-Being Index?

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index collaboration draws on the diverse backgrounds and achievements of published researchers and scientists specializing in employee engagement as well as industrial and organizational psychology; a Nobel prize winner in economic sciences whose research pioneered behavioral economics; leaders specializing in health and care support interventions; and an inventor of an economic model that establishes a direct correlation between human nature in the workplace, employee engagement and business outcomes.


How will organizations benefit from implementing the assessment?

The Healthways Well-Being Assessment will help organizations measure the well-being of its workforce from every angle, including the work environment, corporate culture, health programs and benefits, community and economic factors, etc. By gaining a better understanding of the areas that need attention, organizations can address solutions to help improve their well-being and business results.


What is the difference between the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ Survey and Healthways Well-Being AssessmentSM?

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index Survey

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index Survey is designed to assess well-being in a civic environment, such as a city, state or region. The primary target audience for this survey is policy makers or governments. The information from this survey can be used to measure well-being in the community and benchmark its results against the country in general or against other regions. Having this information may assist communities in drawing businesses to their area or in creating policies to improve the quality of life for their residents. Gallup is administering the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index Survey to 1,000 individuals daily across the U.S. for the next 25 years.

Healthways Well-Being Assessment

Targeted to employers and health plans, the Healthways Well-Being Assessment contains all of the questions in the Community Survey needed to create the national Well-Being Index and its domains. In addition to an NCQA accredited health risk assessment (HRA), we have also inserted questions on employee productivity, work environment (concerning job stress, satisfaction with benefits, employee engagement), and a health culture assessment to evaluate organizations' support of healthy lifestyle choices. Healthways administers the organizational version of the Well-Being Assessment primarily through the web with alternative modalities available.


Can the results from the Healthways Well-Being Assessment be benchmarked against the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index?

Yes. We have designed the Healthways Well-Being Assessment so that we are collecting all the information we need to benchmark an employer, health plan or organization against their city, state and/or nation.


What makes the Well-Being Assessment different from other organizational measures?

The Well-Being Assessment is the only measure that really gets underneath key drivers of well-being and measures their interactions with one another, from life evaluation and health to work, economics and access to basic needs. This Assessment covers every aspect of life, providing unprecedented insight into a population's condition. While many competing indexes claim to assess the "whole person", their approach is typically focused on risk factors, disease burden and some components of emotional health. Our research has shown that well-being is complex and if we want to take a truly "Whole Health" approach, we need to measure all the things that impact well-being including environment, social networks and work situation. The Well-Being Assessment measures all of these things giving us a more complete measure of well-being.

Most organizational assessments look at the organization from an outside perspective. They give the organization a view of what it looks like from an outsider looking into their workforce. The Healthways Well-Being Assessment gives an employer a view of their workforce from the inside looking out. This distinction is key, since the view from the inside looking out is the view that most frequently determines employee engagement and turnover. The Well-Being Assessment provides actionable information showing an employer where to focus efforts to influence the greatest ROI in their population.


Will we allow other organizations to have access to the data and scoring for the Well-Being Index?

A certain level of the data will be available to academic and research organizations, and access will be available through Gallup subscriptions. Sponsoring organizations will also have open access to the data and will help shape its ongoing collection. While customers, prospects and media may want this information in order to better understand the Well-Being Index, the scoring methodology is proprietary and helps to differentiate us from our competitors. Because of this, we will not release specific details and formulas for calculating the Well-Being Index.


Why would an organization trust this measurement tool over others?

The Well-Being Index will be the largest statistically significant collection of data related to the health and well-being (human performance) of large populations ever assembled. No other database in the U.S. allows organizations to address multiple behavior change in the way that the Well-Being Index does. The correlation of the Well-Being Index to worker productivity and corporate performance will be easily demonstrated and help drive new solutions and address whole health across any workforce.


For more information, visit www.well-beingindex.com