The Limeade Blog

My Bike-to-Work Virginity is Gone

2010-06-08T17:01:00Z

I yawned and something golden shone through the still firs. A strange sight in Seattle, this orb. My thoughts turned to our citrusy new offices (10777 Main Street, Suite 203, Bellevue, WA 98004), the optimism of a sunny day (after ~180 bleak ones), and the largely downhill path between my home and my work. And right then and there I made up my mind. I will bike to work. What I learned about myself on my first-ever bike to work: Biking is scary. People who bike to...(read more)

How to Spend Money on People, Part II: Wellness as a Free Line Item

2009-10-23T17:03:00Z

In Henry’s prior entry “How to Spend Money on People,” he put the ROI on $2 worth of wellness in perspective. I agree -- it just doesn’t make sense to skimp on such low cost fundamental prevention, particularly when it drives employee engagement (and profit). So you want to do wellness, but your CFO has made it clear: there’s no budget for anything new or extra this year. Which begs the question… What if you could do wellness without having to justify that new line item? In my 15...(read more)

How to Spend Money on People

2009-09-30T16:19:00Z

Our lesson today is about perspective. In most of our posts, we subtly hint that there is a better way to do wellness (for which “BUY OUR SERVICE!!!” is often the cleverly hidden subtext). Today we are actually sharing a different way to look at how to spend money on your employees in general. How to get the biggest bang for the buck. Why? We know that our little niche fits somewhere in the mind of the HR exec. Every now and then it bursts panting into the CFO’s or CEO’s...(read more)

Sustainable Awesomeness and the (Real) ROI of Wellness

2009-08-18T21:25:00Z

If your business success depends on people, then you ought to care about the health and wellness of those people. It's a little obvious. But how much should you care? Enough to spend some money? The return on investment debate rages in the business of wellness, so let's take it on. First, a quick primer. Here’s a simple look at why companies started implementing employee wellness programs in the first place. Stuff You’ve Read 100 Times So I’ll Keep It...(read more)

Economic Tarpits (and 5 Ways to Avoid Them)

2009-07-24T19:41:00Z

Mammoths are grazing, sabre-tooth cats are hunting. But the ground they walk on is warm and kinda sticky. Who will escape the tarpits of the 2009 economy? Here are factors that matter: Sector. I like whatever is badly broken (healthcare, energy, education, healthcare again) or really numbing – I am talking beer, lottery tickets or anything released in the last ten years starring Nicolas Cage. Size. Go small. Why? It means you can be profitable...(read more)

Disease Management: Failure to Engage

2009-07-22T00:22:00Z

Disease Management (DM) has a simple problem. It doesn’t work very well. The recent disease management demonstration projects for Medicare (widely reported in the New England Journal of Medicine) were uniformly disappointing – with low enrollment rates and low-to-no clinical impact. I won’t oversimplify the complexity behind these data, nor will I throw the baby out with the bathwater – but I will propose some simple, high-level reasons why the ROI of DM is under fire....(read more)

Self-Tracking and Living By Numbers

2009-06-25T23:48:00Z

The headline for this month's Wired Magazine is "Living By Numbers," and brings together some great articles about efforts by individuals and companies to measure and improve the things that matter to them. We're tremendously excited to see this gain attention, as these topics are very much a core of our approach to self-improvement. Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf of Wired have been organizing informal, periodic meetups called the Quantified Self in San Francisco and New York. A few weeks ago,...(read more)

June Service Update: Better Recommendations, More Accountability, and an Identity of Your Choice

2009-06-11T23:17:00Z

A little over a week ago, we released our monthly Limeade product update. We haven't been regularly posting release announcements to our blog, so we thought we'd take a few minutes to review some of our new features we've been working on over the past few months.Get the best recommendationsOur recommendations are now more specific and useful than before. We built them using the best of behavior change science, plus the thousands of goals created by the community over the past few months (which...(read more)

Bizarro Health Risk Thinking

2009-05-28T16:45:00Z

Imagine you run admissions for a top academic institution like, say, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.(Coincidentally, my 10th reunion there was this month) ;-)You are shooting the breeze with the Admissions Committee:“We want students who take chances, who will be self-confident leaders (and big donors!)”“Personally driven, but who thrive in team settings.”“Open to new ways of thinking and growing in an ever-smaller and more connected world.”“We need right and left brainers...(read more)

Why PINK Donuts?

2009-05-05T15:29:00Z

Today we launched our Donut-Back Guarantee. Why? On the plane back from Chicago, I finished 'A Whole New Mind' by Daniel Pink. It's one of those bestseller biz books you read for a mental sugar rush. But this offered me a bit more sustenance because it is, as I described it to a friend, "very Limeade." It's about the limits of reductive and deductive thought, and about the benefits of holistic or "whole mind" thinking. It's about the innovation, health and motivation that ensue when left...(read more)

94% Assessment Completion. 92% Engagement. (In 4 weeks!) Oh, and 5x ROI...

2009-04-08T21:44:00Z

Two recent client deployments surprised us. First, some background: our service combines a “high-performance person” assessment with self-improvement tools, programs and services. The path to “high-performance” requires engaging people in the things that make them happier, healthier (and yes, cheaper to insure) and more productive. It seems simple, right? Turns out, it’s not. But in our last two deployments, we have achieved 94% and 91% assessment completion in the first...(read more)

Whole-Person Approach 10x Better at Predicting Productivity

2009-02-28T00:53:00Z

Companies keep rolling out these Health Risk Assessments (HRA), thinking that they really help predict productivity. Well, they kinda sorta do. A little bit. But as it turns out, there are much, MUCH better predictors out there. In fact, the health risk factors from our study barely crack the Top 10 predictors of productivity. What does? Things like job satisfaction, belief in your company, meaningful work, the ability to manage depression (OK, that counts as a health risk)...(read more)

10 Ways to Slash Benefit Costs Now

2009-01-23T17:00:00Z

1. If it Works, Copy It There is a simple, proven 2-part benefits design structure that is saving companies 10% to 20% today. Combine a high-deductible, consumer-directed health plan with a wellness program that drives participation with incentives. Engage the chronically ill in care management programs, again using incentives. Why? It works. The best companies do it already, and employees appreciate it more. Ask your broker. (Or us). 2. Demand Information Now Can you imagine...(read more)