Eaton is a power management company with 2013 sales of $22 billion. The company provides energy-efficient solutions that help customers manage electrical, hydraulic and mechanical power more efficiently, safely and sustainably. Eaton has approximately 101,000 employees and is battling employee health risks such as obesity, smoking and poor nutrition that require additional spending and move employees down the illness pathway to chronic disease. 

To address these challenges, in 2010 Eaton launched “Powering You to Live Well,” a global wellness initiative aimed at removing traditional barriers to wellness, providing employees and their families with the resources they need for good health/wellness, and striving to create a culture of health and wellness. Eaton is employing two main drivers to achieve this change: wellness and consumerism. 

On the wellness front, Eaton has identified five pillars of wellness that require the business operations to implement including: a global fence-to-fence tobacco ban; offering 80 percent healthy foods and less than 20 percent unhealthy foods that are clearly labeled and identified by nutritional experts; providing opportunities for increased physical activities and stress-management interventions with such mechanisms as a global employee assistant program; and offering biometric screenings and health assessments globally so employees and family members can know their health risks. Eaton provides our employees and family members best-in-class health management programs to remove any barriers around cost and drive changes in health to prevent chronic disease. Eaton has also used innovative high-touch approaches such as onsite health coaching that enable employees to interact face-to-face with employees across our U.S. locations and in some global locations. 

On consumerism, Eaton has moved to consumer (high-deductible) based approaches with health savings accounts to foster employee involvement in health care decisionmaking and encourage savings for the future. Eaton has also provided cost and transparency tools that promote true shopping behavior. 

In another effort to improve access and remove barriers, Eaton is working with our medical administration to offer telehealth options. At Eaton Center, onsite health centers provide employees with patent center medical home models. 

All these efforts have resulted in a 50 percent cost reduction across health care trends without shifting costs to employees and have improved the health and productivity of our employees.