Health and Wellness Program Management and Initiatives

Baxter's occupational health function sets the company’s strategies related to health and wellness and sponsors a global team of corporate, regional, site and business-unit health professionals to help refine and implement these approaches. The team defines priorities and establishes, maintains and continually improves global programs and initiatives.

Following a yearly strategic planning process, the functional team defines short-term targets and long-term goals and the tactical plans and resources needed to achieve those. Additionally, it provides input to Baxter’s Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Leadership Team, composed of EHS directors and other leaders who establish the company’s EHS strategy, policy (global EHS requirements) and EHS goals. This ensures alignment, engagement and commitment throughout the global EHS organization.

BeWell@Baxter

Baxter recognizes that healthy employees are more likely to be engaged and productive, and are less vulnerable to safety incidents and injuries. Through BeWell@Baxter, the company’s global employee health and wellness effort, Baxter strives to create a culture that promotes work-related and personal health, raises awareness about these issues and supports individual accountability and engagement.

The cornerstone of BeWell@Baxter is the Personal Wellness Profile, an online health risk assessment that helps employees understand how their lifestyle choices, family history and other factors impact their health. The assessment provides Baxter with data to target facility-level programs based on specific risks and also delivers global aggregate data to identify overall employee health risk and needs. Thirty-eight percent of the company’s employees worldwide completed a Personal Wellness Profile as of the end of 2011, exceeding the goal of 35%.

Through the program, 43% of Baxter employees were identified as being at-risk of developing diabetes. In response, the company launched a year-long campaign to raise employee awareness of the disease and encourage them to take steps to reduce their risk. As part of the program, Baxter introduced an employee website to provide information about risk reduction, dealing with diabetes and helping family members with the disease. Through the BeWell Local Champion team, more than 7,000 employees participated in more than 80 diabetes-focused programs worldwide.

In 2011, the company continued to run two major health-promotion campaigns based on risk factors identified through health risk assessment. Baxter held the BeWell@Baxter Exercise Challenge in May and encouraged employees to commit to regular exercise. Almost 9,000 employees from 104 facilities globally (a 30% increase in facilities from 2010) participated. In November, the company ran a global nutrition campaign to educate employees about healthy eating strategies that could be used year-round. Forty-four percent of employees from more than 100 facilities worldwide participated in “Healthy Eating Month” events, many of which involved family members.

Other Programs and Initiatives

Baxter's occupational health team also works to continually improve the company's performance with the following programs and initiatives:

• Flu vaccine – In 2011, Baxter achieved its goal to offer seasonal flu vaccination to 100% of employees who work in facilities with 25 or more employees.
• Health promotion programs – In 2011, 73% of targeted facilities achieved eight out of 10 health-promotion program criteria, exceeding the goal of 65%. The company made progress on its smoke-free workplaces initiative as well, increasing the percentage of smoke-free facilities to 88%, from 75% in 2008. All Baxter facilities in Asia Pacific, North America and Latin America are now smoke-free.