How SAP leans on telemedicine to deliver 'whole-person care'

What good is healthcare if employees don't utilize it? 

When Jessy Rosales joined SAP last December as the VP of North America total rewards, she wanted to find an answer to that question. Having built her career in HR and benefits at such companies as Pepsi and Microsoft, she knew that getting employees to engage with available programs is challenging — and the circumstances of the pandemic weren't making it any easier. 

But while hybrid work and lockdowns initially made care trickier to access, a silver lining emerged in the form of smart tech tools and virtual care. Rosales has since leaned into SAP's relationship with Teladoc — which provides telemedicine solutions as well as health management programs — to empower employees to take charge of their health. 

"With benefits in particular, I wanted to make sure we are thinking about whole-person care," Rosales says. "We care about your financial planning, and we also care about your healthcare, and your mental wellness. It's a complete thing — it has to make sense as a whole." 

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Eighty-six percent of SAP's employees are currently engaging in health programs available and accessible through Teladoc's platforms, with 37% of the team enrolled in more than one offering. Management of chronic conditions has soared — 70% of members with diabetes are managing their care better, while 82% of members have improved or maintained their blood pressure — helping deliver strong ROI back to SAP. 

Rosales recently spoke with EBN about why she's focused on making sure the total rewards team is thinking ahead rather than working reactively, and how to enable employees to take advantage of the software company's rich benefits. 

SAP has worked with Teladoc for a few years — how has that helped you not just engage employees around benefits, but see an improvement in health and outcomes?
We'd previously introduced Livongo by Teladoc, which really helps manage chronic care. And we were really thinking about that idea of whole-person health at the time, and one of the reasons we continue to work with Teladoc today is because the solutions they're providing us with allow SAP to talk to our employees from all angles. So if they're looking for a primary care physician, they can do that via Teladoc. If they need to make an appointment with a specialist, they can do that — and the flow of information is contained rather than a patient having to get lab tests or whatever information from one doctor to another. It's just less anxiety for the employee, to have access to all of their care in one place. 

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The forced flexibility we saw in the early days of COVID is credited with getting a lot of people to be more comfortable with virtual care and tech-driven health tools. How do you think people will engage with their health in the near future? 
Obviously a lot of this was influenced by COVID, and the need of having a solution in a remote world pushed us a lot. And it pushed a lot of our employees to take the leap and go for it at the beginning. However, that level of engagement, virtually, has maintained even as life is getting to be a little more similar to normal. 

Another area we've seen that awareness hold is in terms of mental health, and our solution with Teladoc has a mental health component. It's easier for someone to talk about this topic now, to take a [therapy] call without having to go to an office. It's also important to remember that, if people are dealing with a chronic disease, that often pairs with mental health. So to see people stick to their plans and treatment if they're managing hypertension or diabetes, it just impacts that whole-person health. 

SAP has such a big workforce, how do you deliver care to meet wide-ranging needs? 
When it comes to inclusion, it's important to remember that there aren't just many needs, but many preferences. It's one thing for us to say, we're going to offer a fertility program. But how does language fit into that? We have a lot of employees relocating from other countries with their families, and sometimes they don't speak English. So we have to make sure that our benefit offerings are inclusive in terms of geography and language, in addition to being inclusive in terms of who they serve. 

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Have you seen any trends in how different communities choose to engage with these benefits? 
We don't see a lot of difference in utilization, but with all of our programs, we're just looking to give our employees options. Language is one consideration. Another is maybe that, when you're choosing the doctor that you want to meet with, you can access a list that tells you if the doctor is female or male, whether they have religious beliefs, whether they speak multiple languages. That's enabled people to consider their approach to finding care. 

We also have employee resource groups at SAP, such as women in business or caregivers, or the Latin network group. We're having a discussion with the caregivers team this fall about the different programs we have that support caregivers. For example, we have Milk Stork so moms, if they're traveling, can ship their breast milk to their babies. But those employee resource groups have been another way for people to connect the dots. 

Beyond these improved outcomes, what's the impact of these programs on SAP's bottom line? 
When you analyze your health plan, your health insurance, you take a look at what are those core issues or challenges a population is going through? And you usually see hypertension, diabetes, MSK, oncology. So when you start working toward those, you will see an impact on your health insurance costs. And that's on top of having people more engaged — offering these solutions is obviously a lever for us in HR from an attraction and retention perspective. But from the company's perspective, there is a very, very clear financial impact.