We live in an era which can’t exactly be characterized as bipartisan, but every review shows — and as you can confirm by playing the game yourself — all members of every party agree on one thing: Quizzify.
Why? Because employee health literacy is a huge issue. You can’t achieve a culture of health without achieving a culture of health literacy. And quite literally the only company that addresses it — in an engaging Jeopardy-meets-health education-meets-Comedy Central format, no less — is Quizzify. Literally, the only company of any note. Try googling on “employee health literacy” if you want to see for yourself.
Put another way, why wouldn’t you want to improve health literacy? Is there an argument for keeping employees in the dark, when for about $1 PEPM you could enlighten them? Wiser employees make healthier decisions…and it’s your money they’re making those decisions with.
Or, viewed yet another way, a three-part question:
- What is the only expense your employees are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of your money on?
- What is the only expense employees can spend your money on without training in how to spend it?
- How do your answers to those two questions make any sense in combination, or even individually?
The specific occasion for this posting is a terrific article in Workforce about Quizzify, featuring one of Quizzify’s many valued customers (and such a power-user that Quizzify routinely incorporates her edits into the main question database), Debbie Youngblood of the Hilliard City Board of Education. While we encourage reading the article in its entirety, here are a couple of tidbits, starting with a quote from Debbie:
“I’ve always felt that there was a need to have more [information] available to people as they go through their stages of life,” she said. “It always surprises me that we expect people to know how to achieve overall well-being. We’ve given them very little opportunity to know, understand and practice the things that might be beneficial…”
She also believes it’s valuable to educate adults on health-related topics because it drives conversation. She sees employees discussing topics and questioning the information gained through their health literacy program.
To summarize…
Employees are talking about Quizzify. About what they learned, what surprised them, and what they would do differently now. By contrast, employee comments about conventional wellness can’t be repeated in a family publication like TSW. Here are some of the more printable ones. Oh, yeah, and don’t forget these. (To be fair, occasionally an employee does benefit.)
Another tidbit in the article describes (in as many words) how Quizzify and Hilliard have morphed “cheating” into “learning.” Employees are encouraged to look up the answers in order to improve their scores. That’s how they learn — which of course is exactly what Ms. Youngblood and Quizzify want them to do. So employees brag about what they’ve learned, whereas in other wellness programs they brag about how they cheat.
Consequently, companies that think they’re creating a culture of health are instead creating a culture of deceit. Call us wacky idealists, but for $1 PEPY (in lieu of the likely much higher fee you are paying now), you could replace that culture of deceit with a culture of health literacy. Why wouldn’t you?
Wellness program quote of the day
An uberfit Ultimate Frisbee teammate of mine reported that his company’s wellness vendor asked if his doctor had measured his waist size.
“No,” my friend replied. “He’s not a tailor.”
They Said What? 
Big congrats to you and Debbie and who ever was responsible for connecting the two of you (wink, wink) – But I have to say the wellness quote of the day made mine!- Permission requested to repeat with attribution of course – Dr. Jon
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