People are critical to the success of WPS Health Solutions, and employees’ well-being helps the company achieve its goals. In a remote-first work environment, supporting employees and their health needs remains a vital focus. Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts ensure every employee feels a sense of belonging. Compliant and ethical business practices also keep us strong.
The 2023 WPS employee health plans offered coverage for mental health and substance abuse services. The WPS employee plans included a no-cost telehealth service that provides ongoing mental health visits for adults plus children ages 13–17. Telehealth services used board-certified health care providers who are on-call 24/7.
WPS also provided its employees and their families with a confidential, no-cost Employee Assistance Program. The program included access to master’s- and doctorate-level counselors who are available 24/7. These counselors helped develop an action plan best suited to the individual’s needs. Employees and their families also had access to curated online resources that provided information and tools for a variety of issues, including health and wellness, parenting and child care, and career development.
Our disability vendor offered programs that supported our mental health initiatives. There was on-demand training for leaders and employees to raise mental health awareness. For employees on disability leave, the vendor offered a mobile app to help support mental health well-being and to help these employees return to work.
Measuring the utilization of the Employee Assistance program and disability training helps us improve mental health benefits for its employees over time. We investigated available data that provided insights without risking survey fatigue. Specifically, we identified 15 questions from our Employee Experience Survey that could tell us how our employees were faring related to their mental health and psychosocial risks. We analyzed the data and determined the 2023 Question Average was 5.7 on a scale of 1–7, where lower scores correlate to poor mental health and higher psychosocial risks and higher scores indicate better mental health and lower psychosocial risks. This provides a baseline from which to measure employee mental health and psychosocial risks.
Through our company intranet, we intentionally engaged our employees by sharing stories and content focused on destigmatizing mental illness. These internal communications helped keep mental health top of mind for employees and lessons learned could be taken home to share with their families. More than 40 courses available through the internal Learning Management System offered training on a variety of mental health issues, from the benefits of having fun to how to connect with someone who is depressed.
The Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health certification recognizes employers committed to creating mentally healthy workplaces. Recipients of the certification are nationally recognized as meeting or exceeding workplace standards that promote positive worker mental health and well-being. WPS earned a Platinum Bell Seal, demonstrating our outstanding commitment to employee mental health and well-being.
As part of our commitment to the employee experience, WPS leaders sought input from our employees throughout the year via an employee experience survey. The survey went to a randomly selected group of employees each month to continuously measure the employee experience. Leaders used the feedback to identify areas that required action. They assessed where there were gaps in information or training and ensured employees had what they needed to keep our company thriving. By the end of the calendar year, every employee had the opportunity to complete the survey.
Bringing people together in a remote-first work environment can be challenging. Yet WPS has seen success in building cohesive teams across the company. Tools such as the corporate intranet, real-time collaboration software, and other applications allowed interaction, recognition, celebration, and a feeling of connectedness. A virtual meeting series called Cultivating Connections also offered learning opportunities for employees. Virtual meetings for all employees with executive leaders allowed employees to interact with company leaders and feel heard.
In 2023, WPS Health Solutions launched its Aspiring Leaders Program, a six-month foundational, formal leadership program designed to enable participants to explore what it really means to be a people leader, decide if it is something they aspire to, and learn skills and mindsets to prepare them to be a people leader or to perform more effectively as a people leader. This innovative program was featured by national organizations such as Gartner and Harvard Business Review.
We also continued increasing professional development offerings introducing microlearning classes into our self-paced learning offerings. Microlearning is bite-sized content designed to be consumed in 10 minutes or less and addresses one specific skill or topic. The selections in 2023 included short courses on career skills, health and wellness, and resilience during change.
Participation has increased in our professional development offerings. In 2021, 429 participants took our series of instructor-led courses. In 2022, we had 559 participants take our instructor-led courses. We also began offering self-paced courses and had 453 participants take those. In 2023, there were 367 participants in our instructor-led courses, 496 in self-paced courses, and 51 in our new microlearning classes.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion work is deeply embedded in everything we do. Employees are supported and encouraged to be their authentic selves through our inclusion and empowerment efforts. Being able to be themselves helps employees’ mental health and improves the overall employee experience.
WPS won multiple awards for employee experience. These awards recognize the priority we’ve placed on creating a positive atmosphere. We were honored by:
At WPS, Employee Resource Groups, or ERGs, are led by employees and open to all. ERGs, along with the DEI Employee Council, are critical in celebrating the diversity of our team members and support a culture of connectedness. WPS currently offers six ERGs:
(Abilities Beyond
Limited Expectations)
(Women In Search
of Excellence)
Facilitates networking
within WPS
(Veterans
Enhancement Team)
(People Respecting Individual
Diversity and Equality)
(Multicultural Open Space
Advocating Inclusive Culture)
Mental health and well-being include feeling confident in one’s capabilities and supported in career growth, which is why professional development is a key part of the WPS ERG framework. In 2023, four of our ERG leaders earned Employee Network Leadership certification, and two leaders earned Network Communications certifications through Radius Networks. One of our leaders was also featured on a panel focused on achieving balance between your hired job and ERG leadership at ERG Leadership Alliance’s International Symposium.
The DEI Employee Council provides an employee-centric perspective aimed at embedding DEI into our systems, behaviors, and how we work every day, regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, age, disability, or orientation. The Council members help promote cultural awareness and provide educational opportunities surrounding topics such as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Black History Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month among others.
In 2023, the recruiting team welcomed a new role to WPS, the Talent Sourcer, whose goal is to proactively source and build diverse pipelines for current and future opportunities, while keeping passive pipelines warm and engaged. Efforts centered on building relationships and engaging with historically underrepresented professional communities and leveraging data on marketplace trends resulted in 88% of self-sourced candidates receiving an interview with the hiring team within the first five months; 60% of these candidates identified as a member of an underrepresented community. Additionally, we partnered with local professional organizations such as AchieveAbilities, Urban League of Greater Madison, and FEIST VCP to successfully hire local talent.
WPS Health Solutions now has a remote-first work environment that allows employees to have more flexibility in their day-to-day work. Intentional collaboration is used to bring teams together in person or in a hybrid manner to promote innovation, creativity, and connectedness. Teams are reciprocal in sharing and accommodating each other’s preferred work patterns. The intent behind the flexibility in work modes and locations is to promote mental health and well-being.
Remote work allowed us to reduce our real estate footprint by 426,544 square feet, reducing costs and the company’s impact on the environment. In 2020, WPS had 735,590 square feet of office space in 18 different office buildings. By 2023, WPS had 309,046 square feet in nine buildings. This 58% reduction allows us to use our resources in other ways.
Most employees no longer need to commute to work, so there are fewer cars on the road. In the offices, there are fewer office supplies being used, lower facilities costs, and fewer on-site services required. Paperless initiatives within business units have also contributed to less waste. All of this reduces the company’s carbon footprint.
WPS Health Solutions fosters a culture that embraces compliant and ethical business practices and empowers employees to make sound decisions by providing access to resources to help them be successful in their role. In 2023, WPS earned the BBB Torch Award for Ethics from the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin.
