In the latest episode of the HRchat show, Bill Banham is joined by senior leaders at Virgin Pulse to consider the evolution of the workforce wellness space.
Our guests are Virgin Pulse CEO David Osborne and Rajiv Kumar, Chief Medical Officer and President of the Virgin Pulse Institute. Listen to the show and discover:
- How has the workforce wellness space evolved over the last few years?
- How are wellbeing programs shifting from top-down to bottom-up?
- Why should employers be responsible for the health and well-being of their employees?
- Why isn’t offering health insurance and an EAP enough?
- How can an employer quantitatively measure if a company’s wellness program actually worked – what are typical metrics for employee wellbeing? How can a CEO justify the investment in a wellness program?
- What are the biggest mistakes that employers make in regards to encouraging their employees to live healthier lives?
- How can companies with limited resources integrate workforce wellness into their day-to-day activities?
- Should the responsibility for workplace wellness be under HR or employee benefits or the CFO or the chief medical officer?
About Our Guests:
David Osborne is a seasoned business technology leader with more than 20 years’ experience in global sales, operations, transformation planning, execution and M&A. He brings deep experience in operations, strategic growth, and executive management and a proven record of helping organizations successfully integrate, operationalize, and scale their businesses.
As CEO of Virgin Pulse, Dave is responsible for streamlining, optimizing, and scaling Virgin Pulse as the company continues its aggressive growth strategy and solidifies its position as the largest workplace wellbeing company in the world.
Rajiv Kumar serves as Chief Medical Officer and President of Virgin Pulse Institute, which provides Virgin Pulse clients with cutting-edge Value-on-Investment (VOI) studies and promotes research on health, wellbeing and employee engagement. Dr. Rajiv Kumar’s responsibilities also include overseeing the Virgin Pulse Science Advisory Board and the organization’s analytics team.
Dr. Kumar joined Virgin Pulse in 2016, following the company’s acquisition of ShapeUp, an employee wellbeing company that he founded in 2006. As CEO of ShapeUp, he led the growth of the company from a two-person, dorm-room startup to a global company with over 100 employees, 800 customers, and 2 million participants around the world. During his time at ShapeUp, he pioneered new approaches to leveraging social connections to enhance employee health and wellbeing and co-authored several peer-reviewed studies on the relationship between social networks and healthy behavior.
