Bringing better care to more people

Better Sleep! How The Aspen Group pivoted to a benefit that increases productivity

SUMMARY:

The Aspen Group’s partnership with Chorus to focus on sleep as the foundation of well-being illustrates an inclusive approach to enhancing employee health and productivity, in tandem.

This case study underscores three crucial insights from The Aspen Group’s experience:

Firstly, recognizing sleep as the foundation of health and effectiveness, The Aspen Group (“TAG”) has addressed a core requirement of well-being and productivity.

Secondly, by identifying sleep support as the most inclusive benefit, TAG has catered to the diverse needs of its entire workforce.

Finally, TAG's choice of Chorus, unique in its capability to allow leaders to objectively measure the impact of wellness initiatives with data, highlights TAG's commitment to evidence-based strategies.

By prioritizing sleep as the critical foundation of employee health, TAG sets a precedent in the corporate world for addressing wellness and effectiveness in a comprehensive and data-driven manner. Read on to

Learn how they figured out sleep was the foundational issue

Download engagement survey questions to identify unforeseen problems your workforce may be facing

at a glance

Chorus is a sleep-focused employee benefit, with additional daytime support available. For employees, we provide a mobile app and coaching program that helps them improve sleep and reduce daytime stress. For employers, we provide an insights tool that allows them to better understand employee health, sentiment, and effectiveness.

“The Aspen Group is laser focused on bringing better care to more people, and in order for us to do that- we have to take care of our team members first. We recognize that quality sleep is a cornerstone of both personal well-being and professional excellence. Everyone benefits from better sleep, so empowering our team with Chorus Sleep is integral to our vision of inclusive care. We not only enhance our team members' daily work experience but also fortify our ability to deliver on our promise of exceptional patient care for all.”

Cory Rose,

SVP of People Ops & Total Rewards @ TAG

Customer Profile

The Aspen Group (TAG) aims to bring better care to more people. Their team seeks to provide exceptional customer service to people who need dental, health, and animal care.

Most TAG employees work in critical health, fast-paced environments, and are on their feet most of the day, caring for patients. These are high-stress jobs where sleeping and being mentally sharp are critical for delivering high-quality patient care.

Challenges

Working in healthcare, TAG employees have faced high rates of burnout since COVID began.

TAG has long believed in the value of wholistic wellness for their population — not just because it is the right thing to do from a human perspective, but because decades of science have made it clear that when we prioritize well-being, we are more resilient, productive, and creative.

So, when TAG saw that employees needed more support last year, they explored options and tried a popular meditation app as a global employee benefit.

Unfortunately, the meditation app did not work because most of TAG's employees does not have time in their day for meditation due to the fast-paced working environments. Because of this, TAG saw low usage, and employees voiced that they needed alternative approaches.

“While I am thankful that TAG has invested in [this meditation app]...I do not have time to open the app. Things are so fast moving that finding the time to meditate hasn't been attainable.”

TAG Employee

Knowing they needed something else, TAG looked to their employee survey, Peakon, which provides best in class survey options and worked on choosing proper questions to understand their population's true challenges.

After meaningful deliberation, TAG landed on the following questions, allowing them to uncover unexpected needs.

Question 1

Choose a rating from 0-10 to rate the following:

Employee health and well-being is a priority at TAG.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Not Likely

Extremely Likely

This question measures the extent to which employees believe that their organization values health and wellbeing and makes efforts to support these.

Question 2

An open-ended, write-in response to the question:

Please enter any comments that support your rating?

Question 3

An open-ended, write-in response to the question:

What's the one thing that would improve your productivity right now?

Why TAG's questions worked

Survey questions are notoriously tricky to get right.

The guidelines that made TAG's questions particularly valuable are:

01

Start with a 0-10 rating and ask that on every survey

This provides a baseline and allows you to measure changes in this sentiment over time.

02

Follow the rating with a space for comments

(“why did you give the rating you did?”) to understand the employees' opinions. By tying this question to the prior rating, you will get more direct feedback and unpack "the why" more effectively.

03

Empower employees to identify their own solutions

by asking what they need for their best work, not what the company can provide.

04

Include a question about productivity

since this encourages employees to consider their effectiveness and asking an open-ended question on productivity can unearth unforeseen challenges.

What TAG Learned

In response to Questions 1 and 2 (about health and well-being being a priority at TAG), it was clear that employees believed they were prioritized. However, many expressed frustration that a meditation app required more time in their already busy days and asked why therapy wasn't reimbursed via their health insurance.

In response to Question 3 (where employees shared one thing that would improve their productivity), the overwhelming response was: "more sleep." A significant number of responses also mentioned keywords such as “tired” or “burnout” which further bolstered TAG’s understanding that helping employees get quality sleep was a foundational need.

TAG learned three critical findings from these responses:

1

The popular meditation app was not a good fit for TAG employees because of the daytime time requirements.

2

TAG needed clearer communication that insurance covered therapy, because this was already the case. This was a huge win because it required no additional spending by TAG while still providing employees who wanted therapy with what they needed.

3

TAG employees needed help with sleep.

Why TAG chose Chorus

1. Sleep is foundational.

The first ah-hah for TAG came in response to their productivity question when they learned that a top employee need was "more sleep." But what TAG learned through their own research, including speaking to health professionals, is that sleep is not only critical for feeling rested -- sleep is the foundation of our entire human system.

This meant, if they wanted to support their employees well-being from a wholistic perspective -- they had to support this foundational layer first.

As they dug in, sleep challenges were also popping up in more places. Even National Geographic reported on it, citing that poor sleep is not only linked to poor health outcomes but "has serious implications on the ability to learn and focus."

This helped TAG realize that it wasn't just productivity that could benefit from sleep but that mental health, physical health, and all work-effectiveness would benefit from supporting this foundational aspect of employee well-being.

2. Sleep is inclusive.

From the top executive to the summer intern, sleep benefits all employees, which makes it not only the most foundational benefit but also the most inclusive. So, in a world where there is a long list of ways employers can try to meet the needs of individual employees, depending on their unique situation, it can be challenging to find ways to support the broadest set of employees and do so cost-effectively.

Sleep stands out in its inclusivity across all employees.

3. Chorus was the only solution that allowed TAG to objectively measure the health and sentiment of their population.

In considering different solutions, TAG found that many vendors claim to support sleep as part of a broader offering. However, there were several shortcomings with this approach. Namely, the other vendors don't focus primarily on sleep, so their resources are extremely limited and generic.

And, of the ones that focussed on sleep, none of them besides Chorus provided the ability for leaders to measure objectively, with data, what's working and what isn't.

Specifically, Chorus' employee solution was more robust and all-encompassing in its sleep support than any other vendor, and its employer dashboard was the only tool on the market that gives leaders a measurement tool to collect objective, anonymous data that measures the health and productivity of their employee base.

Lastly, in addition to its sleep platform, Chorus also has daytime support for employees who want to de-stress during their day. This was helpful for TAG as they replaced the popular meditation app because, despite the low utilization, TAG still wanted to support the small number of employees who enjoyed daytime mindfulness.

Because of this, TAG chose to partner with Chorus and launched to all 20K+ TAG employees in January 2024.

Conclusion

The Aspen Group's partnership with Chorus to focus on sleep as the foundation of well-being illustrates an inclusive approach to enhancing employee health and productivity, in tandem.

This case study underscores three crucial insights from TAG's experience:

Firstly, recognizing sleep as the foundation of health and effectiveness, TAG has addressed a core requirement of well-being and productivity.
Secondly, by identifying sleep support as the most inclusive benefit, TAG has catered to the diverse needs of its entire workforce.
Finally, TAG's choice of Chorus, unique in its capability to allow leaders to objectively measure the impact of wellness initiatives with data, highlights TAG's commitment to evidence-based strategies.

By prioritizing sleep as a critical foundation of employee health, TAG sets a precedent in the corporate world for addressing wellness and effectiveness in a comprehensive and data-driven manner.

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Click here to get the 3 engagement survey questions TAG used to get to the root cause of their employee needs.

Lastly, stay tuned for Case Study #2 with the results and ROI of the launch.