Creating Healthy Businesses: Investing in Health, Trust, and Ownership

This summer, Anthony Parker became the new General Manager of the Orlando Magic. But it is not the biggest news. The biggest change was to hire Arnie Kander, as VP of Players Performance and Wellness.

Indeed, over the past 3 years, the team has suffered from a lot of random injuries. And investing in wellness and performance was the most important thing to do. And Kander got a plan for it:

• Provide the right kind of care to players

• Build trust

• Give ownership to the players; he wants them to take ownership of their routines (and not just go through them)

• Make sure players bond and work together, learn from each other, and from their failures

In short, Kander is building a “healthy business”. Healthy athletes, just like healthy employees, are more performant, less sick, and more engaged.

Let’s take a step back.

• The healthcare system is under pressure. Medical deserts have become a reality in France. It is becoming more and more difficult to get access to care.

• 60% employees declare they are stressed, and 50% managers suffer from anxiety (Baromètre bien être mental en entreprise, Alan x Harris Interactive, 2023).

• Sick leaves are increasing. 

• Companies can no longer avoid the discussion: 88% employees consider their company responsible for their well being.

Tomorrow’s leading companies will be the ones who understand that economic value skyrockets when there is genuine care for the people who build the company.

That’s our mantra at Alan. We want to be the companies’ best HR investment. We help them boost engagement, productivity, and well-being while reducing absenteeism. For that, we provide a full range of health services, including health and disability insurance, coaching, and prevention services dedicated to back pain and mental health. All of these, into one intuitive app.

Let's take an example:

• A new dad: on a Sunday evening, his baby has a fever spike. He writes to you on Monday morning to warn you that he will be off to take care of his child. It takes time to contact a pediatrician; the appointment is not until the next day. He is worried. For his appointment, he takes another half-day off in order to commute and account for unpredictable waiting times. Yet, the baby simply had a tooth eruption and just needs rest and some paracetamol. 

• You can avoid all of this. With Alan virtual clinic, you can chat with a pediatrician, send photos and get medical advice - even on a Sunday.

• And we measure the impact: in addition to giving our members the opportunity to quickly get medical advice, it allows companies to regain days of productivity per year per employee.

• Investing in health is a positive ROI investment.

Caring for your employees also means creating a work environment that fosters creativity, autonomy, and responsibility.

Trust is the one thing that the highest performing teams have in common

• Employees in high-trust companies have 50% more productivity and 76% more engagement (Harvard Business Review, The Neuroscience of Trust, 2017). They have a higher impact.

• In other words, trust is the foundation of a healthy business. And to build trust, you cannot rely on traditional “top-down” relationships. You have to rethink traditional business paradigms.

Alan's 5 core Leadership Principles

To build trust, at Alan, we have a strong culture:

• Member first: we are obsessed with our users: how can we provide them with the best possible experience? How can we redefine their expectations?

• To reach that level of excellence, we want each team to have fearless ambition, that is our second principle.

• And for the team to have fearless ambition, they need to be owners, empowered. That is what we call distributed ownership. Each team defines their objectives and is accountable for them.

• To have autonomous teams, each team needs to access information to make the best informed decisions. Hence radical transparency, our 4th principle. Radical transparency means that all discussions and decisions are made in writing, are public, and documented.

• And last but not least, our 5th principle: we put a lot of emphasis on Alaners’ growth. We share feedback extensively because we think that it is the best way to grow and become the best version of ourselves.

Obviously, this is how we do things and it does not fit everyone. But leading companies share fundamental principles, and first of all:

• Building trust

• Empowering teams

• Learning from their failures 

So Kander got it right:

• Invest in health to enhance performance

• Build trust

• Empower the team and give ownership to foster their own well-being 

• Share feedback and learn from each other

Let’s look ahead. In 2030, leading companies will be the ones which have invested in what is the most important asset to them: their employees. In 2030, mental health will be everywhere, not a taboo anymore, for anyone. Leading companies will completely rethink their mode of operations:

• Consistently measuring the team's fulfillment and mental well-being, the level of innovation and creativity, the environmental impact…

• and the impact of those metrics on the company's bottom line  

• Rethinking how they organize themselves to deconstruct hierarchies and maximize team responsibility

• Continually learning from failures and constantly improving.

At Alan we are already on the topic, we already have the product. Let’s build healthy businesses together.