Best practice: BGM at Philips
Stefan Remmert, Head of Corporate Health Management, and Kerstin Lohmann manage the occupational health management of the healthcare technology group Philips for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH). They coordinate the health measures for more than 4,700 employees from Hamburg - and do so very successfully.
In this interview, they talk about the measures they use to keep the healthcare technology giant's employees healthy, how they overcome the challenges of increasing digitalization and how they keep the needs of different employee groups in mind.
Occupational health management is a big topic these days. More and more companies are planning measures to keep their employees healthy. Where do you see the need?
Stefan Remmert: The requirements depend on the activities of the employees and the environment in which they work. We have a development and production site in Hamburg with just under 1,200 employees. We also have our headquarters office, where employees work for the sales organization in the DACH region and for Western Europe. This means that some of our employees have responsibilities that go beyond the national scope. So there is a lot of change and dynamism in the company, which has a positive effect on some employees, but can also cause difficulties for others. Then there are personal circumstances and exceptional situations such as corona. Then you have to have a very good ear for your employees and know what problems they are dealing with.
How long has Philips been implementing its occupational health management program?
Kerstin Lohmann: Philips recognized the importance of health in the workplace at an early stage. That was a good ten years ago and since then the focus has increasingly shifted to it. We started small back then and began with low-threshold measures to raise awareness of the issue. First there were the typical fruit baskets, later we handed out stress balls or invited people to health talks. However, these offers did not yet take place within a very structured framework. We then set ourselves the goal of gradually expanding and professionalizing the programme. We were of the opinion that the company was too large and too diverse to only offer health promotion for our employees on a small scale. We then gave our program a name: Philips in Balance. Today, we have created a valuable brand internally.
What are the challenges after two years of the pandemic? How has the organization of work changed since then?
Kerstin Lohmann: At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, we had a digital OHM in the drawer that had not yet been rolled out. All offers were still based on personal participation on site, and my work also took place in the workplace through direct contact. Suddenly I could no longer go to the office, but sat in this study at home. That was a change. We also weren't sure how effective our programs would be without personal contact with colleagues, employees and managers. But we couldn't complain. The switch to a digital OHM has worked. We have very high participation rates, both in terms of the number of participants and the number of clicks on our BGM SharePoint channel. Based on our feedback forms, we were able to see that employees really appreciated our program. What's more, moving the offerings to the digital space has also made it much easier for employees from other locations to participate.
The big challenge is to offer OHM measures that are used by as many employees as possible. How does Philips solve this problem?
Kerstin Lohmann: Our OHM consists of three pillars: The first includes the general offers for all employees, the second individually tailored offers for specific employee groups where special needs have been identified. The third pillar is the cooperation with providers such as pme Familienservice, who provide us with expert support on topics such as children, eldercare and coaching for life situations. We also have doctors on board. All of our services are offered either regionally or digitally in order to reach all employees throughout Germany.
What are the specific offers?
Kerstin Lohmann: We set out the topics in an annual plan. "Prevention" is a big topic for us at the moment, but we also focus on "mental health" throughout the year with recurring offers and a focus on "Mental Health Week" in October. "Cancer prevention" is a topic that we make visible throughout the year with various campaigns. One year, we had various campaigns and events on "sleep" with experts from our own company. We are working with a major institute on this year's focus of "nutrition", but our digital exercise and ergonomics offerings also run throughout the year. We even have our own athletics and sailing team.
However, as soon as problems or issues arise that are relevant to our employees, it is important that we react immediately and do not work strictly according to quarterly planning. For example, we organized a very well-attended webinar on the Ukraine conflict together with the pme Familienservice .
Stefan Remmert: We implemented the idea years ago that our BGM colleagues are available to our employees at any time. This gives them a low-threshold opportunity to approach us with their problems. Not everyone wants to go straight to their own manager. However, we have also trained our managers with appropriate seminars to recognize the stress limits of their employees themselves so that they have precise points of contact to ask for help in difficult times.
How many employees use your digital offerings?
Stefan Remmert: The focus of our offers is in Germany. We have opened up some of our services to Austria and Switzerland. In future, however, we want to systematize this even more and expand our offering.
Kerstin Lohmann: Our webinars are of course unlimited. On average, we have 200 to 300 participants. Whether it's colon or breast cancer, living wills, nutritional advice or the Ukraine crisis - the specialist webinars are always very well attended. We always have several hundred participants. We also offer series of topics in which we focus on specific areas of the body, such as ergonomics. We call them pit stops. These are 15-minute, self-contained sessions. Of course, we don't have 400 spectators every time, more like 80 people.
What individual measures do you implement for the different groups in your company?
Kerstin Lohmann: On the one hand, we consider concepts for special groups of employees. However, we are also approached when necessary. For example, the production department asked us to offer something on stress and resilience. We then developed a concept in which managers were coached on this topic in groups or had individual discussions with a professional psychologist.
Stefan Remmert: Here in Germany, we have a large team of service technicians who repair our large devices such as MRIs and CTs in the hospitals. One employee told me in a conversation that he thought it was great how we picked up the employees during the coronavirus crisis. The field service in particular always felt a bit left behind by the health days and the offers. I was very pleased with this feedback.
As a company, we think about what stress factors can arise for employees and what opportunities there are to make an informative contribution. In the case just described, we looked at how sales representatives felt during the coronavirus pandemic. The virus had just broken out, no one was fully aware of the effects, there was no vaccine, times were very uncertain and they were now supposed to be working in this very hotspot. In this situation, we took advantage of the digital medium and invited occupational physicians to Q&A sessions, for example. At peak times, 1,500 employees were connected. That was almost two years ago, but it made a big impression on the service technician I met yesterday.
Philips in Balance - Always keeping an eye on the individual needs of all employees:
Stefan Remmert
Occupational Health & Safety Manager DACH &
Head of Occupational Health Management, Philips GmbH
Kerstin Lohmann
General Management Support Philips Germany, Philips GmbH
