Raja

Rajamannar of Humana is Documented@Davos Transcript Documented@Davos 2012 RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Thanks for tuning in to our coverage of Documented@Davos from the World Economic Forum. My name is Randi Zuckerberg, and I am thrilled to be here today with Raja Rajamannar of Humana. Thank you so much for joining. Now, for those who-- Humana's a Fortune 100 company. But for those who don't know the great work you do, can you give everyone a little information? RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Right. Humana is, as you rightly said, a Fortunate 100 company. Essentially the health space. We treat our mission as one of helping people achieve lifelong well being. So which means we play a role in the health ecosystem wherever there is an opportunity to improve. Improve the consumers well being. So we have got, for example, health insurance, which is our core business. We also have got pharmacy distribution. We are into bicycles. We are into video games. So we've got a full range of enabling products that help people achieve lifelong well being. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: And now, you were telling me about kind of an a-ha moment you had with your son that I really enjoyed. RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Right. It was a very curious thing which happened about two and a half years back when I was watching my son. And he about 11 years at the time. And he was constantly playing with his Nintendo Game Boy. And I was watching, he was playing for hours and hours together. So I told him, [? Keshev, ?] why don't you go out and play. Why don't you just go and bike and get some exercise. He says, Dad, that's boring. That was truly an a-ha moment for me because curiously, anything which is really good for you tends to be either boring or painful. And anything which is not good for you is very delicious and you indulge in those kind of things. And that's how nature has made it. I know it's a really queer kind of a thing. And what we said is, instead of fighting this kind of a natural phenomena, how can we leverage it? Which means, how can we make healthy things fun and fun things healthy, so that people will actually start indulging in things that are good for them and avoid those which are really bad for them? RANDI ZUCKERBERG: So you've recently launched some exciting things, a video game with Ubisoft and a few other initiatives.

RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Right. So one of the things along this mantra of how do you make healthy things fun and fun things healthy, is we are trying to figure out where could be that intersection between health and fun? One, for example, is gaming. So gamification of health is a big deal. And when I say fun, it's not just only for the kids. It's across the entire spectrum of population. So for example, we have created some games which help the elderly people gain more mobility. So these are for geriatric mobility. Then there are games which are focused on the holistic aspects of a child who is obese. When I walk into my son's classroom today, I see that the number of boys and girls who are overweight and obese is scary. It's almost 2/3 of the people, of the kids, they're obese or overweight. So we said, how can we actually tackle the situation in totality? It is not just exercise. It's a combination of exercise. It's a combination of health literacy. It's a combination of nutrition, all these things [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: Changing of mindset. RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Exactly. So we have got a program around-- a game around childhood obesity. And likewise, stress is one of the biggest killers amongst most of the people. And it is so easily controllable if only you know what to do about it. So we have created some games around stress management. So we are bringing all these things together. And likewise, with the physical world, those people who are not really going to sit in their living work and work on it, we have created a bicycle. So there's a Humana health bike where it has got a whole bunch of biometrics. So when you sit on a bike, it measures your biometrics as you're peddling. It's something which takes you from point A to point B. It is not a bike that sits in your home. So each time you get on the bike and you're peddling, we measure your biometric response to the actual effort you're putting on the bike and moving around. And for every one mile that you bike, you're getting [? more ?] point. It's a whole ecosystem around the bike that we're creating. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: So you tap into that kind of instant gratification that people love. RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Exactly. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: It's great. Especially with the rise of social media and technology as prolific as it is, there's so many wonderful things that come with it. But as you mentioned, it's important to teach kids health and actually getting out and moving too.

RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Absolutely. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: And so you also mentioned some initiatives you're doing around workplace wellness. RAJA RAJAMANNAR: Yes. If you look at United States as a country, 60% of the population of the United States are insured by their employers. So we said, that's number one. It's a big statistic. Second thing, when you look at the amount of time each one of us spend at work, it's the most part of our time that we're awake. So we said, if we're spending all our time at the workplace and if even 60% of the population is being covered by the employers, what rule should employers have in controlling the costs of the medical or the health system, which is really killing the economy right now? So we came together last year with the World Economic Forum in Davos and launched what we call as the Wellness at Workplace Alliance. So it's an alliance and we started with about 12 companies. And today there are more than 100 companies. And all the big name companies out there as part of this alliance. And what we are trying to do is, first and foremost, understand what are the best practices in different companies across the world in terms of how they are helping their employees stay healthy. Whether it is the kind of cafeteria that they have. The kind of programs that they have to help their employees, whether it is smoking cessation or it is in terms of better nutrition, or it is stress management, or it is grievance management. So there are a whole series of well being programs that are being done. Some companies are doing. So we want to actually create a database about all that. And secondly, more importantly also, to give it justification to the businesses. Because most of these businesses are not philanthropic organizations. So they need to really see the difference it makes to the productivity of the employees. RANDI ZUCKERBERG: That having a healthy workforce actually brings them more revenue. RAJA RAJAMANNAR: It's more productive. The absenteeism is less. The presenteeism is less. And presenteeism meaning that people are there, but they're not 100% there. So how do you really enhance the productivity and so on? And the initial visits, even the most recent one, was a study done by Harvard, says that the payback could be 1 [? is ?] to 3.5. So for every dollar that you're putting into your well being program, your returns could be as high as 3.5. So we're creating this whole movement on a global basis under the auspices of World Economic Forum. And that's been really exciting for us.

RANDI ZUCKERBERG: It's great to see you moving into the entire health value chain and all of the wonderful work that you're doing there. So thank you so much for joining us. All of the videos are available at scribd.com/documentedatdavos, or you can follow any of us at Twitter @scribd, @mashable. You can tweet me @RandiZuckerberg or send me a Facebook message. And we look forward to hearing all your thoughts.