The problem of presenteeism

LifeSpeak offers ways to fix health issues

As a lawyer working at challenging legal and consulting firms, Michael Held was struck by one irony: no matter how many health benefits they enjoyed, many e mployees were plagued by family or healthrelated issues that prevented them from giving their all to their jobs.

“When people struggle between work and life, you often end up losing them,” he says. “Even when they really want to keep working.”

Scratching an entrepreneurial itch to build his own business, Held combined those instincts to form LifeSpeak, which brought expert speakers into the workplace to discuss wellness issues. Starting with parenting problems and moving into topics such as mental health, addiction and eldercare, Held had a simple goal: to make workers more resilient.

“I wanted to help people overcome their problems without compromising the work they want to do,” he says. “We started small (holding parenting workshops in grocery stores) and learned what people are looking for.”

Thirteen years later, LifeSpeak has come a long way. Now with 30 employees, the firm has produced a library of 1,500 on-demand wellness videos, earning it the nickname, “the Netflix of health.” Now, seven million client employees and their families can access LifeSpeak’s content to figure out how to manage stress, weight loss, anxiety disorders and other problems before going to HR or their employee assistance program (EAP) for help.

Says Held: “We gi v e people tools to make small but meaningful changes in their lives.”

With customers such as Bell Canada, the federal government and all of Canada’s big banks, Toronto- based LifeSpeak is now engaged in a dizzying U. S. expansion that’s pushing annual growth far into the double- digits. Its American clients include Michelin, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and the U.S. Navy. And a company that prides itself on its full line of French-language videos is now subtitling its content in Spanish.

But LifeSpeak’s success wasn’ t i nevitable. Held shared a hurdle common to visionary entrepreneurs: he plunged into his niche so early that clients didn’t know they needed his help. Many prospects already had EAPs, with benefits such as family counselling, stress management and fitness coaching. So even if they saw value in LifeSpeak’s service, they had no budget for it.

“Trying to engage people in a discussion about what’s never existed before is like pushing a rock uphill,” Held says. “You have to articulate the gap and the need.”

That meant sitting down with potential clients and asking tough questions: “Sure, you have these providers in place, but aren’t you still having problems? Do you have people absent, or taking short- or long-term leaves?”

He even asked about problems with presenteeism, in which ill, worried or otherwise distracted employees show up for work anyway.

“If the answer was yes,” Held says, “then I’d say, ‘Perhaps we can have a discussion.’”

But how do you get in front of these decision- makers, or get time for detailed conversations? Held says he asked friends and colleagues for referrals. He made a point in his early career to be helpful and open, and that helped him build a network that supported him in turn.

Today, LifeSpeak has its own U. S. sales team and is levering the EAP channel. Instead of being bolted onto existing employee programs, LifeSpeak has enlisted EAP providers to sell its content platform as an additional client benefit.

“We’re a distinguishing factor for our partners,” says Anna Mittag, LifeSpeak’s vice-president of operations. “It makes them stickier with their own clients.”

Participating firms share revenues, while LifeSpeak customizes its content to appear as a seamless part of each client’s employee platform.

Mittag expects the U. S. market, which now accounts for 30 per cent of LifeSpeak’s billings, to grow exponentially. She says the company’s Canadian origin gives it a big advantage.

“Canada has long been a pioneer in mental- health training and well- being. As recently as three years ago, the American clients I spoke with didn’t use the term ‘ mental health.’ Now it’s at the forefront of employers’ minds.”

Chance played another part in LifeSpeak’s growth. In 2010, the company shifted its focus from speaking events to online video. It conducts three shoots a year, bringing in experts from across the U.S. and Canada.

“It’s partly an accident of the services we provide, but the model turned out to be very scalable,” Mittag says.

LifeSpeak also provides written content, podcasts, quizzes and monthly webchats with experts, that attract between 500 and 1,000 participants. On the “nearfuture roadmap” is gamification ( e. g., earning points or prizes for accessing videos) and the ability to get individual responses to questions written to LifeSpeak professionals. In a way, that will bring back some of the spontaneity of the company’s original live events, Mittag says.

Clients seem satisfied with LifeSpeak’s services; its client- renewal rate is 97 per cent. That’s one reason Mittag wonders why “there is still nobody out there doing exactly what we’re doing. We keep waiting for that to change, but it hasn’t yet.”

YOU HAVE TO ARTICULATE THE GAP AND THE NEED.