Virgin HealthMiles Announces Fall '12 Release

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - Oct 9, 2012) - Leading employers know, beyond just a paycheck, they need to build a culture that both retains employees and attracts the best candidates. Research shows employees greatly value health and wellness benefits, so employers must offer a range of them to keep employees engaged and compete for top talent. Today, Virgin HealthMiles, the pioneer in developing innovative technology-based solutions that drive real, data-driven healthy behavior changes, announced its Fall '12 product release. Fall '12 offers fresh new features to create even more compelling, personalized digital experiences with workplace wellness and health benefits -- the foundation for an engaged workforce. 

With its Fall '12 release, Virgin HealthMiles draws upon its deep consumer engagement expertise and introduces new flexible branding options. Employers can build a brand their employees will love and drive even greater awareness and appreciation of all their programs. To help employers deliver the right programs to the right people, the company also announced enhanced international capabilities, including new languages, fulfillment, and targeted program activation and engagement options. And to support employers in promoting their various programs and creating enhanced employee experiences, the company announced new best-in-class partnerships with health coaching and lifestyle management program providers, along with new device and app options for employees. Fall '12 helps employers offer an even more engaging, higher value set of employee benefits, and enables them to get better value and results from their employee health and productivity strategies.

"Our Fall '12 release is all about greater choice and flexibility for both the employer and the employee," said Tom Abshire, senior vice president of products and marketing for Virgin HealthMiles. "With Fall '12, we're continuing to build on our proven ability to drive sustained, healthy behavior change by offering employees easy ways to find and choose program options, and we're helping employers create even more value from their health and wellness strategies with well-integrated, best-in-class partnerships."

Virgin HealthMiles continues to innovate where others stagnate, leading the industry in engaging employees and changing lifestyle-related behaviors. Its HealthMiles program engages employees at a rate more than three times the industry average and has delivered proven results for leading employers. Fall '12 makes it even easier for employers to see impact and drive value from their investments. 

Key Benefits of the Fall '12 Release: Choice and Flexibility

• New Flexible Branding Options Help Employers Build a Brand Employees Will Love: Companies offer great programs to help employees, but how they fit together isn't always clear. To drive awareness and participation, it's critical to clearly link health and wellness investments. With Fall '12, Virgin HealthMiles offers new flexible branding options to help employers unite their various programs and create a consistent, branded experience for their employees. This helps companies better showcase their corporate brands or the health and wellness sub-brands they've created. It also helps them more closely link their company's full suite of health and wellness offerings. Alternatively, employers can continue creating great employee experiences by leveraging the fun and innovative Virgin brand as the foundation for their health and wellness initiatives.
  
  
• Better Ways to Deliver the Right Programs to the Right People: To see results from health and wellness programs, employers must maximize participation. And providing the right programs to the right people, regardless of where they are in the world or the specific programs they need, is key. Fall '12 includes new, targeted program activation and engagement options and enhanced international capabilities, with new languages and fulfillment options, which make it even easier for employers to segment their workforce and create experiences tailored to each segment's specific needs. 
  
  
• New Best-in-Class Partnerships, More Ways to Engage:  Getting more from employee health and productivity strategies means tapping the best the industry has to offer. Fall '12 extends Virgin HealthMiles' market-leading Integrated Incentives solution, which offers employers better ways to promote all their health and wellness programs and create an integrated, engaging experience for their employees. Fall '12 offers new best-in-class partnerships that help employers inform and deliver even more health solutions to meet the needs of their unique workforces. The company has partnered with WellCall, a national leader in health and wellness, to deliver health coaching services to U.S.-based employers, and another soon-to-be-announced provider of multinational coaching and lifestyle management programs. Virgin HealthMiles also announced its platform's integration with RunKeeper via their Health Graph API. This integration now offers employees even more device and app choices so they can engage with their employers' programs in ways that best fit their lifestyle.

"Our health coaching services not only help participants make healthy lifestyle changes that last a lifetime, we deliver high impact business results," said Francine Miller, President of WellCall. "Our partnership with Virgin HealthMiles means employers now have more robust ways to help their employees make sustained health behavior changes. We're excited about the early traction -- it's a clear indication that our partnership delivers what the market needs to keep employees healthy and engaged, and to help businesses positively impact their healthcare costs and wellness strategies."

Learn more about Virgin HealthMiles' Fall '12 release at http://us.virginhealthmiles.com/resources/Pages/Fall12_WhatsNew.aspx.

About Virgin HealthMiles
Virgin HealthMiles, part of Sir Richard Branson's famed Virgin Group, provides programs and technologies that engage your workforce in good health. Leveraging Virgin's deep consumer roots, we create compelling, personalized digital health experiences that drive long-term healthy behavior change and employee engagement rates more than three times the industry average. Our range of Pay-for-Prevention™ solutions and program integration capabilities: drive higher awareness and engagement across multiple providers and programs; deliver better measurement and insight into the impact of your investments; and power your overall employee health strategy. Our easy-to-deploy and manage solutions feature a rich array of proven behavior change strategies, including: game mechanics, financial incentives, social networking, and many more. Over 130 industry leaders representing more than 700,000 employees have selected Virgin HealthMiles' award-winning programs for their employees. Learn more at www.virginhealthmiles.com.

About WellCall
WellCall provides employees and their families with the tools, support, and direction they need to stop smoking, lose weight, improve nutrition, exercise, have a healthy pregnancy, manage chronic illness, and reduce stress levels. WellCall's professional team provides a range of services that can be bundled or offered individually, including coaching, online services, health risk assessments, onsite services and screenings, organization-specific campaigns, program consultation and management. WellCall's programs reverse the trend of runaway healthcare costs and provide benefits that come from a healthier, happier workforce. Learn more at www.wellcall.com.