Human Resources: Workscape Teams with WebMD to Provide Online Wellness and Benefits Decision-Support Tools

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. (January 8, 2007) - Workscape, Inc., experts in outsourced benefits and compensation solutions, today announced it has teamed with WebMD, the leading provider of health information, to provide an integrated solution that helps employees make more informed benefit, treatment and provider decisions.

Through the agreement, Workscape's solution connects their clients' employees in a secure and personalized way to WebMD's decision-support tools and resources through the same interface they already use to make benefits choices. As a result, when employees participate in "rewardable" activities, such as the completion of a health risk assessment (HRA), they'll receive awards "real-time" in conjunction with their benefits enrollment.

Workscape's goal is to help employers of all sizes and their employees increase healthy behaviors to drive down the cost of healthcare premiums and improve workforce productivity. To that end, Workscape will provide its benefits administration customers with WebMD's market-leading suite of online health and benefit management tools, including:

Health Risk Assessment - A comprehensive self-assessment questionnaire tied to real-time premium rewards; scores health status, determines health risks, and provides specific recommendations to improve each individual's health.

Personal Health Record - An online health record that allows members to store, manage and maintain all of their health information in a secure, centralized location.

DrugCompare, PlanCompare and CostCompare - Decision-support tools that enable employees to compare prescription drug options, benefit plans, and estimate treatment and service costs.

Select Quality Care - A decision-support tool that offers comparisons of hospitals on the basis of quality and cost for a specific diagnosis or needed medical procedure.

CostEstimator - A decision-support tool that allows one to estimate all costs related to 350 different procedures, conditions, tests and office visits.

Lifestyle Improvement Modules and Trackers - Customized, self-guided programs for exercise, nutrition, smoking cessation, pregnancy and other issues related to lifestyle and healthy living.
Tim Clifford, Workscape's President and CEO, said, "While everyone talks about wellness, most employees - the consumer - do not readily make the connection between their state of wellness and the cost of their healthcare premiums. The biggest reason for this disconnect is that most wellness programs aren't specifically tied to an event when employees are focused on making decisions about their healthcare - the annual benefits open enrollment process. Through our alliance with WebMD, we'll be helping employers link wellness initiatives and benefits open enrollment together, and leverage timely incentives that encourage employee participation."

"WebMD shares Workscape's commitment to helping people better manage their health," said Wayne Gattinella, President and CEO, WebMD. "By providing access to comprehensive health information and resources, we are able to help individuals better understand how their own health status impacts healthcare costs, and to make more informed healthcare decisions."

A study by the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans revealed that nearly two-thirds of employers (62% of respondents) currently offer wellness programs and an additional 15 percent plan to implement wellness initiatives in the next calendar year. While these programs are currently available to employees, the same survey found that more than 80 percent of employers experience less than 50 percent employee participation. To encourage employees to become more involved in living a healthier lifestyle, many employers are actively seeking to tie participation in wellness programs to incentives, such as premium reimbursement and other rewards.

Clifford concluded, "Our alliance with WebMD will help employers drive home to their employees the importance of better nutrition, smoking cessation programs, and healthier lifestyles. Linking the rewards for good health to healthcare premiums garners attention where it's potentially most meaningful to employees, therefore helping to control ever escalating healthcare premiums."

About Workscape
Workscape is a leading provider of business-critical HR solutions that enable hundreds of organizations to manage their two largest workforce expenditures: employee benefits and performance-driven compensation. Both offerings share a common technology platform, can be readily integrated with existing IT investments, serve millions of employees, and are scalable and configurable to meet the distinct requirements of organizations ranging from 2,000 to 400,000 employees. The company's award-winning multi-lingual compensation solution has achieved 99.6% adoption rate in a deployment to more than 400,000 employees across 70 countries. Its outsourced benefits administration offerings are backed by US-based 7 x 24 support for managers and employees on policies and processes. For more information about Workscape, visit www.workscape.com or call (888) 605-9620.