Health and Wellness

Medtronic values the health of employees and encourages employees to maximize their well being by providing a variety of resources and opportunities to engage in healthy activities.

Through our Total Health program, Medtronic proactively addresses preventable employee risk factors, including poor diet, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and lack of exercise. This has the potential to improve employee productivity, reduce absenteeism, and save millions of dollars in healthcare costs annually, as more than 50 percent of healthcare costs are driven by lifestyle behaviors. Medtronic saves more than $1 million each year from improved employee health.

Total Health provides U.S. employees and their spouses with access to health screenings; weight loss, nutrition, exercise, and smoking cessation classes; and wellness promotions. (See “100-day Wellness Challenge” case study below.) In other countries, Medtronic employees have access to wellness resources and programs such as organized sports teams, flu shots, walking programs and health fairs. Medtronic plans to launch a more comprehensive wellness initiative in several countries during fiscal year 2011. The roll-out will include a wellness web site customized by location, lifestyle improvement programs, and health coaching.

Since launching our Total Health program in 2007, 95 percent of U.S. employees and 12 percent of their spouses have registered on Medtronic’s Total Health web site. Eight-eight percent of U.S. employees complete a health risk questionnaire annually, and more than 10,000 have benefited from lifestyle and disease management coaching. Medtronic is achieving a 2:1 return on investment from these programs and a decrease in our overall healthcare cost trend.

Our efforts have yielded the following benefits from 2007 to 2009:

• Approximately 60 percent of those working with a health coach have eliminated or reduced at least one health risk.
• Our smoking population has decreased to 5 percent of the total employee base.
• Medtronic realized a 72% reduction in the size of our cholesterol at risk group and a 50% reduction in our glucose at risk group. 
• Our low risk population increased by 20 percent to 80 percent of the total.
• Our high risk population shrank 2 percent and currently measures just 3 percent of the total. 
• We achieved a 20 percent increase in preventive screenings and a 72 percent increase in diabetic preventive visits.

To encourage physical activity among employees, we offer 12 on-site fitness centers at Medtronic U.S. facilities in Memphis, Tennessee; Jacksonville, Florida; Northridge, California; Redmond, Washington; Tempe, Arizona; and Minneapolis, Minnesota (4), as well as three Puerto Rico locations. In addition to discounts at participating health clubs, Medtronic offers a Frequent Fitness Program through our U.S. health insurance plans, which credits $20 per month towards membership fees at participating health clubs when employees exercise at least 12 times per month. Employees in many locations also have access to company-organized recreational sports teams that range from basketball to bowling, golf, hockey, running, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball.

On-site cafeterias in our U.S. facilities also identify healthy food options with a special icon, so employees can make informed nutritional choices. Our healthy entrees do not exceed 500 calories per serving, and other healthy food options do not exceed three grams of fat per every 100 calories. We use the same icon to identify healthy choices in our vending machines.