Turner Construction

Annemarie Lowe

Turner Construction Company has made tremendous strides enhancing and transforming its employee wellness program from traditional program into a holistic, well-being experience focused on employee’s physical, emotional, social, financial, and work well-being. Our wellness program is called “Healthy Me, Healthy Mind.”

When I began working at Turner in 2009, the wellness program included a medical premium discount and a health club reimbursement. Our medical premium discount requires employees to get an annual physical and a health screening which receives positive feedback from employees who have discovered serious medical conditions that can be addressed early. Additionally, our health club reimbursement supports our employees who live an active lifestyle. 

Changes to our wellness program went into overdrive during the pandemic. Everything changed including the way we went about our daily lives. Remote work, mental health struggles, fear, isolation, delay of medical care, etc. So many people were struggling as they faced so many things at once.

Turner’s benefits team listened to the needs of employees and responded. “Total Wellness” emerged as a key focus ours. Turner strived to make “wellness” mean more than just physical health. Turner wanted to help employees build better connections between mind and body and create healthy habits.

The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that we offered felt like it was in the background and folks did not seem to be engaged. In response, we enhanced our communications to bring a larger awareness to the EAP. We began offering a more regular cadence of webinars, sent home mailers and emails, and mentioned it on company-wide town hall sessions. That got our employees' attention. The utilization of our EAP has increased to 48% of employees over the past two years.

To start the journey of our employees living their best lives, Turner provides the foundation with our medical, dental, and vision plans. Benefits at Turner go beyond health insurance – our employees have access to a world of support throughout the year as we provide a wide variety of tools and resources such as Livongo, a diabetes management program, Group Legal, Doctor on Demand, our telehealth for medical and mental health conditions, EAP, Wondr Health, a healthy eating program, financial planning webinars that includes planning for retirement in every state of your career, pet insurance, a 24 hour Nurseline, a benefits decision support tool, Quit for Life, Identity Protection, SmartDollar, out debt/budgeting tool, 2nd MD, a second opinion program, and Alight Health Pro, which is our healthcare concierge. Additionally, we are aware of the nationwide challenges of obtaining a therapist and as such we rolled out Talkspace in September 2022. We wanted our employees to have every resource available to get the care they need and being able to “text” a therapist is such an amazing add-on. During the height of the pandemic the company implemented a $0 co-pay for Doctor on Demand which was kept in place through December 2021.

Turner created a wellness committee in June 2020 with representatives from various teams including benefits, community & citizenship, environment health & safety, officers, and members of our employee resource groups.  The committee was launched in response to employees asking for resources and Turner’s ongoing commitment to creating a culture focused on active caring. The wellness resources were there, but the feedback was that they weren’t visible under a cohesive umbrella. We created a wellness site which is a single mental health and well-being space of all our Turner resources. This enables employees with questions, concerns, or needs related to well-being could easily locate information and quickly get the answers and guidance that they need. The committee recently rolled out a peer support card for suicide prevention and awareness month as well as a Breast Cancer Awareness flyer. 

For 2023, we are so excited to roll-out a new care-navigation platform and dedicated care coordinators for our LGBTQIA+ community through Included Health, a new cancer care program through Memorial Sloan Kettering, an additional layer on our already robust EAP program in the form of well-being coaching. Turner recognizes that everyone’s pathway to parenthood looks different and therefore we no longer require an infertility diagnosis to access guidance and care.

The changes and enhancements we make are possible because of the support from our executive leaders. Since March 2020, Peter Davoren, our President and Chief Executive Officer, has held weekly town hall sessions for all employees. So many sessions have included the sharing of benefits information and healthcare updates. Various physicians joined the sessions to discuss breast cancer awareness, women’s health, men’s health, mental health, suicide prevention, COVID-19, vaccinations for adults and children, and introduction of a well-being checklist that highlights the importance of preventive care.That is Turner active caring at its finest. The support from our leaders is outstanding and we are so grateful. 

Turner is committed to every employee, and I am very excited for where the next few years will take us. Turner supports the whole person and in our culture of active caring, we strive to connect our employees with coordinated resources to help our employees live their best life. Always.