This piece was written by Elise Harper for the Shared Value Project and the Shared Value Forum 2015 #svf15
What is happening in the region that’s unique and innovative about shared value for companies?
The Australian healthcare sector is in the midst of historic transformation. Restricted public funding for healthcare is leading to an increase in private sector activity and increasing competition. Simultaneously, population health needs are changing as multi-morbidity becomes more prevalent due to lifestyle choices such a smoking, lack of exercise and un-informed eating habits.
In a bid to reduce claims, private health insurers are looking at innovative ways to improve the health and resilience of the Australia population. The challenge for private health businesses is to remain competitive and relevant in this changing market by channelling health and consumer research into new services and products to meet consumer needs.
Bupa Australia and New Zealand (Bupa) is a leading healthcare organisation and part of the Bupa Group which cares for over 33 million people across 190 countries. In Australia, the company provides a wide range of services through its private health insurance, aged care, health coaching, optical, dental and wellness services businesses.
In 2014 Ellis Jones worked with Bupa to develop a whole-of-business framework for identifying, assessing, managing and evaluating existing and potential partnerships, using a shared value approach. The overarching objective is to make Bupa the ‘partner of choice’ for research, health, consumer advocacy and commercial partners who share the company’s purpose of ‘longer, healthier, happier lives’.
What’s exciting about the work that Ellis Jones is doing in creating shared value? What’s new, different about how or to what extent they are creating social and business impact?
We are working at the leading edge of a global megatrend that is improving society and changing the nature of the relationship between business and everyday people.
Our work in partnerships is exciting because partnerships are fundamental to achieving social change: no single institution or company can make a measureable impact on the big, intractable issues we face. We help establish the shared purpose and strategy on which great shared value initiatives are founded.
Ellis Jones is a shared value enterprise. We change human behaviour to solve business problems and improve society. For us, the global shared value movement has provided a vehicle for expressing of our thinking and purpose. We get immense reward from the inspiration this brings to company employees and community stakeholders.
Bupa is a purpose-driven health organisation. Ultimately, every strategic decision made by the company is based on its capacity to create shared value. Its significant investment in diverse partnerships represents an opportunity to establish competitive advantage.
What’s the biggest challenge that you see companies face in adopting shared value?
Humans are resistant to change; it’s in our nature to keep doing what we have always been doing. A new and still evolving practice, shared value can be a challenging for companies to adopt. Change needs to be measured and that takes time.
Without the understanding of, and leadership from, senior management – particularly the understanding of what shared value looks like in practice – shared value projects can struggle to get endorsement at the scale required to generate measurable results.
Furthermore, competencies need to evolve and this requires investment in training and resources.
How can they overcome this challenge? What do you help companies do to overcome their challenges?
It is important that everyone understands that this is not a “leap of the cliff” moment. We work with companies to adapt existing business systems and processes.
Using the agency’s Social Thinking approach we engage staff, from senior management to tactical staff, to identify opportunities and crystallise the company’s position on social change and business success.
We apply the shared value approach directly to the organisational context.
Case study: Working with Bupa to develop shared value strategy.
The Opportunity
Describe the context/scenario and outline the key opportunities or issues to be addressed by implementing the shared value strategy
The Australian healthcare sector is in the midst of historic transformation. Restricted public funding for healthcare is leading to an increase in private sector activity and increasing competition. Simultaneously, population health needs are changing as multi-morbidity becomes more prevalent due to lifestyle choices such a smoking, lack of exercise and un-informed eating habits.
In a bid to reduce claims, private health insurers are looking at innovative ways to improve the health and resilience of the Australia population. The challenge for private health businesses is to remain competitive and relevant in this changing market by channelling health and consumer research into new services and products to meet consumer needs.
In 2014, Ellis Jones worked with Bupa Australia and New Zealand (Bupa) to develop a framework for assessing and pursuing partnerships using a shared value approach.
Bupa is a leading healthcare organisation and part of the Bupa Group which cares for over 33 million people across 190 countries. In Australia, the company provides a wide range of services through its private health insurance, aged care, health coaching, optical, dental and wellness services businesses. Reinvesting its profits in improving health outcomes for members, its purpose is to help people live longer, healthier, happier lives. The Bupa Health Foundation is one of the leading Australian charitable foundations dedicated to health.
Bupa invests in a range of strategic relationships across its business. The more prominent are managed by a dedicated strategic partnership group but business units also invest in commercial relationships relevant to their markets and operations.
Bupa looks beyond the horizon, investing in medical research that may never lead to development of a service offering but which ensures the company has insight and opportunity. Bupa is also aware that the size of its customer base, scale of its market access, and network of channel partners places it in a unique position to help achieve whole of society impacts in important areas such as (but not limited to) wellbeing, ageing and obesity.
The challenge for the group was to:
- Define what a strategic partnership is/means to Bupa Australia.
- Develop a whole-of-business approach to identifying, assessing, managing and evaluating all partnerships.
- Ensure that the company’s purpose of investing in health for societal impact is evident in all partnerships.
- Create a system that aggregates and provides visibility over partnerships, ensuring that investment is appropriately allocated across different health conditions and business objectives.
- Provide a compelling argument to the business for change.
The Strategy
Describe the strategy and implementation process.
Ellis Jones is leading the development of ‘shared value’ as a practice. Shared value principles were a natural fit for Bupa’s strategic partnership exploration because they provide the basis of a model to identify, assess and manage those partnerships to ensure realisation of purpose and business returns are outcomes of every relationship.
During the project, the company’s business, brand, marketing, health research, health grants and health innovation program reports and strategies were assessed for objectives, outcomes and synergies. Interviews with heads of department and executive team members also clarified the different objectives of each team and some of the perceived conflicts the group was facing.
A full day workshop with all team members explored the different aspects of strategic partnerships considering market, economic, and internal company conditions. Using shared value as a guiding concept, the group worked through the nature of their roles and mandates, and where alignment or shared objectives could be identified.
Full lists were then drawn up for health and social impact and business impact areas. The project also defined impact areas the company did not view as strategic from a competency, risk or return perspective.
A base strategic partnership management model was created for further development. The management model will ensure whole of business visibility over partnership investment to ensure aggregate health and business impacts reflect the partnership strategy.
Results – Value for Business and Society
Overview the outcomes of implementing the shared value strategy.
Ultimately, when a final model is in place, all of Bupa’s strategic partnership investments will achieve health/social impacts and business objectives. That journey is now underway.
Indirectly or directly, strategic partnerships provide evidence for Bupa’s role in longer, healthier, happier lives. The company’s purpose is embedded in health research, brand activation activities, operations, consumer outcomes, and channel partner relationships.
Bupa’s recent HeartSalute campaign is an early example of the way in which the organisation leveraged its extensive customer base, provider network and partners to raise awareness about heart disease, the single biggest killer of Australian women.
Heart disease claims the lives of approximately 25 women every day, is the single biggest killer of women in Australia and kills three times more women than breast cancer. One of Bupa’s social sector partners, the Heart Foundation, raises funds for cardiovascular research, public awareness and support, notably through its Go Red For Women initiative.
Connecting two existing partners – prominent AFL clubs, the Brisbane Lions and the Hawthorn Hawks – to Bupa’s existing relationship with the Heart Foundation, Bupa was able to significantly raise awareness of heart disease by taking the message not only to its own customer base, but football supporters across the country.
Social outcomes:
The results exceeded objectives, achieving 14 million impressions via social media and television advertising including more than 297,000 views, with #heartsalute hashtag shared by 1,165 people.
The key social outcomes were:
- Greater awareness of heart-related health issues, particularly in women
- Visitors to the website learned how to check, monitor and improve heart health, through Bupa’s health services and resources
For the Heart Foundation the issues of heart health and its role in reducing heart-related illness reached many more Australians than would be possible if the campaign had been undertaken on its own.
Business outcomes:
For Bupa, business outcomes of the HeartSalute include increased brand equity and engagement of new and existing customers with Bupa services. When asked, two in three AFL club members agreed with the statement, ‘Bupa cares about the health of Australia’. In addition, it helped Bupa establish in the minds of Australians that it is a health company with services and products beyond health insurance.
The broader strategic partnerships project had a number of important immediate business outcomes for Bupa:
- Recognition among departmental leaders of the value each team creates across the business-health impact spectrum.
- A clearer definition of what Bupa seeks in a strategic partnership, and what it brings to any relationship.
- A process for finding, assessing, initiating, managing and evaluating partnerships.
- A framework to enable assessment of any single partnership in the context of whole-of-business partnership investment and with which to define the range of outcomes expected.
Lessons Learned, Challenges and Outlook
Describe the lessons learned, challenges and outlook that arose from the shared value strategy and implementation.
Lessons Learned
All shared value projects have ‘epiphany’ moments and a big one on this project was Bupa’s realisation that it wants to be the partner of choice of any organisation sharing its purpose. This was seen as a key input in remaining relevant to consumers and having key research investment and collaboration opportunities come to the company first for consideration.
Additionally, research conducted by Bupa confirmed that consumers have high expectations for purpose to be evident in its activities. This echoes the findings of other studies by Nielson and the NYU Stern institute that show a persistent and escalating trend toward consumers willing to pay more for socially responsible products.
Challenges
Within any company there are competing priorities and perspectives within different business units or departments. When there is a view within one department that another does not directly contribute to business or social returns, coming together within a shared value approach can be challenging. The challenges for the group were to establish that purpose and social and business value is the core of all departments, weather they focus on health leadership or branding strategy.
The challenge ahead is to ensure the strategy and model put in place is resistant to intervention from senior leadership. There is social capital inherent in the statement ‘every partnership achieves shared value’.
Outlook
Given the transformation of Australia’s broader healthcare sector, there is an opportunity for a purpose-lead private company to lead in delivering healthcare that improves and strengthens the community. As Bupa aligns its health, brand and partnership strategy to deliver shared value, it is lining itself up with this opportunity.
The success of Bupa’s recent HeartSalute campaign is a testament to Bupa’s ability as a leader in the health industry to deliver both business return and positive social impacts to the health and well-being of Australians.
With a base strategy and overarching approach to identifying and assessing strategic partnerships that generate social impact, Bupa’s successes will continue to lead the development of shared value in Australia, demonstrating that organisations can best benefit from a strategic approach to partnerships.
