Corporate wellness
Corporate wellness is a marathon, not a sprint
“Corporate wellness” – what does that phrase mean to you? To many of us, it evokes an array of ambivalent thoughts — the gym membership we barely used, the nagging ankle injury from last year’s company picnic, the backaches, the bratwurst we had for lunch, the love handles and of course, the fad diets that failed us or that we failed. Usually, corporate wellness is a guilt trigger that causes us to feel remorse about our bodies and the health management we know we should be doing for them.
The sad fact is that we live in a sedentary society where our survival is dependent on sitting at a desk, not hunting game, picking berries and sprinting away from wolves. We also live in such luxury, nutritionally, that we can gain weight steadily without being wealthy. Cardiovascular disease, obesity and bad nutrition cause most of the corporate wellness issues that weigh down employee attendance and erode a company’s productivity.
It’s ironic that the poorest societies in our world – the ones furthest from the conveniences of modernity – often boast the fittest, most physically hardy members. And as for the animal kingdom — don’t look there for corporate wellness commiseration. In the wild, it is extremely rare to find an animal that suffers from our kind of wellness issues.
Pharmaceutical dependency degrades corporate wellness
It doesn’t help that Americans are descending into a deadly love affair with drugs — and drug testing won’t help you with these drugs.
For example, Greg Critser’s book Generation RX details how Americans spend about $180 billion dollars on prescriptions each year, with the estimated 2011 tally at a whopping $414 billion. The average number of prescriptions per American in 2004 stood at twelve.
Twelve! That means that your average employee is taking 14, 18, or even more than 20 medications in an attempt to improve their corporate wellness.
Is this effective, though? Critser is not convinced that the drugs help American corporate wellness. In fact, he points out a bevy of negative corporate wellness consequences for America’s legal drug addition, which include drug interactions, liver damage, and the legions of people who now depend on drugs to deal with ordinary trials and stresses.
An employer has the potential to enhance corporate wellness
It’s not all bad news, though. Occupational health screenings and well-designed corporate wellness programs can help you fight the downward corporate wellness spiral for you and your workforce. In fact, good corporate wellness efforts – like a strong walking wellness initiative – can literally save lives and reduce the symptoms that cause employees to turn to drugs in the first place.
Your corporate wellness resource
Starting a corporate wellness program can be daunting, but that’s when you can turn to an experienced provider like EmployeeWellnessUSA for no-obligation assistance. We’re here to help you with every step of the process, from surveying your employees about corporate wellness to setting up on-site health screenings to find out where your employees stand on critical corporate wellness metrics.
Don’t hesitate to contact our corporate wellness experts for assistance – we’re here to answer all your corporate wellness questions.
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