Wellness Incentives Bring Big Returns

Wellness incentives pay off and they pay off well, according to an article that appeared in Industry Week.
“Companies that are using a health management program are saving $2,850 per employee,” stated the article.  That amount is definitely a wellness incentive for the company.

Wellness Incentives Encourage Employee Health

Companies that are choosing to offer wellness incentives are seeing the benefits to their bottom-line, as well as the ability to keep healthcare costs down for their employees.  Thus wellness programs and incentives offer a win-win situation for any corporation.

According to the article by Adrienne Selko, companies like Nature Sunshine, who doesn’t charge their employees for health insurance and benefits and would like to keep it that way, are asking employees to join their wellness program if they want to continue not paying for their health benefits.

With 95% of their employees enrolled in their corporate wellness program, Nature Sunshine estimates that they have saved $5.5 million in the five years they have had the program.  Not to mention, Nature Sunshine’s employee’s health has improved drastically with a 61% improvement in scores on their health assessments.

Wellness Incentives are Win-Win

Corporate wellness programs have several advantages aside from reduced healthcare expenses for the company and the employee.  Corporate wellness programs also lower employee absenteeism, lead to fewer injuries and fewer worker’s compensation and disability claims, provide better productivity, increases morale and improves employee retention, as well as gives the ability to offer wellness as part of an employee’s overall compensation package.

Wellness Incentives for Happy Employees

The article provided an example of a wonderful employee wellness program that was instilled by Gallatin Steel.  First off, it starts with a Health Risk Assessment and a 50% deduction in health insurance premiums for any employee that takes the health risk assessment.  Next, the company built and offers free to their employees, a jogging track and a 24/7 fitness center that is staffed with a personal trainer.   Finally, the employees are offered a $1,000 per year reimbursable healthy lifestyle stipend to spend on trainers, vitamins, weight loss programs, etc.

Wellness Incentives can Start Today

To begin offering your employees wellness incentives and to establish a corporate wellness program at your company, pick up the phone and call one of our healthcare management representatives.  They can get you started with an evaluation of your company and a free wellness proposal to assist you in you approval efforts.

It really is that simple … really.

Health risk assessments help you quantify employee health

Health risk assessments (HRAs) are an important tool to help you isolate the value of strong corporate wellness programs. In our twenty-plus years of health testing and analysis as EmployeeWellnessUSA and parent company HeathcheckUSA, we’ve found that executive leadership is best at assessing risk in a rigorous, bottom-line-oriented manner — which is exactly what health risk assessments do for you.

Health risk assessments: what’s an HRA?

HRAs (health risk assessments) got you mystified? They’re a bit of a puzzle because there’s no unified standard for health risk assessments. A health risk assessment is both a procedure and a document, too, depending on the context — you must answer questions and ideally undergo some simple biometric data collection to develop a document that describes what’s good and bad about your current state of health and wellness.

To add confusion to the situation, there’s a heritage of industrial health risk management to the term “health risk assessment.” Talk to an OSHA inspector about health risk assessments and she’ll assume you’re referring to an analysis of contaminants and industrial chemicals in a factory or manufacturing facility.

Health risk assessments: a typical HRA

However, even though there’s no government or agency mandate telling you what should be in your company’s health risk assessments, the employee wellness professionals at EmployeeWellnessUSA agree that a complete, comprehensive health risk assessment is aimed at producing a concrete baseline of a person’s health, and includes most of these features:

• a blood pressure test to find possible cardiovascular disease,
• a blood type test so the employee can receive prompt transfusions if an accident does happen to occur at the workplace,
• a cancer test to detect this insidious killer before it can cause harm,
• a blood glucose diabetes test that can detect this common disease, and
• a thorough investigation of the employee’s health management status.

The investigation ideally would analyze the employee’s:

• lifestyle factors,
• symptoms and ailments,
• pharmaceutical needs and prescriptions,
• functional abilities,
• quality of life,
• self-efficacy,
• fitness proclivities and interest level,
• clinical information,
• and fitness biometrics.

Health risk assessments: what next?

If your organization is pondering the costs and benefits of health risk assessments, contact a wellness expert at EmployeeWellnessUSA. We’d be happy to provide you with no-obligation advice about how to go about planning a corporate wellness program and improving the health of your workforce while augmenting morale and reducing your health insurance costs at the same time.

Here are a few more health risk assessment articles that you may find useful:

• Online health risk assessments
• Health risk assessment vendors
• Health risk assessment benefits
• Health risk assessment surveys