Employee Wellness and Healthcare Costs

Employee wellness programs are important now more than ever.  According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, with the troubles in the economy it seems that the costs of employer provided healthcare keep continuing to grow and it doesn’t seem like it is going to change.  The article states that during the year 2008, U.S. employers can expect to see an increase of 10% in healthcare costs.

This increase in health care costs is causing some small businesses to reduce their employee health benefits or get rid of them altogether.

Employee Wellness for Healthier Lifestyles

Employee wellness programs do provide an option for small businesses.  The corporations can offer discounted co-pays and deductibles to those employees that fully participate in the offered corporate wellness program.  Full participation means getting health screens, receiving a health risk assessment, and then working with their wellness coordinator to work towards a healthier lifestyle.

The healthier the employees, the lower the overall healthcare costs for the corporation.  Just one lengthy hospital stay can almost deplete a small business’ healthcare budget.

Employee Wellness and Your Bottom Line

Employee wellness programs provide many advantages to a company’s bottom-line.  Corporate wellness statistics from Prudential Insurance show a benefit expense of $312 per person enrolled in a wellness program compared to an expense of $574 per employee that wasn’t enrolled.  Coors Brewing Company showed a positive side-effect of participant absenteeism dropping by 18%, thus greater production and less healthcare costs overall.

Employee Wellness is Smart Business Decision

With the down economy and the increase in healthcare costs, deciding to implement a wellness program is a smart business decision.  Not to mention, it is very simple to do with the help of our wellness representatives.  They will work with your staff in putting together the best and most appropriate wellness program for your employees.  Contact them today to receive your free wellness proposal and start cutting your healthcare costs.

Is It Necessary to Incentivize Corporations to Initiate Wellness Programs?

Corporate incentives may seem like an effective way to get employees excited about employee wellness - but is it wise?

Our opinion at Employee Wellness USA is that if it helps and encourages employers to understand the importance of maintaining a healthy workforce, not only for the welfare of its employees, but as well as the welfare of the corporate bottom line … then, yes, it could be necessary.

Tax Breaks as an Incentive for Corporations to Offer Wellness Programs

In 2007, two senators decided to band together to create the “Healthy Workforce Act.” This act is designed to encourage businesses to keep employees healthy and prevent disease. The senators believed that having a country focused on “well care” versus “sick care” would decrease the overall costs of healthcare for everyone. They decided to start with the America’s workforce.

The legislation, introduced by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, states that companies would receive a corporate incentive - a fifty percent tax credit - if they offer to their employees a wellness program that meets the following criteria:

1) A health awareness and education component, which could include health risk assessments and health screenings.

2) A behavioral change component – such as counseling, seminars, or self-help materials to empower employees to lead healthier lifestyles.

3) A supportive environment component – including offering meaningful incentives to participating employees, such as a reduction in health premiums or allowing employees to engage in walking wellness during the workday.

4) The creation of an employee engagement committee – which would tailor the wellness program to the needs of the workforce at a particular company.

If this legislation gets passed, many organizations will be scrambling to offer employee wellness programs in hopes of receiving the corporate incentive. Why not get ahead of your competition and start now? Contact our workplace wellness experts to get your corporation on the road to becoming healthy. We offer free consultations and are happy to answer any questions you have regarding our wellness services. At EmployeeWellnessUSA, we believe that encouraging your employees to be physically active, eat better and learn how to prevent disease benefits everyone.

Good Corporate Wellness Starts with Personal Health and Wellness

Personal health and wellness might be the fatal flaw in your corporate wellness plan. Is personal health and wellness part of your strategy? Does corporate wellness stop when your employees leave the office?

Give Your Employees Personal Health and Wellness Continuity

If employees don’t have the tools to pursue wellness on a personal level, then it becomes easy for them to “fall off the wagon” and slide back into a less healthy lifestyle. If you have a walking wellness program, for example, it should encourage employees to build walking routes near their homes, perhaps with the cooperation of the neighborhood association or coworkers who live in the neighborhood.

Personal Health and Wellness Means Never Being “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”

Your corporate wellness program coordinators should have “vacation wellness” as part of their job scope. In other words, you don’t want corporate wellness to stop at the boundaries of the corporate campus. Instead, integrate personal health and wellness with your employee wellness programs.

For example, what if Human Resources were to give out a personal health and wellness wallet card whenever someone goes on vacation or sabbatical? With some card stock and a small laminator, these cards could be easily customized to remind the employee of the employee wellness programs that he or she is currently participating in, making it easier for them to continue with their health and wellness on a personal level when away from the familiar environs of the office.

This benefits your corporate wellness programs in two ways:

• it reduces the chance that the employee will come back to the office feeling unfit, overwhelmed and unable to resume their health and wellness activities; and
• it shows that their employer is just as invested in their personal health and wellness as they are

Like a marathon, personal health and wellness is a long-haul commitment and it’s difficult for any one person to do in isolation. Simply put, it’s easier to maintain your health and wellness when you know others are depending on you and watching your personal performance. It’s easier to stick to an exercise program when you have a jogging partner who wakes you up when you oversleep, or spots you when you’re lifting weights.

Similarly, it’s easier to stick to your personal health and wellness plan when you know your employer is supporting you and wishing you the best.

Don’t Dictate Personal Health and Wellness

Just as corporate wellness surveys serve a vital function in building a health and wellness plan at work, it’s critical that you involve employees in designing an off-site personal health and wellness strategy. No one enjoys being dictated to, but everyone enjoys having assistance in tacking tough problems. Make it clear that employees are in charge of their personal wellness. Your role as their health management partner is to support, advise, counsel, provide resources and dole out information.

Of course, don’t forget that part of your personal health and wellness responsibility is to provide good health risk assessment baselines so employees can proceed safely on the road to better fitness. For that purpose, and for any health and wellness questions you may have, think of EmployeeWellnessUSA as your health management partner. Don’t hesitate to call our health and wellness experts about how we can help with onsite health screenings or simply for obligation-free advice.

Worksite wellness is good for business — and good for employees. We’ve talked about workplace wellness, health management, health and wellness… and if you’ve been paying attention, you probably have figured out what the employee wellness statistics are saying. A good worksite wellness system more than pays for itself in productivity, lower health insurance premiums, and worksite satisfaction.

Now we’ve found out about a new, free tool that you can add to your worksite wellness toolbox — a free worksite wellness report on small business wellness from WELCOA, the Wellness Councils of America. Worksite wellness isn’t just for the big boys, and this worksite wellness report from WELCOA president Dr. David Hunnicutt proves it. In the report, entitled “The Art of Implementing a Great Worksite Wellness Program in a Small Business Setting,” Hunnicutt points out ten critical worksite wellness steps that your small business can take to encourage wellness at your workplace.

The report’s subtitle, “Introducing WELCOA’s Small Business Workplace Wellness Initiative,” illustrates WELCOA’s awareness of the important of small business to the American economy and to wellness for American employees. A few steps from the report that we heartily endorse:

• designate a company wellness leader
• conduct an employee wellness survey to assess worksite health interest
• make on-site health screenings available at the worksite
• administer an annual physical activity campaign to get employees active, and
• promote community health efforts.

Take a look at this worksite wellness report and see what you can do for your worksite — and for your company.

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