Human resources and wellness go hand in hand

Human resources and wellness are a perfect pair, even though your human resources department may not be as focused on corporate wellness as they probably are in their personal wellness.

Health and wellness is a big priority for most people in our modern world, especially with the news we hear every day about exercise, obesity, nutritional analysis and the results from cancer testing and diabetes testing. Like we always say, our health and wellness is one of the most important things that makes life worth living.

But why not bring personal wellness priorities into Human Resources? Can’t wellness priorities like better fitness and walking wellness make the transition into the office?

Corporate wellness shouldn’t be a foreign term in Human Resources

There are some very good bottom-line reasons for prioritizing corporate wellness in Human Resources. Corporate wellness statistics make it clear that well-implemented employee wellness programs can pay for themselves several times over. But it’s not just a financial decision; better employee wellness means your human resources staff spends less money on absenteeism and health insurance premiums. A fitter workforce is more productive and happier.

Another interesting consequence of wellness as a human resources objective: many employees consider strong health management programs and employee wellness as compensation. If your human resources group brings wellness to your employees, they’re making employment a sweeter deal for them.

Wellness and human resources is a win-win

That’s why people call human resources wellness initiatives a win-win proposition for employees and employers. Well-implemented health fairs, online health management systems and health screenings are amazingly inexpensive compared to the cost of a sickly workforce, high absenteeism, employee turnover and high health insurance premiums. Contact our employee wellness experts for no-obligation advice on wellness programs. Your human resources director will sleep better for it.

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.

An Online Health Management System Can Reduce Headaches - And Prevent Disease

“Online health management system” is a mouthful. Four words, eight syllables… and a potent tool in your toolbox for helping to build employee health and wellness in your organization.

Often our customers ask us about our online health management system. And if they don’t, we like to mention it because it’s a big part of the package that we bring to the table. But in either case, here are some frequently asked questions about our online health management system:

“What exactly is an online health management system?”

At EmployeeWellnessUSA, our proprietary online health management system is a coordinated suite of applications that provide online scheduling of employee medical testing, on-site health screenings, complete reporting, online consent forms, secure data handling, and customized health risk assessments.

“What does an online health management system do for health risk management at my company?”

Simply put, a good online health management system takes all the headache out of performing corporate wellness surveys, baselining, and medical testing. It does all the scheduling and logistics, letting human resource personnel focus on their normal duties. In combination with the full-service on-site health screenings from EmployeeWellnessUSA, our online health management system lets you do your job while we do ours.

“Can your online health management system be customized to the needs of my group?”

Yes. Our online health management system allows us to tailor corporate wellness surveys and health risk assessments to your specifications, and of course you can add or remove health risk management tests to fit your needs. If you have any specific customization requests, please contact our online health management system consultants.

“An online health management system sounds expensive. Will it fit our tight employee wellness budget?”

It’s probably not as expensive as you think. The system is already built and functional, so instead of having to build your own system, or worse yet, beta-test an unproven online health management system for another vendor, you’ll be deploying something that’s solid and fully developed. And of course, you’d be surprised how much employee time and logistical wrangling you’ll avoid by using an online health management system designed specifically for this purpose. Don’t make the mistake of trying to save a few dollars only to lose several times that in confusion, lost workflow, and embarrassing mixups.

An online health management system really can prevent headaches while reducing absenteeism and producing a slew of other corporate wellness benefits. Don’t sit on the sidelines when the health and wellbeing of your employees may be at stake. The employee wellness statistics are particularly persuasive about the economic and ethical positives of proactive healthcare measures. Take action today; click on the “Contact Us” link and talk to one of our experienced online health management system consultants.

Biometric data collection means better heath risk assessment baselines and better security

“Biometric data collection” is a hot phrase these days, but it can help your workforce with health management, too. When the pundits talk about biometric data collection, they’re usually referring to retinal scanners, fingerprint readers, and other high-tech security measures. However, if you trace the phrase “biometric data collection” back to its roots, it refers to the measurement of unique human physical and behavioral characteristics.

Both security and employee wellness are of critical importance to the modern business. As a result, biometric data collection should be one of the tools in the arsenal of a forward-thinking organization. At EmployeeWellnessUSA, biometric data collection is our forte.

Our on-site health screenings aren’t just a “feel-good” measure for your employees. Assessments of employee health help your workers to prioritize their well-being, which results in happier, more productive employees. Health risk assessments also build your database of employee biometric data. Biometric data collection, when handled on-site by our experienced professionals, is hassle-free and smoothly organized. The biometric data we collect then can be stored digitally for years or even decades, helping you and your workforce build better health risk assessment baselines that you can use to analyze workforce fitness and the efficacy of your company’s health management programs. Collected biometric data can even allow an employee’s doctor to assess that person’s health over many years, helping him or her spot trends and diagnose disease.

Our biometric data collection extends to a wide variety of health risk tests, including measurements of blood pressure, blood type, body fat, substance abuse, and susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. You or your corporate security department may find it useful to coordinate our biometric data collection and health screenings with your own biometric security procedures. Collecting biometric data for security purposes - like fingerprints, facial recognition imprints, or hand geometry - can be dovetailed with our health tests to minimize workflow disruption.

Feel free to contact our health risk assessment experts for free advice on biometric data collection and how it can help augment your employee health and security.

Exercise and heart patients may seem incompatible, but a strong exercise program is an essential part of a heart patient’s recovery. Exercise for heart patients encourages strong muscular regrowth, recovery from atrophy, and mental, physical, and emotional conditioning.

Heart patients should exercise regularly during recovery, but exercise is actually just part of a larger picture that includes health risk assessments, risk factor reduction (like smoking cessation), health screenings, and vocational and psychological counseling. For more information on exercise and heart patients, one can find a number of good articles at the American Heart Association website.

For those who are hoping to avoid becoming heart patients through exercise, the Discovery Channel is now reporting that a casual game of soccer burns more fat than a good run of the the same duration. Initially, this research may fail to raise one’s heart rate. However, in this Danish exercise study, subjects in both the soccer-playing and jogging groups maintained the same average heart rate.

In other words, the researchers discovered that, even when the exertion level is the same, anaerobic exercise is significantly superior to aerobic exercise for the heart and the burning of fat. In fact, the soccer-playing subjects nearly doubled the fat loss of the jogging subjects (3.7% body fat loss, compared to 2%). This is a significant finding for heart patients and patients with a history of congenital heart failure as they consider their exercise options.

Also encouraging was the significant level of muscle development among subjects practicing vigorous exercise, who experienced an average of 4.5 pounds of muscle mass growth, as opposed to an average of zero change among the joggers. The soccer subjects even enjoyed their exercise more, while the joggers felt exhausted after their workouts.

With cardiac disease consistently tracking among the most significant Western health problems, it’s important that employees and heart patients exercise as efficiently as possible. Some 5.2 million Americans are now estimated to suffer from heart disease. If you and your employees are hoping to avoid heart disease through exercise, you may want to plan your corporate wellness programs around anaerobic activities where possible. Of course, high-impact exercise should be undertaken with caution, and a doctor’s advice is strongly recommended for employees and heart patients who are newly participating in exercise and employee wellness programs.

A story from the Jacksonville Daily Record talks about CSX Corp., a company whose headquarters are in Jacksonville, and their major stake in employee wellness. Three years ago, CSX Corp. got on track with employee wellness, investing in a facility and program focusing on health and fitness. To get — and keep — the ball rolling, they initially noted health issues employees were facing and developed a pilot wellness program. From this pilot program, which involved over 6,000 workers, health tests concluded that obesity and cardiac and pulmonary disease were three common health issues found in employees. The same issues are typically true of the American population.

After the pilot wellness program came the development and implementation of health management programs, where employees could be shown how to use lifestyle changes to improve their health and wellness. Soon they found that many employees were truly interested in what was going on — improving their diet, getting fit, meal planning and more. The 10,000 square foot fitness facility located at CSX’s headquarters helps employee wellness in a huge way, and they appreciate it. One employee is quoted in the article as saying, “The company has been totally supportive in providing the best opportunities for its employees to improve the quality of their lives.”

Though it’s easy to think that companies are providing employee wellness programs out of the goodness of their hearts, there’s a reason behind it, employee wellness programs work: For every dollar invested in employee health, there’s a $3 return, says the article. Still, CSX expects to do even better than that.

You’d think it couldn’t get any better than this, really. A company with its own fitness center that genuinely cares about the benefits of employee wellness? Sounds like a joke. But it’s true, and hopefully other companies will board the employee wellness train. Though some companies may see adding a state-of-the-art fitness center as out of their budget, there are definitely other things that can be done. Employee wellness programs can include health screenings, assistance with gym membership fees and even an on-site masseuse a few days per month. Starting an employee wellness program is not that hard, and the benefits definitely outweigh the costs.

Corporate wellness doesn’t have to be just about a hefty insurance policy. Increasingly, the corporate world is turning to proactive employee health programs to help reduce costs and improve the productivity of its’ workforce. It follows a simple logic. Employers benefit from having a healthy workforce which shows up to work.

It is estimated that the U.S. loses up to $300 billion a year due to absenteeism. Many of those absences are attributed to chronic pain and illness, hypertension, and headaches. With so much money at stake, it is about time that businesses start addressing the health, both physical and mental, of their employees. Corporate wellness trends suggest that many businesses are doing just that. Wellness coaches and consultants can help monitor, educate, and create individual health plans for employees. Some companies are even going further, creating health plans for employees and their families. Another approach to reducing chronic health problems (many of which stem from obesity) is to educate employees on nutrition, including lectures tailored to specific diseases, such as diabetes. Finally, other corporate wellness programs include health screenings, on-site chair massages, and reimbursement for gym memberships.

Here at Employee Wellness USA, we obviously support these steps. Our business is founded on the belief that if you give employees the tools to improve their health in a business setting, you can have a mutually beneficial relationship. One in which the both the employer and employee benefit