Company Wellness Programs

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives Becoming Popular

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives are becoming popular outside the workplace, showing the ever-increasing importance of disease prevention and health risk management.  Private insurance corporations, as well as state Medicaid and Medicare offices are working on ways to improve the health of the people they insure in hopes to save money in the long run.  They are finding that mini-Company Health & Wellness Initiatives are definitely the way to go.

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives Help with Early Intervention

According to an article that appeared in The Indianapolis Star, businesses, insurers and government agencies are turning to “early intervention to change the behavior of those struggling with common but dangerous health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, heart failure and coronary heart disease.”

The tactics that they incorporate to improve their beneficiaries’ wellness postcard reminders for different lab tests or check-ups; and possibly even phone calls from nurses to work with the patients to make sure that they are taking their medicines properly and following the lifestyle changes that were suggested by their medical care provider.

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives Offer Quality Benefits

There are more benefits to a Company Health & Wellness Initiative than just the cost savings that an employer or a state agency will see; there is the benefit to the actually patient.  The patient is going to get the motivation and the incentive to get better or to manage their health and their health risks by having to answer to someone, whether that someone is a full-time wellness worker at their company or a nurse affiliated with their insurance company.

Walking Health Promotion Programs are among of the most popular Company Health & Wellness Initiatives. They set the bar for entry fairly low – most anyone can walk around the block or their building – and walking wellness also offers staff members with a good way to break up the afternoon doldrums and interact in a casual, more social environment with other staff members. Just leaving your desk for a few minutes every day for a little sunshine can be a big stress reliever – and stress is the second leading cause of absenteeism, according to Employee Health Promotion statistics.

As a first step to starting your Company Health & Wellness Initiative, we recommend that you have a designer draw up an attractive map of your corporate campus or vicinity. Plan out and test a few short walks of varying distances, and using a pedometer and watch, figure out how long each walk is in time and distance. Have a little fun with your walking Company Health & Wellness Initiative by equating each walk with a common office activity of the same duration, like a writing a one-page status report or filling out a common form. Post the map in the office and make sure people know about walking wellness by using your office communication channels – newsletters, announcements, company meetings. Keep it fun by building weight-loss teams, setting up races or organizing healthy picnics and athletic activities around the walking wellness route.

Following are some other walking wellness tips from Tom Weede, author of The Entrepreneur Diet: The On-the-Go Plan for Fitness, Weight Loss, and Healthy Living:

Make sure to link the walking wellness program to work objectives. Employees need to be reassured that these walks are part of their responsibility to be healthy and productive. They’re not personal errands that need to be compensated for by longer days at the office.
Keep healthy snacks in the office.
Reinforce the walking wellness program message by regularly mentioning it during worker meetings
Set up a health-related benefit that walking wellness participants can use for health-related expenses.

Health Promotion Statistics tell a clear story – corporate Health Promotion Programs are effective , and they save corporations money.

You should take note of these interesting Health Promotion Statistics:

Some 25 percent of American corporations were running corporate Health Promotion Programs in 1996.
Health Promotion Statistics depict a savings of $2.30 to $10.10 for every $1 spent on health promotion programs.
Coca-Cola’s fitness program recouped $500 per year per worker, despite the fact that only 60% of their staff was enrolled.
A Ipsos-Reid Company Health & Wellness statisics paper in 2004 found the three major preventable causes of staff absenteeism to be mental health (anxiety and/or depression), stress and a bad relationship with a supervisor.
Health Promotion Statistics from Prudential Insurance reveal a benefit expense of $312 per individual enrolled in their wellness system, but $574 per non-enrolled worker.
At the Coors Brewing Co., Health Promotion Statistics illuminate a savings of $5.50 per $1 spent on fitness, with a positive side-effect of participant absenteeism dropping by 18%.

Company Health & Wellness benefits still aren’t self-evident to some executives, even though the research, real-world evidence and cost-benefit analyses are demonstrative. With careful planning, almost every company can reap Company Health & Wellness benefits.

Part of the problem is that some executives erroneously believe that the Company Health & Wellness benefits are mostly on the worker side. The truth is that Company Health & Wellness benefits both the employer and worker – and according to Employee Health Promotion statistics , the employer stands to gain $2.30 to $10.10 in cost savings per dollar spent. Employee fitness saves businesses money.

At the same time, medical care and insurance costs continue to skyrocket. Company Health & Wellness benefits are one of the only ways to cut those costs while helping staff members at the same time. As Karen Roberts, senior vice president with Aon Consulting, said about Company Health & Wellness benefits in her address at the 2006 WorldAtWork Total Rewards Conference & Exhibition, “If you can’t afford to invest in wellness this year, you’re never going to afford it.”

Company Health & Wellness benefits include helping to prevent cancer, obesity, heart disease and hypertension. It’s rare that corporations can cut costs and assist struggling staff members, support families and even arguably save lives. Isn’t that a good thing?

Employee Health Screening means better heath risk assessment baselines and better security

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

Both security and Employee Health Promotion are of critical importance to the modern business. As a result, Employee Health Screening should be one of the tools in the arsenal of a forward-thinking organization.

On-Site health screenings aren’t just a “feel-good” measure for your staff members. Assessments of worker health help your workers to prioritize their well-being, which results in happier, more productive staff members. Health risk assessments also build your database of worker biometric data. Employee Health Screening, 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 workers build better health risk assessment baselines that you can use to analyze workers fitness and the efficacy of your corporation’s Health and Productivity Programs. Collected biometric data can even allow an worker’s doctor to assess that individual’s health over many years, helping him or her spot trends and diagnose disease.

Our Employee Health Screening 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 Employee Health Screening 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.

Company Health & Wellness: A Long-Term Committment

“Corporate Health and 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, Company Health & 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.

Unfortunately we live in a 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 Company Health & Wellness issues that weigh down worker attendance and erode a corporation’s productivity.

It’s ironic that the poorest societies in the world – the ones furthest from the conveniences of modern life – often boast the fittest, most physically hardy members. And as for the animal kingdom — don’t look there for Company Health & Wellness commiseration. In the wild, it is extremely rare to find an animal that suffers from our kind of wellness issues.

Prescription Medication dependency degrades Company Health & 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 Prescription Medications each year, with the estimated 2011 tally at a whopping $414 billion. The average number of Prescription Medications per American in 2004 stood at twelve.

Twelve! That means that your average worker is taking 14, 18, or even more than 20 medications in an attempt to improve their Health and Wellness.

Is this effective, though? Critser is not convinced that the prescription medications help American Company Health & Wellness. In fact, he points out a bevy of negative Company Health & Wellness consequences for America’s legal prescription addition, which include prescription interactions, liver damage, and the legions of people who now depend on prescription medications to deal with ordinary trials and stresses.

An employer has the potential to improve Company Health & Wellness

It’s not all bad news, though. Occupational health screenings and well-designed corporate Health Promotion Programs can help you fight the downward Company Health & Wellness spiral for you and your workers. In fact, good Company Health & Wellness efforts – like a strong walking wellness initiative – can literally save lives and reduce the symptoms that cause staff members to turn to prescription medications in the first place.

Health Risk Assessment: Helping Quantify Employee Health help you quantify worker health

An Health Risk Assessment (HRA) is an important tool to help you isolate the value of strong corporate Health Promotion Programs.

Health Risk Assessment: What is it?

Does the term “Health Risk Assessment” have you puzzled? If so, then you are not alone.  Unfortunately there is no standard definition or format for a Health Risk Assessment. 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 Employee Health Screening to develop a document that describes what’s good and bad about your current state of health.

To add confusion to the situation, there’s a field called health risk management. Talk to an OSHA inspector about health risk assessment and they will likely assume you’re referring to an analysis of contaminants and industrial chemicals in a factory or manufacturing facility.

Health Risk Assessment: The Typical Health Risk Assessment

A comprehensive health risk assessment is aimed at producing a concrete baseline of a individual’s health, and includes most of these features:

a blood pressure check,
cancer testing,
blood sugar test, and
a thorough analysis of the worker’s health status.

Health Risk Assessments would analyze the worker’s:

lifestyle indicators,
medical conditions,
prescriptions,
functional concerns and abilities,
quality of life,
self-efficacy,
fitness level.

Health and Wellness Fair activities put the spotlight on Employee Health Promotion

A Health and Wellness Fair is a brilliant way to shake your workers out of the doldrums and into better awareness of their health and wellness. A Health and Wellness Fair brings your organization together to discuss Employee Health Promotion, examine Medical Insurance and “cafeteria” plans, explore health savings accounts, publicize corporate Health Promotion Programs and share success stories and challenges.

Some common Health and Wellness Fair desired outcomes include:

better awareness of the health services and resources available to staff members, both from their employer and from local, state, regional and national health services;
increased motivation for improving health behavior
increased participation in worker Health Promotion Programs, commuter and carshare programs and health savings accounts
better awareness of individual health status through health screenings, Health and Wellness Fair activities, displays, handouts, and demonstrations, and
better information on what staff members are seeking from their employer’s health management initiatives, and which staff members are interested in participating.

Planning a Health and Wellness Fair

Planning a Health and Wellness Fair is a lot like starting an Company Health & Wellness Initiative on a smaller scale. Just like an Company Health & Wellness Initiative, your Health and Wellness Fair will need publicity, logistical planning, programming, targeted goals, in-house marketing and of course, executive approval. Festive touches like free food, kid-friendly activities, live music, art displays, talent shows and other community-minded fun will help cement the appeal of your Health and Wellness Fair and ensure that the Health and Wellness Fair becomes a welcomed, annual event.

You can find some Health and Wellness Fair planning tips at the Family and Consumer Sciences site of Texas A&M University. These Health and Wellness Fair tips are aimed more at community and non-profit organizers, but you can discover many useful Health and Wellness Fair ideas at the site.

Health and Wellness Fairs and Company Health & Wellness Initiative Recruitment

Many Employee Health Promotion planners find that Health and Wellness Fairs are the primary reason why staff members sign up for walking Health Promotion Programs, health savings accounts and other pro-worker corporate Health Promotion Programs.

Don’t forget – not only do staff members value these programs highly, but the increased energy and decreased sick leave associated with Health Promotion Programs also saves your company money. The Health Promotion Statistics are clear – healthier corporations work harder and pay less in Medical Insurance premiums.

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives: The Grand Slam

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives are as close to a grand slam proposition as you’ll find, according to most researchers and Company Health & Wellness experts.

But if you have skeptics in your organization who are questioning the time and expense of starting an Company Health & Wellness Initiative, you may be wary too. Aren’t worker Health Promotion Programs subject to the adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”?

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives Don’t Have To Be Expensive

Fortunately, worker Health Promotion Programs don’t require a big investment. Like any other corporate project, mismanagement and “death by committee” can inflate the cost of worker Health Promotion Programs, but it’s hard to spend too much time and money on them. After all, worker Health Promotion Programs are mostly informational in nature. Flyers, e-mails, maps, and Employee Health Promotion Health and Wellness Fairs can only cost so much. There’s no expensive, specialized Company Health & Wellness Initiative machinery.

Employee Health Promotion statistics on successful programs are particularly persuasive. Unlike many cost-saving measures, worker Health Promotion Programs actually add to worker satisfaction – but they also reduce Medical Insurance premiums and worker absenteeism.

What are some common worker Health Promotion Programs?

Company Health & Wellness Initiatives run the gamut, depending on your workplace demographic, from physical activity for health patients to nutritional initiatives that encourage workers to replace unhealthy snack foods with healthy fare like dried fruit and shelled nuts.

Following are some examples of worker Health Promotion Programs:

• ergonomic safety
• cardiovascular disease education and testing
• worker safety
• health risk assessments
• walking wellness programs
• drug testing

Maintaining Employee Health Promotion during Cold Season can be a challenge for any company. The average adult can get up to four colds in one year, and hundreds of thousands are hospitalized every year for flu complications. From December to March, there are more staff members out of the office due to illness, and others who barely made it to the office and can hardly think over their constant coughing and sneezing.

Employee Health Promotion: Prevention is the Key

Prevention is the key to maintaining good health in the workplace and increasing overall Employee Health Promotion. Fighting infection after the cold and flu epidemics hit is a losing battle and can best be combated with early action, such as implementing a corporate Company Health & Wellness Initiative in the office for good health year-round.

Keeping the Office Germ-free During Cold Season

The typical office is the perfect breeding grounds for influenza or the cold virus. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says that there are higher chances for the spread of infection during winter because people spend more time indoors. In an office, this risk is increased by cubicles, bringing many people into a close space. On-Site health screenings conducted regularly as part of an overall health management program will increase the chances of Employee Health Promotion year round, and especially during Cold Season.

Education Can Increase Employee Health Promotion During Cold Season

Educating staff members about various ways to stay healthy during Cold Season may help prevent the spread of any sickness to the entire office. Hand washing is a crucial component in maximizing Employee Health Promotion, as bacteria collects on keyboards, mouses, around the water cooler and next to the community coffee pot. As staff members shake hands, infection may be passed, multiplying the chance of getting a cold or coming down with the flu. Hand washing and anti-bacterial cleaners for surfaces can help reduce the spread of sickness.

Employee Health Promotion is possible during Cold Season. With Employee Health Promotion, your office can reach one step closer to immunity from sickness during Cold Season.