All About Employee Wellness

The expenditures of medical care have been rising more than 10 percent each year for several years. A substantial amount of the money spent in the medical care system treats costly illnesses and diseases.

• Approximately 95 percent of the $1.4 trillion that we spend as a nation on health goes to direct medical services, while about 5 percent is allocated to preventing disease and promoting health.
• Potentially, 50 percent to 70 percent of all diseases are preventable as they are associated with potentially-modifiable health risks.
• In an effort to optimize employee health, cut preventable healthcare utilization and enhance work execution, and in turn lower healthcare costs and better employee satisfaction and retention, many organizations are planning, or are interested in planning, Corporate Health Promotion Programs for employees.

The advantages of workplace wellness are well documented. Greater than 120 research studies repeatedly show themes such as improvements in health outcomes coupled with high returns on investment (ROI). Some primary findings include the following:

• Savings of $3.48 in reduced medical care expenditures per dollar invested.
• Savings of $5.82 in cut absenteeism expenditures per dollar invested.
• ROIs of at least $3 to $8 per dollar invested within five years of program implementation.
• Lifestyle behavior modification programs: $3 to $6 return on investment within 2 to 5 years.
• Self care, decision reinforcement programs: $2 to $3 ROI within a year.
• Disease management programs: $7 to $10 return on investment within a year.

By offering health improvement programs, companies are not only providing an additional service for employees, but they are also gaining financially. Furthermore, the impact of a health improvement program goes beyond decreased health care cost and ROI. A health improvement program can affect productiveness, absenteeism, morale, recruitment success, turnover, and health care costs.

• Source: Rees, C., and Finch, R. (2004). Health Improvement: A comprehensive guide to beginning, launching and evaluating worksite programs. National Business Group on Health, 1 (1), 1-7.

According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move toward a state of ideal health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle modification can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change behavior, and establish environments that support good health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest impact in producing lasting change.”

Worksite Wellness Program: Action Steps

The process of building a Worksite Health Promotion Program involves:

• Identifying the current health status of your staff members
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and implementing the programs
• Building in motivational incentives and rewards
• Measuring the influence
• Revising programs based on assessment outcomes

It may even include beginning policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your workplace (such as flextime).

Steps to Starting a Company Wellness Program

• Conduct an corporation assessment
• Obtain senior staff support
• Establish a Corporate Health Promotion Program Committee
• Get employee input
• Develop objectives and goals
• Design and start program activities
• Identify incentives
• Evaluate outcomes

One of the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through accross the board Employee Wellness Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help employees live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs. In fact, one of the goals of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to stimulate the proportion of employees that take part in a accross the board Employee Wellness Program at their worksite to 75 percent.

5 Ways to Evaluate and Improve Your staff members’ Health

Emotional health is a state of wellness that comes from understanding and acknowledging our emotions and finding appropriate ways to express them. As employees, we frequently bring emotional concerns from our childhood or current family life into the worksite because we haven’t dealt with them effectively outside of work. This can seriously damage worksite relationships and lead to poor performance and detrimental feelings all around.

Many tools and techniques exist for helping us better our emotional health. Some of the most common are given below, with real-life case histories illustrating their use. If an unpleasant mood or feeling persists over a length of time, don’t hesitate to seek out a qualified professional. Worksite Wellness Programs usually have professional reinforcement already in place as part of their services.

1. Health Coaching / Health Counseling:
One of the hallmarks of emotional health is the willingness to ask for help when we need it. Confidential professional help, the coaching and counseling offered by employee assistance or wellness programs, can offer an external source of strength and insight for “working out” emotionally-based problems instead of “working them in” to your job.

2. Self-help Groups:
Self-help groups are designed to aid people in emotional situations in which they feel alone. The purpose of these groups is twofold: to allow people to safely feel and express their emotions, and to help break their isolation at work and/or in society at large and reintegrate them into society with the support of a peer group.

The classic self-help group is Alcoholics Anonymous, but thanks to technology, it’s possible to connect with others that have common health challenges, no matter how unique the situation. People are taking advantage of tele-conference groups and social websites, such as sparkpeople.com and revolutionhealth.com. Workplace Health Promotion Programs often have such groups available through online or telephone support. Progressive corporate wellness provider Exan Wellness, for example, offers teleconference cell groups and moderated wellness forums for interacting with others in a supportive, confidential and anonymous environment. People with shared challenges get together and discuss the emotional challenges they are facing at work or in other areas of their lives and work through change together.

3. Journaling: Journaling is often recommended by counsellors as a way to help identify and process emotions. People record their emotions in writing as they experience them, in whatever form they wish. By helping the writer gain greater emotional clarity, journaling can help in making more emotionally informed decisions. In much the same way, letter writing enables people to identify and process the emotions they feel in relation to others. The letter does not have to be be sent or its contents shared: it simply supplies a place for the expression of feelings.

An 18-year-old “army brat,” Brent has always done well at school, academically and athletically. But in his last year of high school, something seems to have happened to him. He has lost all interest in school, becoming moody and withdrawn.

Brent describes to his guidance counselor all the times he had to move when he was growing up. Each move wrenched him from his friends and forced him to play the role of the “new kid on the block.” The counselor suggests that Brent write letters to the friends he has missed over the years telling them how he felt. Finally, he has a chance to say a proper goodbye.

4. Assess Your Emotional Wellness: Employers that seek to boost employees’ interpersonal skills, or emotional intelligence in the worksite are more thriving, according to ground-breaking journalist Daniel Goleman. And emotional intelligence is the buzzword in workplaces these days. Some Company Health Promotion Programs have information about emotional intelligence, or emotional health assessments. Seek out more information about emotional intelligence for better corporate wellness.

5. Friendships/Support Systems: Friendships allow people to feel supported in their emotional journeys. At the same time, they give people an opportunity to cultivate their empathetic skills. These skills are also valuable for worksite health. When we are empathic with fellow staff members, we help them resolve detrimental or unhealthy emotions. New friendships are made through hobbies, classes, clubs, or even through internet based groups. Many people are finding emotional satisfaction by making friends through Facebook and other social websites.

Occasionally workplace stress that is not dealt with in a healthy manner can be brought home. A 36-year-old mother of three, Sarah, wants to be a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, and a success at her work. One day, drained after a long day at work, she shouted at her rambunctious children and threatened to hit her youngest son. Her behavior horrified her. To make matters worse, she believes she is a failure at her work as well as at motherhood. She watches with jealousy as younger co-workers advance much more rapidly up the corporate ladder despite having less experience than she has.

On the advice of a counselor, she decides to take time out for herself and take a course for amateur painters. It doesn’t take long before she strikes up a friendship with a single mom in the class. She once led a life very similar to Sarah’s before managing to achieve a better balance between work and family. Her new friend becomes a much-needed sounding board for Sarah and offers her perspectives on her life that she hadn’t considered before.

25% Jump in Employer Interest in Employee Health and Wellness

Worksite wellness for their employees, businesses are discovering, is great for the health of their businesses as well. Worksite Health Promotion Programs help to cut the costs associated with poor employee health, which include absenteeism, loss of work rate and poor work quality.

A recent Hewitt Associates survey of over 500 United States companies indicated a significant paradigm shift in how companies view health benefits for their staff members. Of those surveyed this year, 88 percent are committed to instituting long-term medical care assistance programs (over the next 3-5 years) for their staff members, with the objective of boosting the health and productivity of their workforce. This represents a 25 percent increase in interest in Company Wellness Programs over 2007.

A strong offering of Corporate Health Promotion Programs to meet the demand has resulted. Health assistance providers have broadened their programs with tools that address general lifestyle factors, physical, social and psychological health factors. Programs look to predict chronic disease in their workers and give them the tools and the information to prevent it. Employers also demand a way to measure the effectiveness of their healthcare spending.

“Self-care is our motive,” says Vic Lebouthillier, president of progressive health and wellness provider Exan Wellness.”We really believe giving employees tools to help them manage their own health, and promoting the benefits, while giving people resources to reach out for help is the key to thriving lifestyle shift. Corporations are also telling us they need a cost-effective way to deliver Worksite Wellness Programs. The type of program we have developed over years delivers the highest healthcare return on investment.”

Combining worksite wellness promotions, internet based assessments and health trackers, internet based health information, telephone conferences and self-help groups, and access to a wide variety of health professionals, is behind the success of the Exan program. “Having internet based statistics about workers’ health also makes it easier to track the bottom line – return on investment” says Vic Lebouthillier.

“Companies are moving beyond their traditional role as a provider of healthcare benefits to advance holistic programs that pinpoint the specific health needs of their employee populations, drive employee behavior modification and eliminate barriers to healthcare,” says Jim Winkler, leader of Hewitt’s health management consulting practice.

Nonetheless, in a separate survey of 30,000 staff members, 74% said that, even though they felt their corporation had an obligation to help them understand how to use their health benefits program, only 12% felt the corporation had any right to tell them how to be healthy. Based on these results, businesses need to drive home the fact that improved health is better for their staff members as well as the corporation. It’s a win-win situation.

Employers and workers did find common ground when it came to future healthcare. Both surveys indicate that 95 percent of workers understand that their taking care of their health today will influence future health care payments. A similar percentage also understand the significant of early detection and prevention when it comes to saving on health care expenditures.

Cost is valuable for most corporations as well. Over 80 percent of those surveyed made cost mitigation a priority for 2008, but those reductions did not involve shifting responsibility for healthcare onto employees. Although 64 percent of corporations have shifted expenditures to their employees, only 17 percent aim  to do so in the next 3-5 years. Similarly with health reimbursement accounts, 20 percent now offer these, but only about 5 percent aim  to use them in 2008.

These survey results indicate employers are getting more proactive in helping their staff members to modify behaviors and take ownership of their own health futures. This is obviously good for the wellness of staff members, but also for the wellness of the employers they work for. Almost half the employers surveyed were convinced that changing health behaviors was key to increased productivity and cut absentee rates. Over 60% intend  to institute programs that help staff members change and/or sustain a healthier lifestyle. Almost of these employers will also use data and measurements to make sure their health care strategies meet their health care objectives?

It is obvious to most Americans (especially those of us in business) that healthcare expenditures are skyrocketing out of control. No one doubts that either the market will solve the issue OR the government will impose one on us. Managed care has failed from either a cost containment or quality of care perspective. Organizations have reached the point where the cost of offering medical insurance is almost as burdensome as government regulation. It’s time for some new thinking on healthcare and its influence on business and vice versa. “Corporate wellness” as an operational perspective rather than merely window dressing is one way to deal effectively with rising healthcare expenditures.

The Insurance Delimma

The first step in solving the concern is to realize that an employee’s health is their own responsibility. Expecting employers to provide unlimited medical insurance coverage is simply unrealistic and unreasonable. It’s time for employers (on a broad scale) to reconsider their role in offering medical insurance coverage. Instead of offering complete coverage for all staff members through group plans, employers must begin to change the burden of health coverage to those covered.

Here’s the approach. Provide catastrophic health care insurance as a group benefit to all staff members with a large enough deductible (say $5000 per employee) to make the expense affordable for the organization. Then, allow staff members to buy their own health care insurance policies (based on their own needs) and pay for them through payroll deduction with pre-tax earnings. There are numerous insurance employers that sell individual plans on this basis. Everybody wins. Employees can tailor their coverage to their own needs and circumstances using their own doctors. Organizations win by stopping the endless cycle of rising expenditures and ever-changing plans. And when individuals become responsible for the expense of their own insurance, they become more attentive to their own health. Besides, if an employee is interested in working for you ONLY because your organization offers great insurance benefits aren’t they telling you they’re going to cost you more money in the future?

Design a “Wellness Culture”

Our current “sickness culture” perpetuates the healthcare crisis and hastens the demise of market-based solutions. By sickness culture, I mean our focus on health issues instead of on having a healthy workplace and performance culture.

So, what would a “wellness culture” look like? First, rather than paid sick days, employees might be rewarded at year’s end with an attendance bonus. Staff Members would be reimbursed for successful completion of smoking cessation and weight-loss programs. Businesses would invest in corporate memberships at local health clubs so every employee can take part. Staff Members would be offered in-house wellness programs on a variety of problems ranging from ergonomics to stress management. Finally, employers would commit to hiring and retaining healthy employees. Simply put, healthy employees cost less and are more constructive than unhealthy ones. Applicants ought to be screened for health habits and practices that limit their productivity and increase the likelihood of future expense. While this may seem harsh, it rewards those employees whose personal lifestyle and habits ensure the best Return on Investment by the organization committing to hire, train and pay them.

Be open to “alternative and complementary” approaches

Studies published in primary medical care journals reveal that people who use “alternative and complementary” health modalities (including chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga and massage) are generally healthier, better educated, take fewer medications and miss fewer days from work than the average American. Since these people look for ways to stay healthy without prescription drugs and surgery, they end up being a net benefit in terms of attendance and productivity. Old prejudices in this area should be discarded in order for corporations to better productivity and improve profitability

Conclusion

Healthcare expenditures are increasing at a staggering pace. Managed care is an abysmal failure. Corporations are buckling under the pressure of offering health coverage to their staff members. American competitiveness in the market is sagging. These times call for extraordinary solutions. It’s time for American employers to consider some out-of-the-box solutions to the medical care crisis. Organization wellness is an approach that is timely, achievable and reasonable given the alternatives. All options should be considered while we still have a chance.

Research spanning more than a decade has consistently determined Company Wellness Programs to be monetarily effective and that every dollar invested on a corporate wellness program can return $2.30 and $10.10 by decreasing absenteeism, sick day usage and by lowering insurance costs. Additionally it is noted that there are marked improvements in employee success and work rate in businesses that implement a Company Wellness Program.

Healthy companies enjoy enhanced employee morale and an improved ability to attract and retain key people. Additionally, staff members are more alert and beneficial. For instance, Coca Cola reports that they save an estimated $500 a year per employee once they implemented a exercise program in which 60 percent of their staff members take part. Coors Brewing Employer published that staff members who participated in their Workplace Health Promotion Programs reduced their absentee rate by 18%.

staff members enjoy their share of benefits from Company Wellness Programs too. A healthy lifestyle impacts every part of a person’s life, including their work environment. Company Wellness Programs result in fewer injuries, less human error and a work environment that is more harmonious and relaxed. Additionally, staff members who work at a employer that implements a Company Wellness Program know that their employer is concerned about their wellbeing and health. Workers often report a reduction in their stress levels due to Company Wellness Programs.

As workers feel better, more relaxed, more valued and more human to their corporation; they enjoy a rise in productiveness. This rise in productiveness, while beneficial to the corporation, is also essential to the employee as it increases their own sense of self worth and confidence levels. Employees who feel efficacious and who feel that they accomplish goals/objectives are overriding happier and in a better frame of mind.

The advantages of Worksite Health Promotion Programs, both tangible and intangible, are evident. It is a wise move for a company to enable a Worksite Health Promotion Program, especially when they incorporate some form of mental health aspect into it. This also has social advantages as domestic violence and child abuse is determined to be decreased in areas where wellness programs are implemented. These days, a company can almost not afford to have some sort of wellness program to offer to their staff members.

Some of the top wellness programs currently in use today include:

Health Risk Assessments or HRAs

Health Risk Assessment is a top corporate wellness program currently in use globally. Employers that enable it determine the safety and health issues of staff members by the assessment of appropriateness of the facilities and equipment against the needs of the staff members.

It can, for example, guide the company into determining how the air quality within an office room affects the users and then help the assessment group to come up with the measures necessary to correct the problem. An HRA can also evaluate the level of exposure employees have to certain hazardous or dangerous materials and practices.

Immunizations

This isn’t always practiced in every country since there are regions where government sponsored immunization shots are available. Nevertheless, it has also become an valuable component of the top Corporate Health Promotion Programs in numerous organizations in North America.

Immunization shots, such as those used to combat flu, for example, are available to staff members for no cost.

Employee Assistance Program

Employee Assistance Program(EAP)s consist of a wide variety of services. It can range from offering educational resources to staff members regarding health problems to sponsoring health services and healthcare. In many companies, medical and insurance have also become a staple part of their benefits system.

In-house diet drives

This is another wellness program that businesses use, particularly those that offer in-house commissary or cafeteria services. Instead of serving richer, high-calorie fare, cafeterias offer options for a healthier diet, usually in the form of low-calorie foods and sugar substitutes.

In-house employee wellness newsletter and campaign drives

One of the top wellness programs that organizations can implement is a self-powered tool using a newsletter to promote wellness, coupled with a visible campaign. The campaign may be done periodically and focus on a specific topic, such as smoking risks, cancer, stress, carpal tunnel syndrome, safety in the workplace, etc.

The employee wellness newsletter in itself can be an effective means to deliver information to employees or members of a organization but it is far from perfect. Some employees, for example, may not read the newsletter entirely or even pay attention to it. If the issues outlined in the newsletter are promoted through an active and highly visible campaign, it will be easier to maximize positive results.

Exercise and physical activity drives

Another top wellness program for corporations is one that involves physical activities. Organizations frequently sponsor exercise-related programs such as marathons and business sports programs to advocate workers to remain fit or lose excess weight. In mid- to large-sized corporations, corporations may even pay for fitness center memberships or in-house exercise facilities.

Incentives and Rewards

Some of the top wellness programs implemented by businesses involve Incentives. This involves company-sponsored programs that reward staff members for achieving specific wellness-related goals. Participation in health campaigns and signing up for wellness programs are two of the most frequently rewarded schemes. Rewards can range from special recognitions to over time acquired points (for bigger rewards) to specific gifts. In a few cases, cash may also be used.

Nonetheless, incentive systems have had mixed reactions and levels of success. But it continues to be one of the top choices among businesses who are willing to modify it in order to fit their unique needs.

Peer Pressure

In a myriad of corporations, corporations take advantage of peer pressure in order to advocate staff members to participate in wellness programs. This is currently one of the favorite Company Health Promotion Programs currently in use today and growing in popularity. Peer pressure is frequently leveraged to help promote competitions referring to worksite wellness and to persuade staff members to be active in company-sponsored health & wellness fairs.

Wellness is a great concept. It brings happiness into health and encourages a truly holistic approach to life. Wikipedia defines wellness as a healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit that results in an overall feeling of well-being. It sounds like exactly what every one is looking for. But when you begin to talk about corporate wellness, or worksite wellness, all life goes out of the concept. Total solutions, disease management and health evaluation do not inspire visions of enjoying life and living it to the full. They begin from the assumption that sickness is here to stay and needs to be discovered, managed and controlled but can never be healed.

The wellness industry is growing phenomenally fast. Wellness guru, Paul Zane Pilzer, has labeled it the next trillion dollar industry. But wellness has two different faces. On the one hand there are the small companies – people working from home or in small centers selling all kinds of wellness products and services at a speed of growth that is escalating rapidly. On the other hand corporate wellness is also exploding but in a very different direction.

The baby boomers who are driving the popular wellness revolution have been described as the first generation to refuse to accept the inevitability of death. They are actively looking for ways to prevent aging, stay healthy into old age and enjoy themselves more than ever before after retirement. This is a radical departure from current notions of old age, which are frequently dominated by pictures of sickness, frailty and suffering.

The companies have been largely forced to take on wellness. This is partly through legislative pressure, with many countries introducing laws to make companies liable for stress-related sickness in their staff members. It is also monetarily motivated, as research has repeatedly demonstrated the enormous expenditures of absenteeism (and increasingly of presenteeism as well).

Whereas the baby boomers are actively looking for new solutions and new lifestyles the employers are struggling to organize largely traditional and mainstream health systems, such as doctors, nurses, insurance and screening systems. The problem is that the traditional health system does not have solutions for the issues that people are handling.

Nobody ever went to see a doctor to get happy, because a doctor doesn’t have any clue how to make people happy. And a myriad of stress-related health problems are described as chronic diseases, which means that they last for a very long time – or perhaps for the rest of your life – because there is no medical cure. Counseling is a common offering in businesses for emotional problems, but whilst it may support a useful pressure valve it is not a powerful treatment for stress, unhappiness or depression.

Imagine walking into a business where the workers are happy, healthy, full of inspiration, fit, love working, have meaningful family lives, active social lives, and enjoyable relationships at work and in their community. That kind of business would be a pleasure to work in and bound to be efficacious because people would be working to their optimum capacity.

So can we establish a system of true wellness that will serve the development of the organizations and their workers and will pay for itself because of the benefits that both sides will gain?

First of all we have to face the fact that we can’t place all the responsibility into the hands of the current health system. Rates of Absenteeism, stress, depression, the very roots of the wellness revolution, have not been solved by the current system. If they had been we wouldn’t have this revolution, we would all be much more well. So we need to look elsewhere for solutions.

We also can’t rely on makeshift feel-good wellness offerings, such as the onsite massage team which visits the office once a month or the wellness day that raises awareness for a modest amount of while but leaves most people unaffected. They are simple to organize but have little or no real importance on employee wellness.

Corporation needs are different than individual needs and many of the new small wellness businesses that are springing up simply don’t have the capacity to serve the corporate market. However it is in the best interest of both businesses and workers to find and develop systems of health and wellbeing that really work – that benefit people to be happy, handle stress, love working, and to have sufficient energy to go home at the end of the day and enjoy their family and social life. So far the corporate world has hijacked the concept of wellness and turned it into a modern version of occupational health. It is time to raise the vision and find out how to make truly healthy, happy workplaces where people thrive.

High rates of employee turnover and the expenditures of sick days are increasingly taking bites into company profits. The high cost of recruitment programs only adds to the challenges that these concerns in total cost the average company. Many employers are finding the solution to these challenges by increasing job satisfaction, team building, and the implementation of programs that provide a decrease in these expenditures.

It has become increasingly clear to most managers that a well designed wellness program / physical activity program with a strong nutritional and fitness lifestyle emphasis will directly meet this need. Senior Management’s goals for a productive wellness program must be viewed through the perspective of increased employee work rate, decreased absenteeism due to health related causes, improved employee morale, decreased utilisation of employer subsidised health benefits, enhanced team cohesion and effectiveness and a reduction in turnover due to lack of job satisfaction. It is obvious that an improvement in any of these areas will have a beneficial influence on the monetary status of any organisation.

The benefits from an employees point of view can be seen in improved health, increased energy levels, diminished body fat, a more youthful fit body, an increased ability to handle work related stress, greater feelings of confidence and morale and more social associations at work contributing to greater feelings of satisfaction with their work and worksite.

To be most productive a wellness program needs to achieve both senior staff’s and employee’s objectives and goals, and this can be accomplished through a program that will support the individual employee with an awareness of their current physical condition and attitudes to fitness and wellbeing, and the benefits of attaining a fitter, healthier lifestyle, and a plan that will allow them to achieve the crucial changes to their physical condition that can be applied in the context of their life and work.

The Bottom Line – Corporate Wellness Programs

Lowered Absenteeism – Dupont reduced absenteeism by 47.5% over six years for the participants of their corporation fitness program, (Health Behaviour, March 1992).

Diminished Health Care Expenditures – Steel case showed a reduction in healthcare claim costs of 55 percent for corporate exercise program participants over non-participants over a six year period – an average of $478.61 for participants vs. non-participants who averaged $868.88, (The Am. Journal of Health Promotion, Sept/Oct, 1991).

Diminished Turnover – Turnover among physical activity program participants at the Canadian Life Assurance Organization was 32.4 percent lower over a seven year period compared with non-participants (Canadian Journal of Public Health, Jan/Feb, 1988).

Positive Return on Investment – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Indiana saw that its employer fitness program had a 250% return on investment; $2.51 for every $1 invested over a five year period (American Journal of Health Promotion, March, April, 1991).

The Partnership for Prevention was formed to promote Fortune 1000 employers to consider making workforce health a CEO concern and adopt strategies to reward prevention and wellness. After several years of double-digit rate increases for healthcare insurance, employers are realizing that one of the best ways to slow the cost increases is to have employees take more responsibility for both costs and health choices. A majority of employers surveyed feel that the best way for lowering costs is financial rewards and incentives to promote employees to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Nearly 100% of employers surveyed say that health costs will be a critical or important concern over the next five years, according to a survey by United Benefit Advisors. More employers are adopting higher deductible health plans with HRA’s or HSA’S, wellness programs, and expanded disease management programs in order to control ever-increasing medical costs.

Failure to deal with these problems could be disastrous for a business. Wayne Sensor, Chief Executive Officer of Alegent Health recently stated, “I think that we have built a healthcare machinery we can’t afford. I think we are choking the economic engine of America.” In his October 2005 newsletter, Dr. Andrew Weil stated, “I think rising health- care expenditures are becoming the big economic concern in our nation”. Obesity expenditures California organizations billions of dollars each year. Projected expenditures for 2005 may reach 28 billion dollars for direct and indirect healthcare expenditures, worker’s compensation, and lost productivity. California has experienced one of the fastest growing rates of obesity of any state.

According to California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe, “The obesity epidemic is more than a public health crisis, it is an economic crisis.” What is frightening is that most people do not even realize that they are obese, which is defined as only 20 percent above normal weight. There is a great need for additional education on weight and resulting diseases, and the worksite is an ideal venue. Wellness education and programs can result in a valuable return on investment and, if structured properly, can produce results in a very short period of time.

Although many organizations have attempted some form of wellness program in the past, results from those efforts have been disappointing. In many cases, the healthier workers participated for incentives, such as gym memberships, but those who necessitated it most did not take advantage of the program in a meaningful way. Businesses are looking at ways to advocate more workers to buy into the wellness movement.

A new webinar hosted by Human Resource Executive Magazine and presented by Carlson Marketing Group titled, “Healthier staff members; Healthier Bottom Line: Engaging staff members is the Missing Link in Managing Health Care Costs,” drove this point home. This session provided actionable advice on how organizations are achieving higher impact with their wellness investments by focusing on employee program engagement. It also highlighted how you can establish an Economic Engagement Model to forecast the potential effect for your business.

Employers can simply no longer disregard the concern of their employee’s unhealthy lifestyles and must take action to engage them in a meaningful wellness program to lower health expenditures, absenteeism and lost productivity. staff members also benefit as they derive better health and greater satisfaction in both their personal and professional lives. The alternative is being caught in a non-competitive position and severely impacting the bottom-line of the corporation.