Is the wellness workplace benefit expansion just a fad? That's one what colleague of mine called it awhile back. This aricle details why I disagree.
After a decade plus of near double digit health insurance premium increases, a movement toward greater employee cost-shares, and an economy that is struggling to recover, employers are seeking an edge to increase profits. A primary means to increase profits is to increase productivity.
Smart employers realize their number one asset is their employees. Increasingly, we are hearing about the positive returns on investment that quality workplace wellness programs offer. That means business profits from better employee health through increased productivity and lower employee absences because of their improved health.
Looking Long-term
If we don’t change our eating and exercise habits, every third child in the United States will have Type 2 diabetes by the time he or she is 20 years old. That’s according to fitness and nutrition expert Dr. Pam Peeke, at a speech at South Carolina's Anderson University, according to Independent Mail. Clearly, wellness is no fad, it can't be for those who realize where we're currently headed.
Because even without Peeke’s statement, we only need to look around to see the evidence with toddlers to adults eating fast food and playing too any video games. Obesity rates of children and adults are increasing everywhere. A 2010 study by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, 38 states had obesity rates above 25 percent. Ten of the top 11 states with high obesity rates are in the South.
What is Wellness?
Workplace wellness programs assist employees to choose healthier behaviors like being more physically active or quitting smoking. Wellness includes the effort to raise awareness, educational sessions to increase knowledge, opportunities to learn new skills, and changes to policies to make it easier for employees to make healthy choices are often included. This approach is taken because the workplace is a good way to reach people, since most adult Canadians spend a large part of their day at work.
While safety and lifestyle programs are two aspects that contribute to the health of employees, workplace wellness is more effective when a third factor is brought into the equation—the environment at work.
Increasingly, it is recognized that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health, according to Healthy Alberta. When people are satisfied with their job, they are more productive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a large impact on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity.
Consultant Graham Lowe has identified five components of workplace culture that directly affect employees’ health and the health of the organization overall—credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. The underlying idea is that companies must genuinely care about the well-being of their employees.
There are several components of wellness that have a tremnendous impact on employee health and therefore on their productivity.
These elmenets include:
- Smoking cessation,
- Nutrition counseling,
- Fitness programming or fitness center membership discounts,
- Health Risk Assessments,
- Fitness breaks, pedometer purchase, and others.
Making the Business Case
Researchers at the Center for Studying Health System Change, recently conducted a study for the National Institute for Health Care Reform and found that wellness program return on investment is uncertain. They particularly cited programs that were one-size-fits-all programs purchased from vendors with little direct employer involvement as particularly poor in Return on Investment (ROI). Evidence continues to grow that well-designed and well-resourced wellness and illness avoidance programs provide multi-faceted payback on investment. Coworker-reviewed analysis and meta analyses show that ROI is achieved through improved worker health, decreased benefit expense, and enhanced productivity.
Several studies have analyzed the return on investment that wellness programs provide. Here’s a sampling:
- Goetzel and peers, in their meta-analysis of two dozen articles summarizing economic examinations of health and productivity management programs, found an average return of $3.14 per $1 invested in traditional wellness programs. the ROI estimates for the individual programs ranged from $1.49 to $13.7,
- Aldana reviewed 72 articles and concluded that wellness programs achieve an typical ROI of $3.48 when considering healthcare costs alone, $5.82 per $1 when examining absenteeism, and $4.30 when both outcomes are considered.
Summary
Still convinced that wellness is not serious business or is just a fad? Stay tuned for more resources if you need more convincing.
