Archive for the ‘Worksite Wellness’ Category
Communicating Your Wellness Program
Four Steps to Successfully Communicate Your Small Biz Wellness Program – Prt. 2
We already know that offering wellness programs are important and even necessary, but it’s not enough. When it comes to motivating your small biz employees to change their behavior, you have to communicate your wellness program, and communicate it well. This is the second of 4 articles in which we’ll cover four – “must” – steps your small biz must take to make sure you’re getting your message across to your employees.
As we talked about in “Part One” of Successfully Communicating Your Small Biz Wellness Program, the first thing you need to do is take a look at all the different things you use to communicate to your employees. By assessing how you are currently doing things, you can get a good an idea of how well your wellness program is being communicated.
Your Wellness Program Communications Checklist
Remember to check back as we have two more “steps” to go. The following best practices will help organizations develop an effective wellness communications strategy:
Step 1: Communicate frequently. Ongoing communication with employees is key to creating awareness, building understanding and influencing behavior.
Step 2: Come Up with a Communications Strategy. Next, you need to come up with a plan around the issues that were identified during the the assessment process.
- Come up with some set short and long-term goals. You need to really map out what you want to get out of the program. Set participation goals for the short-term (e.g., 75 percent of the employee population takes a health-risk assessment within the first three months). Results-oriented goals should be set for the long term (e.g., 50 percent of smokers complete a smoking-cessation program).
- Know your Small Biz’s Culture. The better the communications are tailored to your employees, the more effective the communications will be. Your goal is for your employees to take action (e.g., target smokers by placing communications in locations where they tend to congregate).
- Know your audience. The demographics of your employees should pretty much determine “what kind” of communication campaign you have. For example, a poster or flier that some may think is offensive, might “hit home” for others and cause them to take action immediately.
- Build a wellness brand. This may include a name, logo, color scheme and/or an eye-catching message. The goal is to grab the employees’ attention with something that is action oriented.
- Decide whether incentives will play a role. Once again, it is important to know your audience and what will motivate them. A health condition that is not life-threatening and involves maintenance or prevention could land low on an employee’s priority list. In such cases, incentives can help make the issue more of a priority. Incentives can include premium reductions, cash, gift cards and individual recognition (such as diplomas). Remember that incentives are not always necessary and may create an additional administrative burden.
- Select the media to be used to communicate the wellness program. Look at your audience and find out what will make your employees pay attention and take action. One good strategy is to see where employees spend their free time at work and place print materials accordingly. It is important to determine whether the majority of employees have computer access and will respond to electronic campaigns; if so, the focus can be online.
Implementing a small biz wellness program for your employees will end up controlling health-care costs, while improving their health. At the core of every small business wellness program is the drive to change employee behavior.
The success or failure of the wellness program comes down to the degree to which your employees respond to your program’s efforts to change their behavior towards healthier lifestyles. To help with that behavior change, you really need to review how your small biz wellness program is communicated to employees. Without effective communications the best wellness program in the world is not going to succeed.
Employee Wellness Likely to Survive Battle Over Health Care Reform
Okay, the current healthcare reform legislation may have slowed down, but it’s not over yet. Whether its tort reform, the ability to buy your insurance from another state, or an over-haul on medicare, one definite area that is being looked at by employers is employee - wellness and prevention. This issue is one that will be more on everyone’s radar because it consistently draws bipartisan support.
As we covered in an earlier post, the Healthy Workforce Act, written by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would give you an annual $200 tax credit for each of the first 200 employees participating in your small biz wellness program and $100 for each additional employee.
In addition, the Partnership for Prevention found that worksite wellness produced an average savings-to-cost ratio of $5.81 to $1. The programs also reduced annual health costs by an average of 26 percent, reduced absenteeism by 27 percent, and reduced workers compensation and disability claim costs by 32 percent.
Comprehensive wellness programs usually end up being cost neutral in year one. Year two is when you start seeing return on investment, and by the time you get to three years, things really start kicking in and you really do see ROI.
We are still waiting to hear whether or not this proposed billed makes its way to the President’s desk, but in the mean while think about this:
- An estimated 142 million Americans are overweight or obese, this represents 66 percent of the adult population.
- Health care costs in the United States doubled from 1990 to 2001 and are expected to double again by 2012.
- Chronic illnesses affect more than a third of working-age Americans and the costs associated with chronic diseases account for approximately 75 percent of the nation’s annual health care costs.
- Obesity costs American companies $225.8 billion per year in health related productivity losses. An obese employee costs the employer an additional $460-$2,500 in medical expenditures and absenteeism annually.
- The workplace environment is a significant target for obesity prevention efforts. Over 130 million Americans are employed across the United States and spend a significant part of their day at work. Sedentary jobs have increased 83 percent since 1950.
- The Healthy Workforce Act provides employers with the means to implement evidence-based strategies for improving the health of workers by addressing causes of chronic disease including obesity, physical inactivity and tobacco use.
The Right Place at the Right Time
Four Steps to Successfully Communicate Your Small Biz Wellness Program – Prt. 1
Whether it’s the “still smoking for more than 30 years” or “the 50 pounds since high school”, that 45-year-old employee of yours knows that it’s “bad” for him, yet he still hasn’t changed his lifestyle behaviors. Although you might have run smoking-cessation campaigns or weight-management programs over the years, it’s not so much the frequency of the message that matters as it is having it in the right place at the right time.
We already know that offering wellness programs are important and even necessary, but it’s not enough. When it comes to motivating your small biz employees to change their behavior, you have to communicate your wellness program, and communicate it well. This is the first of 4 articles in which we’ll cover four – “must” – steps your small biz must take to make sure you’re getting your message across to your employees.
Step 1: Conduct a Communications Assessment
The first thing you need to do is take a look at all the different communications “vehicles” you use to communicate to your employees. This “inventory” can give you an idea of how well your wellness program is being communicated.
Is your information readily accessible for all your employees and easy to understand? Are communications consistent, recognizable and well-organized? And finally, do your communication campaigns support your overall wellness goals?
For example, if an employee wants to lose weight, does he or she have to dig through your benefits plan to determine what coverage is available? Does he or she have to search your weight-management programs to find support courses? Does he or she have to check the cafeteria bulletin board for a weight-management meeting or find out if coaching is even available for weight loss?
Once you’ve figured out what’s what with your communication process, it’s a good idea to survey your employees to learn what they think about your “wellness communications”.
It is important to find out how they get information about the programs that are available. What works and what does not. What is most valuable to them and what they want to know more about. Depending on how many employees you have, you can survey them with written or online surveys. Both are helpful but may be open to interpretation. Putting a focus group together is even better at getting vital, first-hand and targeted feedback. If you do it right, a good focus group will give you opinions and impressions that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Y
our Wellness Program Communications Checklist
Remember to check back as we have three other “steps” to cover. The following best practices will help organizations develop an effective wellness communications strategy:
Step 1: Communicate frequently. Ongoing communication with employees is key to creating awareness, building understanding and influencing behavior.
Implementing a small biz wellness program for your employees will end up controlling health-care costs, while improving their health. At the core of every small business wellness program is the drive to change employee behavior. The success or failure of the wellness program comes down to the degree to which your employees respond to your program’s efforts to change their behavior towards healthier lifestyles. To help with that behavior change, you really need to review how your small biz wellness program is communicated to employees. Without effective communications the best wellness program in the world is not going to succeed.
Small Business Wellness Really Does Work
Small Biz Wellness programs are an effective way to reduce major risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking, obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, says a new American Heart Association policy statement. Each year, heart disease costs the United States about $304.6 billion, the association says. Companies spend 25 to 30 percent of their annual medical costs on employees with significant health risks, mainly because of their increased likelihood of experiencing heart disease and stroke, it says.
But the financial burden also falls on workers, it says, in the form of higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles, reduction or elimination of coverage and trade-offs between insurance benefits and wage or salary increases.
“Research shows that companies can save anywhere from $3 to $15 for every $1 spent on health and wellness within 12 to 18 months of implementing a [workplace wellness] program,” the statement’s lead author, Mercedes Carnethon, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a news release from the heart association.
“Beyond cost savings and increased productivity, visionary employers are realizing the value of an employee’s total health,” she said. “An effective worksite wellness program can attract exceptional employees, enhance morale and reduce organizational conflict.”
More than 130 million Americans are employed, according to the association, which means that workplace wellness programs have the potential to reach a sizable population.
“We are making great strides in workplace wellness, but we also know that half of employees don’t have access to these programs, mainly because they work in small companies or for employers that have a small number of employees at multiple sites,” Carnethon said. “We are hoping this paper shows employers large and small the benefits these programs may provide to both their employees and their bottom line.”
Keys to a successful program, according to the policy statement, include:
- Smoking/tobacco cessation and prevention
- Regular physical activity
- Stress management/reduction
- Early detection/screening
- Nutrition education and promotion
- Weight management
- Disease management
- Cardiovascular disease education, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) training
- Work environment changes that encourage healthy behaviors and promote occupational health and safety
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
On-Line Wellness Workshops Now Available!
myWelCoach.com is excited to announce launch of it’s on-line health and wellness workshops! From exercise and nutrition, to diabetes prevention, to weight management, each workshop is designed to assist you in establishing better healthy lifestyle habits. Throughout each workshop, you will be guided through a series of tasks to strengthen your understanding of achieving and maintaining healthier health-habits.
Exercise Workshop – The exercise workshop is designed to assist you in establishing better exercise habits.
Currently there are four workshops available:
- Diabetes Prevention - This is a six week workshop designed to educate you about diabetes, and provide useful tools to help you reduce your risks of developing diabetes.
- Cardiovascular Disease Prevention - This six week workshop is designed to help you understand and manage any risks you have for heart disease.
- Nutrition - The nutrition workshop is designed to assist you in establishing better eating habits. Throughout the workshop, you will be guided through a series of tasks to strengthen your understanding of healthy eating habits.
- Exercise - The exercise workshop is designed to assist you in establishing better exercise habits. Throughout the workshop, you will be guided through a series of tasks to strengthen your understanding of a proper exercise regime.
Completing Your Health Risk Assessment
Following the initial setup, you will be prompted to answer a series of questions pertaining to your health, diet, fitness, and lifestyle. This survey will help track your current health, identify any health-related risk factors, and create a baseline from which to measure your performance and success. It’s okay if you aren’t sure of some answers. Your Wellness Profile can be saved and updated at your leisure.
By staying current and updating your health profile you can keep track of your current health risks and take a major step towards a proactive approach to diet, fitness, and wellness. These surveys will help you evaluate your current mental and physical health, set goals, and provide a foundation from which your progress can be demonstrated and documented.
Your Health, Fitness and Wellness Views
Update these profiles to create a blueprint for your health, fitness, and wellness objectives. Factors such as nutrition, exercise, emotional stress, and even motivation work together to complement and contribute to a healthy lifestyle.
A completed profile only shows up after you complete the Health Risk Assessment. Quickly assess personal strengths and weaknesses associated with your behavior. Visualize the results of your completed HRA with a bar graph indicating ideal versus low and high-risk rankings for you BMI, exercise, nutrition, stress levels, tobacco use, automobile safety, and alcohol consumption.
video management, video solution, video streaming
The Cornerstone of Our Employee Health Strategy – You
In case you haven’t noticed, the cost of health care continues to rise. Small businesses are seeing their profits consumed by higher insurance premiums and individual claims costs. Like many small
businesses, your organization has turned to worksite wellness to help you develop healthy behaviors and lower your risk of developing a chronic disease.
Having a healthier workforce will lower direct costs like insurance premiums and worker’s compensation claims. It will also positively impact many indirect costs such as absenteeism and low
worker productivity. What does that have to do with you? That ultimately means more money in YOUR pocket!
Our health and wellness programs are your key to optimizing your fitness, dietary, and wellness goals. You now have the power to proactively regain control and transform your life. Whether you are a first time user or already a member, you’ll have access to some of the most extensive array of interactive tools and resources.
Below are some of the programs that are automatically included in your organization’s wellness program.
- EXERCISE & NUTRITION EDUCATION
- ON-LINE WELLNESS PROGRAMS
- WELLNESS COACHING
- WEIGHT MANAGEMENT
- INDIVIDUAL & GROUP FITNESS
- WELLNESS SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS
- SMOKING CESSATION PROGRAMS
- HEALTH SCREENINGS
- STRESS REDUCTION
Emergency Influenza Containment Act May Make Paid Sick Leave Mandatory
They are at it again. The government now is trying to decide whether or not to guarantee a maximum of five paid sick days for employees sent home or directed to stay home because their employer believes they have, or have been in close contact with a person who has, symptoms of a contagious illness, specifically, the Swine Flu, I mean the H1N1 virus.
Meant to help control the spread of the H1N1 flu virus, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and the chair of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee, announced the introduction of the emergency temporary legislation. The introduction of the Emergency Influenza Containment Act comes just as President Obama declared the H1N1 flu to be a national emergency last month.
The concern is that workers will not stay home even if they have a contagious illness, if they do not get paid for the time they take off from work. Currently, federal law doesn’t require employers to provide workers with paid sick leave.
If the Act is passed in its current form, it would cover both full- and part-time workers, on a pro-rated basis, in businesses with 15 or more employees. The amount of paid sick leave would be calculated based on an employee’s regular rate of pay and the number of hours that the employee would otherwise be normally scheduled to work.
The sick leave is available for contagious illnesses, including influenza-like illnesses. If you already give your employees at least five paid sick days, you would be exempt from having to provide additional days. If passed this provisions would take effect 15 days after being signed into law and would expire after two years.
The House Education and Labor Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on the Emergency Influenza Containment Act during the week of November 16, 2009. Whether the bill becomes law remains to be seen…
Another Reason for Small Biz Wellness
Wellness Tax Credits for Small Biz May Be Coming
Okay, if you’re still on the fence as to whether or not to start a worksite wellness program at your small business, this may help you make a decision. We already know that when your employees’ health-risks increase your costs increase. When your employees’ health-risks decrease, your costs, decrease. Period!
What ever comes out of the current healthcare reform debate, you can bet that wellness and prevention will play a big part of that reform. Implementing a small business wellness program can not only help you control costs, it may even earn you a tax credit in the near future. Let me explain.
Currently, if you already have a wellness program in place, all you get is to deduct it as a regular business expense. Now, the government has issued a proposal that would give businesses a tax credit would be allow for 50 percent of the costs paid by an employer for providing a “qualified wellness program” during a taxable year. View the video.
Under the Healthy Workforce Act, the amount of the credit would be limited to an amount not exceeding $200 for each employee not exceeding 200 employees, plus $100 for each additional employee in excess of 200 employees. Only employees generally working more than 25 hours per week are taken into account.
For purposes of this credit, any amount paid for food or health insurance could not be included as a cost of the wellness program. The credit would not be refundable and would not be paid in advance and would be available for a maximum of five years.
To claim the tax credit for eligible expenditures, an employer would be required to obtain a certification by the Secretary of HHS (in coordination with the Director of the CDC and the Secretary of the Treasury) that its program meets the definition of a qualified wellness program.
In order for a program to be a qualified wellness program under the proposal, all employees would be required to be eligible to participate in the program. Further, under the proposal, a qualified wellness program includes four components:
- health awareness (such as health education, preventive screenings and health risk assessment);
- employee engagement (such as mechanisms to encourage employee participation);
- behavioral change (elements proven to help alter unhealthy lifestyles such as counseling, seminars, on-line programs, self help materials); and a
- supportive environment (such as creating on-site polices encourage healthy lifestyles, eating, physical activity and mental health). For an employer with 500 or more employees, to be a qualified wellness program, a program would be required to include all four components. For an employer with less than 500 employees, to be qualified wellness program, a program would only required to include at least three of the four components.
In addition, to be a qualified wellness program under the proposal, the program would be required to be consistent with evidence-based research and best practices, as determine by the Secretary, such as research and practices described in the Guide to Community Preventive Services and Guide to Clinical Preventive Services and the National Registry for Effective Programs.
Finally, another option would apply all of the criteria described above as well as provide employers with 50 or fewer employees with a credit limited to $400 per employee. This credit option would not have a sunset requirement for those employers, meaning it would be indefinitely.
We will be staying on top of this legislation, so we’ll let you know what happens!