Posts Tagged ‘workplace wellness’
Want to REALLY Lower Your Healthcare Costs?
Healthcare costs are higher than ever and the increased prices have forced many small businesses into bankruptcy. So what is the solution to lowering healthcare costs? Take the steps to encourage your employees to make better lifestyle choices. As a small biz, one of the things you can do is acknowledge the health problems affecting your employees and implement programs to solve them.
One of the most serious public health problems, and the leading cause of preventable death, is obesity. It also costs the United States $147 billion a year in healthcare. Your small biz can help to motivate your employees to exercise by offering discounted gym memberships, hosting company run/walks or implementing exercise programs. Yo could also bring in a nutritionist or help bring in healthy food options in the cafeteria or vending machines.
Healthy Americans may account for only 8 percent of the population, but these 24 million people are the answer to saving America billions of dollars on unnecessary health care expenditures each year. More than 40% of premature deaths in the U.S. are a result of unhealthy behaviors like obesity and smoking. These habits are costing Americans $100 billion to $150 billion a year!
Smokers have cost the U.S. $96 billion in healthcare this year. Almost 21 percent of Americans smoke, which is more than 45 million people. Therefore, employers should encourage their staff to quit smoking by offering incentive programs or access to counselors. Many companies are taking more extreme measures by implementing a tobacco-free workplace.
Lastly, be aware that the current economy may have an increased affect on your employee’s stress levels. This can lead to smoking or unhealthy eating. Make sure to continue positively reinforcing your employees and let them know exercise is a great way to alleviate stress. By keeping employees healthy, businesses can reduce healthcare costs, which in turn will impact their bottom-line.
Getting Your Wellness Program Started
Create Your Wellness “Fact-Finding” Team
Making your small biz health & wellness program part of the your “corporate culture” will help to ensure the time and money you put into the program lasts. Create a team of two to three people, and at least one from your management team to start developing your program. Try to pull different people from different departments. It would be really good idea to have someone from human resources be a wellness team member.
It’s important to remember that no-one in the group has to be health professionals, or even know a lot about wellness. But they DO need to be enthusiastic about the program and helping their fellow employees. The wellness team will come up with how the program should be structured. What resources, policies, and benefits are already available for the employees? Are there any gaps that could be filled? Here are some initial questions that you will need to ask.
- Does your company have a position dedicated to employee health & wellness?
- Is employee health & wellness included in any employee work plan?
- Is employee health and wellness considered a high priority in the company’s business plan?
- Is your management team supportive of individual employee initiatives to adopt healthy behaviors?
- Does your company provide resources for wellness & health related activities for the employees?
- Do employees have access to adequate and affordable health care?
- Is there a policy in place that ensures all employees have equal access to health insurance and screenings offered by or through the company?
Now What?
Once your team has the results, you can then decide what’s the first step needed to get your program going. Be sure to include a budget in the action plan for the first year. There are a few strategies that, when implemented, will go a long way to ensure the success of the program: creation of a wellness committee, development promotion plan to help market the program to your employees, and coming up with a way monitor and update the program. These strategies will be the foundation upon which your whole health & wellness program is built.
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
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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.