Employee Health and Wellness

Employee Wellness: An Attainable Goal

Was Employee Wellness on your organization’s new year’s resolutions list? Here we are a little over midway into the third month of 2008, the time when resolutions start to falter if they haven’t lost momentum completely. Has your Worksite’s wellness resolution fallen by the wayside? If so, there are still ways to get back on track.

One Employee Wellness tip comes to us from the YMCA of Greater Des Moines, reported from the Jersey Shore. Rod Shirk, the YMCA’s chief financial officer, participated in the organization’s first executive Employee Wellness Program, which registered his cholesterol as higher than normal. That prompted him to get a physical, which showed high levels of a prostate-specific antigen that often indicates prostate cancer. The outcome? His doctors caught a life-threatening illness just in time.

All thanks to a single health management program.

So of course, Shirk is a huge proponent of Employee Wellness Programs. He says, “For us here at the YMCA, if we are telling people to be healthy, we had better set a good example for our employees.”

Employee Wellness Decreases Health Care Costs

Though cases like Shirk’s dramatic cancer save are the most desirable effect of Employee Wellness Programs, it isn’t the initial draw for Worksites. They do it to reduce health care costs, and there’s no doubt that Employee Wellness Programs do just that. Health Promotion Statistics show that Employee Wellness Programs return anywhere from $2.30 to $10.10 per dollar spent on wellness. “Health care costs should go down as people think about changing their diets and getting more active,” Shirk says.

The Employee Wellness savings aren’t just in the Medical Insurance department. Human resource departments report that Employee Wellness Programs also reduce absenteeism and increase productivity.

Still, businesses have been loath to invest that elusive Employee Wellness dollar despite the well-documented returns. A Principal Financial Group and Harris Interactive survey found that only 10% of small- to medium-size companies have made workplace health screenings – like the one that saved Shirk’s life – available to their employees.