Healthy Employees Improve Your Bottom Line

Healthy employees are crucial to the daily operations of your small business. If two of your six employees are out sick, you’ve lost 33 percent of your workforce for the day. Not only do sick employees leave you operating with a skeleton crew, they also cost your company financially. But there is something you can do to help maintain a healthy staff and reduce your healthcare costs: Establish a wellness program to promote physical and mental wellbeing.

Physical inactivity and obesity are two of the leading contributors to high health care costs. Sedentary lifestyles contribute to 15 percent of all healthcare costs paid in the United States, and the statistics for the cost of obesity are even more alarming. Obesity accounts for:

• $8 billion for added health insurance
• $2.4 billion for paid sick leave
• $1.8 billion for life insurance
• $1 billion for disability insurance
• 39 million lost work days
• 239 million days where work is restricted
• 90 million sick day or days in bed
• 63 million visits to physicians

With more than 30 percent of Americans diagnosed as obese, creating a program at your company to encourage healthy living, can help employees achieve optimal physical and mental health, resulting in better, more productive employees – not to mention lower healthcare costs.

The Wellness Councils of America (WELCOA), a nonprofit organization, recommends following these steps to creating a wellness program:

1. Secure the support of top management. Any meaningful change will be driven from the top. So lead by example and participate in the activities you’re urging upon your workers. Nothing spurs attendance at an aerobics class like the chance to see the boss lead the exercises.
2. Appoint a wellness team to oversee the effort. At a small comapny this might be a single individual, perhaps even the boss.
3. Collect data. You can’t change what you can’t measure. Data collection can run the gamut from having employees participate in health screenings (an online version can cost as little as $8 an employee; a blood workup is about $30 per head) to weighing the workforce on a grain elevator scale to establish a weight-loss benchmark.
4. Create a simple plan and set simple goals. If excess weight is identified as a primary concern, for instance, the wellness team might say, “In 12 weeks we’re going to lose 500 pounds as a company.”
5. Choose the appropriate intervention. This could be anything from providing information on healthy eating, to facilitating exercising at work.
6. Create a supportive environment.  It’s important that you make it clear to workers that you approve of and support their participation.
7. Carefully evaluate outcomes. If the desired result isn’t being achieved, it may be necessary to change the intervention or make the environment even more supportive.

Additionally, offer employees initiatives to participate in the program, but remember, you can’t make incentives contingent on weight lose – just participation.

Make it easier for employees to behave in healthy ways by:

• Encouraging workers to walk during the day
• Offering classes in aerobics or other activities that promote health and reduce stress
• Making sure vending machines are stocked with healthy alternatives to junk food and charging less for healthy foods than junk food
• Sponsoring fitness programs or securing discounts at local fitness centers
• Using Web-based tools for tracking and information
• Buying $5 pedometers and challenging employees to take 10,000 steps a day,