What Does a Healthy Workplace Mean for the Bottomline?
What Does a Healthy Workplace Mean for the Bottomline?
The Health of Your Company Starts with Your Workforce
Do you want to maximize the morale, productivity, and stamina of your workforce? Would you like to reduce stress, absenteeism and healthcare costs in your corporation? What if you took action to improve the health, energy, and positivity of your employees? Do you want to retain quality employees and attract the best talent in the marketplace? What if you could create a corporate culture that your competitors would aspire to? Let’s discuss the importance of Corporate Wellness.
Why Corporate Wellness?
In 2016, the U.S. as a nation spent nearly $3.4 trillion on healthcare. That’s a figure predicted to reach $5.5 trillion by 2025! This study, conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, projects that the average annual growth in health spending between 2016 and 2025 will be 5.6%. This is driven by inflation in the cost of medical services and products and an aging population. Over the last decade, employer-sponsored healthcare costs have increased by more than 131%. Recent studies indicate that approximately 50% of corporate profits now go towards healthcare costs, versus only 7% three decades ago.
A recent study found that lost productivity costs due to presenteeism and absenteeism are at least 2.5 times higher than direct health costs! Presenteeism is the term used when employees are present at work, but function at a lower productivity rate due to health reasons. Health conditions incorporated under the umbrella of presenteeism include anxiety, depression, migraines, diabetes, arthritis, and back and neck pain.
Presenteeism results in an annual cost of approximately $7000 per employee. The estimated annual cost of lost productivity to employee fatigue alone is $136 billion! A common misconception is that employee absence due to illness is a bigger threat to productivity and bottom line. But, in fact, presenteeism is actually 10 times as costly.
Organizational Benefits of Employee Health Education
Not surprisingly, employers are actively seeking new ways to reduce healthcare costs, without jeopardizing their ability to attract and retain quality employees. These factors have prompted many organizations to actively promote health and wellness on-site. According to a 2015 report from the Society for Human Resource Management, an estimated 74% of employers in North America offer wellness programs providing incentives to encourage healthier lifestyles among employees. However, in a poll commissioned by a leading global provider of integrated employee well-being services, 55% of working Americans report having no access to benefits designed to help improve physical health or wellness through their employer. There appears to be some disconnect between what employers claim to offer, and what employees believe they have access to. Or, at least, what they deem as effective or applicable programs.
In the aforementioned poll, the 3 most important aspects of physical health and wellness for U.S. employees are nutrition and healthy eating, fitness and weight loss, and emotional and mental well-being. By providing education for employees on how to improve eating habits, reduce stress, and increase healthy lifestyle activities like exercise, corporations can experience not only reduced healthcare costs, absenteeism and presenteeism, but also a reduction in chronic disease of up to 80%! Productivity and morale also increase exponentially, due to higher levels of positivity, energy, and vibrancy in the work environment. As a result, the workplace culture is markedly enhanced, and corporations can attract more talented employees, and experience less turnover of quality staff.
Offering Employee Health and Wellness Workshops
Onsite coaching and workshops are the corporate keys to helping employees obtain their desired health results. In providing such educational benefits to employees, they become better equipped to implement more educated nutrition and lifestyle choices, thereby creating a healthier life for themselves and their families. The outcome of this for the corporation is markedly improved efficiency, positivity and productivity. Such programs serve as greatly beneficial steps in encouraging employees to improve personal health, thereby allowing them to experience limitless benefits both personally and professionally.
All in all, education on nutrition, stress management, and overall lifestyle choices leads to improved morale, efficiency and sustained energy. Improvements in overall health enhance our desire to make subsequent healthier food and lifestyle choices. This creates ongoing positive effects of reduced stress, anxiety, and food cravings. The end result is a long-term increase in energy and vitality and a general increase in daily satisfaction! The health of your company starts with its people!