ADVANTAGES According to Hareyah (2009), healthier employees will spend less time away from work; this can be the result of an effective wellness program. Sick employees who continue to present themselves at work can have a negative effect on employee morale. A company wellness program can improve the overall health and wellbeing of your employees. This can contribute to a decrease in presenteeism, and effectively increase employee morale. An ill employee can also cause other employees to fall ill, when they would otherwise not have fallen ill to begin with. Employee wellbeing and employee productivity are strongly connected. Hareyah (2009) also states that an effective employee wellness plan can “decrease stress, improve concentration, …show more content…
According to the study done by Gallup, Inc. (2010), “Businesses big and small are realizing the importance of their role in the health and wellbeing of their employees. Healthy employees are more productive, report higher job satisfaction and lead to higher employee retention rates. The monetary benefits of providing for employees' wellbeing are immense; and a comprehensive corporate wellness plan can dramatically reduce health insurance costs and premiums, sick days and employee turnover.”
DISADVANTAGES The actual costs of implementing a wellness plan varies from company to company, from provider to provider, and it also depends upon the type of plan implemented. However, ScienceDaily (2010) reports that “A Midwest utility company learned firsthand that it pays to keep healthy employees fit, reaping a net savings of $4.8 million in employee health and lost work time costs over nine years. Over the nine years, the utility company spent $7.3 million for the program and showed $12.1 million in savings associated with participation. Medical and pharmacy costs, time off and worker's compensation factored into the savings.”
PLAN OVERVIEW
An important part of this research includes and overview of what other companies are doing, as well as, a highlight of actual plans from two major wellness plan
An employee can help reduce the cost of health cost by doing several things. There has been an outcry from organizations due to the rising number of competitors with high expenses catering for health benefits during employment periods and on retiring. The employee can be of great help by being participative in the programs set by their employers to benefit more from other advantages far from health costs (Kerzner, 2013). Some of the choices an employee may consider to help control health costs are by boosting consumerism, use technology to manage benefits, and indulge in fitness and health programs.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 to make sure that most people had medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives to try to stay or get healthy. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Car Act is a big item and very important in health care reform and very positive for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become a very important issue to help reduce companies medical cost, and to help employees get on track to know their numbers, get healthy, and have a positive healthy mental attitude. Many employees do not understand or know how to get healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare relating to
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, with the intent of ensuring that most people in the United States have medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives in an effort to stay healthy or at the least, increase their level of activity and health awareness, making them more responsible for their own wellness. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Care Act is one of the fundamental items of the law and is a particularly meaningful, very positive attribute in health care reform for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become an essential issue to help reduce companies’ medical cost, and to help employees get on track to know their numbers, get healthy, and have a positive healthy mental attitude. Many employees do not understand or know how to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare, especially relating to people not taking care of their bodies, wellness in the workplace has become even more critical. Author Lori Breiner (2007) “believes wellness in the workplace has economic benefits for organizations, because if workers are healthy, they miss less time from work.” Breiner’s theory would suggest that better health increases productivity and profits in the workplace.
General motors have a great wellness program that keeps their workforce healthy. They use a program called LifeSteps which helps employees identify controllable health risk.
Foremost, the healthier a society is, the more productive employees are, which boosts revenue. When an employee’s health is in question, an employer may actually lose 77 percent of productivity, making the loss greater than that of health care expenses. These numbers go up with the combination of lack of exercise, 96 percent loss, and unhealthy eating habits, 93 percent loss, said a study from Brigham Young University, according to an article in a 2012 Education Letter. The study included “those who did not believe their workplace environment would support them in becoming physically and emotionally healthier were more likely to
The purpose of this meeting was to introduce and clarify business health insurance options in the year 2015 and the significance of good health at work. The three main topics that were presented to us were: 1) 2015/16 Affordable Care Act (ACA) overview for small sized businesses with fewer than fifty full time employees; 2) 2015/16 ACA overview for medium to large sized businesses with fifty or more full
When a business hires an employee they are looking for a person to do a job to the best of their ability and poor health could hinder those efforts. When a person is inattentive and lackadaisical during a work day they are wasting that companies time. Employers should be encouraged to set into place requirements for exercise and healthy eating of all their employees to ensure the utmost productivity of that company. Companies with cafeterias could make sure that only or mostly heathy food is served for breakfasts or lunches. They could also have exercise classes available for employees at lunch time, if they have the space. Or they could try to arrange a discount deal for employees at a nearby gym. This way they would be encouraging employees to be healthy and also helping to keep the business
Best health practices and worksite wellness program is about engaging with employees to understand what they want, taking a tactical method about looking at health holistically. According to Lacoma, (1999 -2014), these worksite wellness programs are intended to help the workers upgrade their health and maintain healthy lifestyles. This package includes exercises, variety of care and treatment for various illnesses (mental and emotional health), healthy food, on time check up reminders, outlined health checks assessments, consultations and therapy. Moreover, Engelman (2012) determined that many of the conditions impacting workers were preventable and requires increased amounts of education, screening, encouragement and benefits to help understand how these affect the quality of their lives. These shifts gained prominence during the 1990s from increased research, about the importance of prevention and the advantages it can provide employers inside the marketplace.The recent Affordable Care Act workplace wellness provisions on implementation and expansion of employer wellness programs serves a great means to offer great opportunity of improving the citizen 's health and also control health care spending. The effectiveness and benefits of such programs should be evaluated to encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces (Kisberg, (2014).
It has recently come to my attention that there are talks of cutting the wellness program here at Dynamic Wellness Center. Should this program be cut there will be a direct negative impact on the employees within the company. With the shift in the composition of the work force our company will need to stay up to date with competitors in attracting qualified employees. The following summarizes what factors prompt the need for a Workplace Wellness Program, the results are program is obtaining, and ways the program can improve and become more cost effective.
Because we understand the importance of health, we decided to implement a health and wellness program for our employees. However, we didn’t just want to give boring lectures and hand out
Health and wellness in the work place is a vital part to a company’s success. Employees who are healthier and more productive are less likely to call out from sickness. There are not many companies that have affordable health care coverage for employees. More companies should make healthcare affordable for their employees and their family. Research has been done on how effective health and wellness programs can be in the workplace. Throughout the reading these points will be discussed. The effectiveness of health and wellness in the workplace will also be spoken of. Health and wellness activities in the workplace will be a positive move for companies and employees.
This memo recommends that Whirlpool Corporation announce a new expansion to the Employee Wellness Program: the inclusion of spouses of employees. By offering annual physicals to employees and their spouses, Whirlpool hopes to see a decrease in company insurance spending and an increase in employee productivity and
America has a bleak outlook towards the costs associated with employee turnover, productivity decline, and increased employee healthcare costs due to chronic health care conditions. The cost of healthcare is increasing, and employers typically bear the brunt of these costs. Employers also face financial loss in regards to productivity decline and retention. In a Rand report, commissioned by the U.S. Government and compiled, by Matke and others, showed that the cumulative losses of all three domains associated with chronic
Health and wellness in the workplace is crucial to business success. Increasingly, it is recognized that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When people are satisfied with their job, they are more productive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a large impact on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity. Companies that promote healthy lifestyle habits for employees to improve their health, often take the success of the company to heart and are likely to be absent less often for health related reasons.
However, for small business they may will point out that it is not worth to pay sick leave for employee, like as Hitchcock mentioned in his article that “that workers with paid sick leave often abuse it.” Same as 77 percent of employers are recently reported that “workplace wellness” program is not effective (Eduardo). According to this situation I would use the opinion from Robert McLellan, which who is the chief of occupational and environmental medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, is one of those experts - The health workforce does really have value to employee’s wellness, but measuring it is complicated. The 77% employers who said does not feel their health workforce work well is because they did not recognize this program well. From the data given in our textbook page 325, we can know that those corporations who have a good understanding health workforce are gian much high effective from those low effective companies. Those high performance companies they do pay for sick leave, they do provide other health environment around the place where does employees work